Montreal’s 375th anniversary and the 150th anniversary of Canadian confederation made for an invigorating backdrop for the Earth Observation (EO) Summit 2017, hosted in part by the Canadian Remote Sensing Society. Over 500 scientists, professionals, and governmental and industrial leaders from over 26 countries gathered on June 20-22, 2017, to discuss EO technologies, its applications, and its societal benefits.
The CEOS Working Group on Capacity Building & Data Democracy (WGCapD) co-organized a workshop, “One Earth – One Health Workshop: Contributions of Earth Observations (EO) to Public Health Practices”, during the 2017 Summit on June 21, 2017.
The workshop opened with remarks from the Canadian Space Agency’s Eric Laliberté, and Public Health Agency Canada’s Howared Njoo, affirming the need to identify data, indicators, and technologies to improve public health outcomes with EO.
Sessions at the meeting shared opportunities and challenges for scientific endeavors and for the development of applications. Cécile Viignolles from France’s Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), shared opportunities in telehealth, to improve access to healthcare for patients in remote locations and mobile sites, and in tele-epidemiology, to connect human and animal diseases that are linked to climate and environment, using space technology.
Ramesh Krishnamurthy from the World Health Organization championed for a common global dashboard to monitor the targets of the Sustainable Development Goal #3, “Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages.” He shared three elements required to ensure that the efforts to improve health are sustainable: good data, a good informatics approach, and human capacity that is multi-sectoral (involving departments of health, education, labor, finance, etc.), all working towards a “common value” goal.
All presentations from the workshop sessions can be accessed here: http://learningcenter.obt.inpe.br/doku.php?id=workshop-montreal
The workshop afternoon engaged participants in small break-out groups to conduct scenario-based problem solving in the following six themes: vulnerable human populations, mosquito-borne diseases, tick-borne diseases, microbial water contamination, air quality and chronic conditions, and pandemics. Each group was charged with identifying current and potential EO products, applications, and services to support public health efforts for their respective scenarios.
The insights and results from the small-group discussions are being complied into a white paper by Stephanie Brazeau of the Public Health Agency ofCanada, Stephanie.brazeau@phac-aspc.gc.ca, and Guy Aubé of the Canadian Space Agency, guy.aube@canada.ca.