Stuart Marsh and Luc Chevallier, co-leaders of work package 7, attended the first GEO Work Plan Symposium that was held in Pretoria from 17–19th May. Stuart Marsh also attended the GEO Science and Technology Committee and Joint Committee Meetings that followed on 20–21st May. The event was hosted by the Department of Science and Technology of South Africa.

The GEO Work Plan describes Tasks, the concrete steps towards implementation of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). It consists of two parts:

• Building an integrated GEOSS: addressing architecture, data management, capacity building, science and technology and user engagement

• The 9 GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas (SBA): Tasks aimed at applications to Disasters, Health, Energy, Climate, Agriculture, Ecosystems, Biodiversity, Water and Weather issues.

Four presentations were given by the AEGOS team. We made the case of the obvious lack of “Geology” in the work plan and argued strongly for Geoscience to feature more prominently in future iterations, as suggested by the figure opposite. The idea of a 10th SBA called “Geology” was used to spark a debate.

Of course, such an SBA does not fit the existing model and is unlikely but an SBA like “Geo-Resources” can be envisaged in the longer term. In the short term, there is definitively scope for geological contribution as new tasks distributed over the entire programme. The strongest need concerns mineral development and finding a home for EO-MINERS, an EU-funded FP7 GEO Project without a GEO Task. This topic could perhaps be coupled with the “Energy” SBA in the short term, with the combination then ultimately rebranded as “Geo-resources”.

The existing 2009-11 GEO Work Plan is open for revision at the moment. Then, the new 2012-15 GEO Work Plan will be prepared over the next year, for approval in 2011. So, proposals for new tasks to be added are timely; short term suggestions for the revision round will be made by the WP7 team during June and firm proposals for the new Work Plan should then come out of the London conference on the 7–8th July on “Geoscience Observations and Observing Systems”. All AEGOS participants have been invited to attend the latter; information is on the AEGOS Project Website (www.aegos-project.org) and it can be requested from Gisela Ager at BGS: CLOAKING

L. CHEVALLIER (CGS, South Africa)

S. MARSH (BGS, United Kingdom)

Work package 7 Co-leaders