Represented by the CMCC research team (Manuela Balzarolo, Maria Vincenza Chiriacò, Melissa Latella, Monia Santini), SDGs-EYES participated in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting 2023.
The conference represented a great chance to communicate objectives and preliminary outcomes of SDGs-EYES and to connect with the international scientific community. The participation was in the form of three e-lightning (i.e., digitally showcased) posters in two sessions “Advances in Characterizing and Monitoring Land System Change Using Remote Sensing Data” and “Earth Science and Observations for Advancing the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals”.
Each year, AGU’s fall meeting convenes >25,000 attendees from 100+ countries to share research and connect scientists, educators, policymakers, journalists and communicators to exchange results, views and better understand our planet and environment to address climate to global change challenges, fostering collaborations, solutions and stimulating scientific advancements. This year, AGU2023 allowed SDGs-EYES involved researchers to start communicating the project aims and initial results as well as connecting with relevant research teams and centres working around similar and SDG interconnected topics, especially the increasing use of Earth Observation (EO).
Communicate the SDGs-EYES project
Through the posters it was possible to highlight the project’s objectives and expected results, and some of the methodologies and pilots. One poster “SDGs-EYES: A Copernicus-driven Service for Monitoring SDG Indicators” gave an overview of the key features that makes the SDGs-EYEs project unique and the important outcomes that it strives to achieve. Two posters were mostly dedicated to ongoing activities related to SDG15 (Life on land) indicators: “Earth Observation and Machine Learning to Improve the Estimation of Changing Land Cover and Management in Soil Erosion Assessment” and “SDGs: a Novel Framework for Forest Cover Change and Land Degradation Assessment and Monitoring across Europe”.
Building Bridges
The initiative was one of the main relevant events in the SDGs-EYES calendar given that the project aims at further exploiting EO-based data and services to monitor SDGs indicators. Through the initiative, it was possible to connect with the scientific community, working around Earth Observation, Machine/Deep Learning and modelling approaches, who showed interest and provided feedback that will help in fine tuning the project’s products. It was also a great chance to observe the latest initiatives, projects, and advances in the EO and AI sectors. During the session and the conference as a whole a number of other fruitful relevant initiatives and projects were displayed related to SDGs, climate change and innovative scientific fields and tools to investigate them.
Raise awareness
Since the SDGs-EYES key takeaway is the exploitation of Copernicus data, products and services to have a better and more accurate SDGs Indicators monitoring, participating in the AGU Fall Meeting was an important occasion to draw attention about Copernicus, a EU funded Programme that provides a increasing amount of data with global coverage, facilitating the upscaling and transferability of project’s outcome across the world.
Participating in such events always helps in having a more comprehensive view on the latest achievements of the EO and digital solutions to contribute to addressing global challenges. The successful participation was crowned by communicating SDGs-EYES, building collaboration bridges, and raising awareness about the project which are the main objectives of the participation.
