Dear colleagues,


The European Space Agency (ESA) is organizing the 2nd consultation meeting of EO Open Science in ESRIN (Frascati, Italy) on 12–14 September 2016 to explore new challenges and opportunities for EO research created by the rapid advances in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). This includes open tools and software, data-intensive science, virtual research environment, citizen science and crowdsourcing, advanced visualization, e-learning and education of the new generation of EO and Data scientists.  The conference will present precursor activities in EO Open Science and Innovation and develop a Roadmap preparing for future ESA scientific exploitation activities. There will be live streaming of the conference for those unable to attend.



On behalf of Geo4All, i thank all our colleagues who are doing amazing work to make this possible. EO Open Science activities directly adds momentum to our vision 2030 for Open Geospatial Science [1],[2].

It was at last year's event that we launched  ideas about OpenCitySmart - The Open platform for Smart Cities [3]  based on open principles to the wider community. Special thanks to Patrick Hogan (NASA)  and his colleagues for their tremendous work which made this possible.

Even today, with all these scientific advancements, billions of people in cities in developing and poor countries worldwide do not have access to even basic facilities and urban infrastructure development is key for eradicating extreme poverty and improving the standard of life for citizens globally. There are opportunities now for cities in the developing/poor countries to also get the tools needed (without having to pay huge licensing costs) to develop the  infrastructures  to help improve the quality of life of people everywhere.

We must learn to be more efficient along with being more effective. To most wisely achieve this goal, we need a more collective approach to problem-solving. Many, if not most of the challenges facing the cities of today are quite similar in nature, if not identical, from infrastructure management to essential public services. Why must each city solve these problems alone? If the cities of the world were to share solutions with each other, they could each focus on different parts of the problem and thereby only bear the burden for a small fraction of the load. And by working together we may come to better appreciate what we share in common as well as experience the joy being able to help each other.

This vision of OpenCitySmart [4] is for cities to collectively develop functionalities they could all share and build upon is very powerful. This would allow cities to come closer together for their mutual interest, save an extraordinary amount of money, help improve the quality of life  of citizens worldwide and certainly advance the cause for world peace and shared prosperity.

Thanks again to Maria Brovelli, Patrick Hogan, Chris Pettit and all the colleagues in OpenCitySmart for all their help which made this possible and it will be great boost for future work.



Best wishes,

Suchith


Dr. Suchith Anand

Geo for All - Building and expanding Open Geospatial Science