News & Events

An online meeting was organized by NOA, on the 26 of April 2023 to establish an inter-connection with GEO for the capacity building plan and activities in the frame of CiROCCO. We discussed with Ernest Acheampong, the Coordinator of the Capacity Development working Group (CD-WG) of GEO activities. First, the concept, objectives and use cases of CiROCCO were shortly presented and explained, through navigation on the official website of the project. The axes and content of the liaison of CiROCCO with GEO were next discussed, not only with respect to capacity building activities, but also relevant to the in-situ component of Earth Observations (EO) and the planned interaction with the in situ subgroup of the GIDDT. Based on the latter, Ernest will explore the participation of CiROCCO in the in situ session of the Open Data and Open Knowledge (ODOK) workshop in Geneva, June 2023 https://earthobservations.org/odok2023.php. 

The interaction between CiROCCO and GEO on capacity building proposed to be 2-way: as a project, we will be informed and familiarized with GEO’s tools and good practices when it comes to the preparation and realization of our relevant activities. Once utilization of the adopted plan and materials is realized, use cases and lessons learnt of our capacity development activities will be delivered back to the GEO community. Ernest expressed his opinion that CiRROCO is of high interest for GEO, since the desert areas at the global scale (e.g. Africa deserts) face similar challenges with respect to the adoption of in situ EO infrastructure, thus they can exploit the experience to be gained from the capacity development in the pilot areas of the project. The potential participation of GEO experts from the in situ and capacity building working groups in the advisory board of CiROCCO, was discussed as a good means for solidification and sustainability of the liaison between CiROCCO and GEO.