Notes from the One Earth One Health Workshop at The Earth Observation Summit 2017

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.

GEO Health CoP featured on the GEO website

A blog post about a blog post – we are going META here at GEO Health CoP!

The GEO website recently featured a blog post on the newly revitalized GEO Health CoP. 

The blog introduces the GEO Community to the GEO Health CoP chair, Mr. John Haynes.  Mr. Haynes is the Program Manager of NASA’s Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences Program, and for the past 15 years, has applied his expertise in meteorology and remote sensing to address globally significant issues in aviation weather policy, public health, and environmental health.

The blog also shares GEO Health CoP’s recent events and achievements, including the group’s support for the addition of a new Community Activity to the GEO Work Programme entitled, ‘Earth Observations for Health,’ which has three focus areas: 1) weather and climate extremes; 2) water-related illnesses; and 3) vector-borne diseases.

The post, published on July 24, 2017, was authored by Dr. Shobhana Gupta, AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at NASA’s Heath and Air Quality Applied Sciences Program.

Hyperlink to the blog post: http://www.earthobservations.org/geo_blog_obs.php?id=238

NASA Earth Science Division to Select Proposals Advancing GEO Work Programme 2017-2019

In November 2016, NASA’s Earth Science Division (ESD) released a solicitation for proposals to advance specific elements of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Work Programme 2017-2019.  With this solicitation, NASA hopes to engage organizations, especially non-Federal domestic organizations, in contributing to and achieving progress on the GEO Work Programme.

The GEO Work Programme is “the primary coordination and planning instrument to assist GEO with the selection and prioritization of its activities to achieve its Vision.”  This vision – To realize a future where decisions and actions, for the benefit of humankind, are informed by coordinated, comprehensive and sustained Earth observation information and services – is being realized though GEO Community Activities, GEO Initiatives, GEO Flagships and GEO Foundational Tasks, which form GEO’s implementation toolkit. 

The key objectives of NASA’s solicitation include:

•       Achieve demonstrable progress, results, and accomplishments in specific elements of the GEO Work Programme; 

•       Advance use of Earth observations to inform decisions and actions; 

•       Advance and broaden domestic involvement in the U.S. national support to GEO and the GEO Work Programme; 

•       Increase the uptake of Earth observations to inform decisions and actions and broaden the organizations routinely using them; 

•       Increase international collaboration and partnering across GEO and broaden the GEO community; 

The solicitation called for activities including projects, studies, workshops, and trainings, and it involves innovative communications work.  The solicitation also called for these activities to coordinate with global organizations that are involved with the specific work element(s) they address.

NASA is currently completing its evaluations of submitted proposals, collected through March 2017, to identify those that help increase GEO’s achievements, and enable greater uses of Earth observations to benefit the private sector, civil society, academia, public sector, and the public. Proposals will be reviewed for various criteria, including their plans to address: 1) the identification of possible data products (or refinements) that would advance the use of Earth observations by communities associated with the GEO Work Programme element and other communities; or 2) applications development and applied research, if appropriate to the element.

The call encourages innovative approaches, both technical and programmatic, to enable the objectives of the GEO Work Programme element. Examples include, integrating crowdsourcing and challenges into project design. Additionally, the scope of this call includes significant external communications and outreach to engage and work with relevant organizations, and to showcase the value and benefits of Earth observations across the range of Earth satellite missions and observation types. However, basic research is outside the scope of this call.

This call for proposals and the awards are being managed by ESD’s Applied Sciences Program. The Program promotes efforts to discover and demonstrate innovative and practical uses of Earth science data and knowledge. Program activities support goals to deliver near-term uses of Earth observations, build capabilities for applying Earth science data, and contribute to satellite mission planning.