UIC Report to the GEO-VI Plenary: Accomplishments, Activities, and Recommendations November, 2009 The UIC Co-Chairs Ellsworth LeDrew, IEEE Carsten Dettmann, Germany Gary J. Foley, USA Jai Parihar, India Francesco Pignatelli, EC Thierry Ranchin, France

UIC Objectives 1.Enable GEO to address the needs and concerns of a broad range of user communities in developing and developed countries, across issues and trans- disciplinary needs, with a particular focus on fostering new or less organized communities. 2.Enable GEO to engage a continuum of users, from producers to the final beneficiaries of the data and information. 3.Facilitate linkages and partnerships between established communities of practice and new groups or organizations interested in collaborating.

UIC Objectives (continued) To oversee and manage the following Tasks and Sub-Tasks –US-09-01: User Engagement US-09-01a: Identifying Synergies between Societal Benefit Areas US-09-01b: Communities of Practice and Partnership Development –US-09-02: Socio-Economic Indicators US-09-02a: Socio-Economic Benefits of GEO and GEOSS US-09-02b: Socio-economic and Demographic Global Data US-09-02c: Global Road and Human Settlements Mapping on GEO Grid –US-09-03: Cross-Cutting Products and Services US-09-03a: Development of Global Map for GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas US-09-03c: Global Soil Data

Highlights User engagement needs improvement within the GEO tasks – UIC has conducted an analysis of the role of the UIC in GEO tasks and has developed a proactive strategy to improve the User engagement role; The UIC has been working to acquire and provide feedback on collaboration, user engagement, Work Plan content, and communication throughout all aspects of GEO. The UIC embraces significant activity; indeed with more activity than it has volunteers at present.

Highlights (continued) The UIC has developed an organized, structured approach to address the significant user engangement opportunities and expectations within GEO. Our focus remains on user engagement and increasing participation in targeted regions

Major Accomplishments for 2009 Communities of Practice Societal Benefit Analysis Project GCI Usability Testing in collaboration with ADC Call for Proposals in collaboration with CBC Work Plan Analysis UIC Activity Plan

Communities of Practice Process being formalized for introduction of new Communities of Practice –Enabling vs prescriptive process New Communities of Practice: Carbon Community of Practice Global Agricultural Monitoring System Community of Practice Health and Environment Community of Practice Integrated Global Water Cycle (IGWCO) Community of Practice

Communities of Practice We request that the Plenary continue to support the Communities of Practice and IGOS Theme Teams by volunteering new participants to these groups and identifying in-kind contributions to their work plans

Societal Benefit Analysis Project The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the IEEE, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) are leading the GEO effort on identifying critical Earth observations priorities common to many Societal Benefit Areas. Analysts and Advisory Group members originate from various GEO Members and Participating Organizations: –Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Paraguay, Russia, United States, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand, Tunisia, CEOS, DIVERSITAS, ECMWF, ESA, FAO, GCOS, IEEE, UNESCO, WMO.

Societal Benefit Analysis Project (i) Identifying existing publicly-available documents, published by GEO Members and Participating Organizations from present, that specify observation needs, (ii) Performing a meta- analysis across the documents, (iii) Preparing interim and final reports.

Societal Benefit Analysis Project Analysts have completed Final reports for five SBAs: Climate, Disasters Ecosystems, Energy, and Weather. Analysts have completed Preliminary reports for four SBAs: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Health, Water. The Task Team established a website ( to support the management of this task and report results.

Societal Benefit Analysis Project We request that the Plenary support the new UIC efforts to develop and populate the databases on user types, user applications and user requirements, as well as the Best Practices Wiki, in each of the SBA areas by designating points-of-contact that can bring their user experiences into this work

GCI Usability Testing Gary, we need some help here. Do you have anything that will work? Process Statistics Recommendations Next steps

Call for Proposals In Collaboration with the CBC Earth Observations for Decision Support Schedule –Call for Proposals in February 2009 –Provide Feedback in fall of 2009 –Full proposals due in January 2010 –Final selections announced in 2010 Statistics –130 concept proposals received in June 2009 UIC and CBC have involved the relevant Communities of Practice in the review Consistent with sub-task Resource Mobilization (CB-09-01), the GEO Committees will broker connections between project teams and resource providing organizations These projects clearly represent activities that will occur because of GEO.

Work Plan Analysis The GEO User Interface Committee conducted an analysis of user engagement in the GEO Work Plan task sheets and delivered an 18-page report in August The UIC performed this analysis to assess user-engagement activities in all 114 task sheets and to identify opportunities for UIC support to task teams. –51% of the task sheets had strong or fairly-substantive statements about user engagement; –49% had insufficient statements (dozens left the User Engagement section of the task sheet blank). The analysis found a general need to improve the user- engagement activities in many tasks. The analysis identified 20 tasks of strong interest to the UIC in which the UIC is not currently involved.

UIC Activity Plan Formulated in early 2009; adopted in mid 2009 Spans 2009 – Support of GEO Work Plan, Targets, and Events 2. Communities of Practice 3. User Needs and Requirements 4. GEOSS Applications and Societal Benefits 5. Key Cross-Committee Actions 6. Engagement Strategies 7. UIC Internal Management 35 Activities; 6 complete; 16 underway; remainder to start in early 2010.

Actions for Plenary SBA: We request that the Plenary support the new UIC efforts to develop and populate the databases on user types, user applications and user requirements, as well as the Best Practices Wiki, in each of the SBA areas by designating points-of-contact that can bring their user experiences into this work CoP: We request that the Plenary continue to support the Communities of Practice and IGOS Theme Teams by volunteering new participants to these groups and identifying in-kind contributions to their work plans

Actions for Plenary UIC recommends that there be representation of Committees on Ministerial Task Force working on the GEO Work Plan Workshop. UIC recommends that its Co-Chairs work with the appropriate ExCom and/or C4 representatives to determine the best method for discussing Committee topics that might require some level of response from the ExCom.