Working links between AEGOS and GEO were strengthened during a series of meetings held by GEO in April-May 2009.

Michael Mente of the project's Capacity Building Work Package attended GEO's Capacity Building Committee in Athens (Greece) from 27-28th April. This is the GEO committee that 'owns' our project, which they oversee as Sub-Task CB-09-05d. Michael made a presentation on the progress of the AEGOS project. He also took the opportunity to discuss interaction with other CB Tasks, for example covering the EUMETSAT and SERVIR initiatives. Reporting to this committee will be a regular occurrence for AEGOS.

In May 2009, Stuart Marsh from the project's GEO Work Package attended a series of GEO meetings in Stresa, Italy. He represented AEGOS at the EC GEO European Projects Workshop on 5th May. This served to gather people from GEO-related projects supported by the EC, along with their national GEO representatives, to hear about the progress on the projects and then to plan how best to further reinforce Europe's Contribution to GEO. Concurrently, GEO and related projects like AEGOS were introduced to the scientific community attending the International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment, via a dedicated poster session at which an AEGOS poster was prominently displayed.

Stuart then attended a meeting of the GEO Science and Technology Committee and its’ joint session with the User Interface Committee, from the 6th to 7th May 2009. Included on the agenda was a briefing on the open GEO Call for Proposals. Outcomes from these sessions are a strengthened relationship with some important EC officials, knowledge of the summer 2009 EC SPACE FP7 call, and information about an EU GEO Network, EUGENE, proposed by Germany. The advice received about the GEO Call for Proposals was put to good use in the final preparation of an AEGOS-related proposal on an African Groundwater Monitoring network. The proposal has since been submitted by TNO. The EC stated that it will continue to be proactive in supporting GEO and GEOSS, setting an agenda for its’ projects to respond to. The next step will be a 3rd EC GEO European Projects Workshop in October 2009, with Turkey as the potential venue.