Since it was launched one year ago in Cape Town, South Africa, the AEGOS work programme has been implemented successfully. The project team is now preparing the first reports to present the outputs of five workshops held in Tervuren (Belgium), Ispra (Italy), Lusaka (Zambia) and Hannover (Germany). Thanks to the local organisation committees, these meetings provided very fruitful discussion opportunities to strengthen the team building and the common understanding of the future AEGOS. This Spatial Data Infrastructure for georesources in Africa is taking shape in terms of architecture, contents and organisation. The first year was dedicated to identifying the various components necessary to develop and operate the future pan-African observation system, i.e. the most appropriate standards and reference models, available data sets and expected end-user oriented products and services as well as capacity building programmes.
The project activities are carried out in a wide collaborative context of international programmes such as the European contributions to the GEO work plan 2009-2011 and the privileged European Union – African Union partnership. The first results were presented at the AfricaGIS’2009 conference (Kampala, Uganda). AEGOS will now further interact with the other SDI programmes implemented at national and regional levels in Africa and also with the end-users of added-value georesources data.
That is why all interested parties are kindly invited to actively participate to the AEGOS Mid-Term Conference in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (May 25th, 2010). The design of the AEGOS infrastructure is definitely driven by the needs and requirements specified by the End-User Committee. New members are most welcome to join in! Looking forward to meeting with you in Dar es Salaam.
M. URVOIS (BRGM) - AEGOS Project Coordinator
