Building a Geohazards Community of Practice in Support of GEO Work Plan Tasks and GEOSS Implementation 1st Workshop of the Geohazards Community of Practice of GEO January 18-21, 2010, Paris, France

Sessions:

• Session 1: Geohazards in the GEO and GEOSS Framework
• Session 2: Contributions of the GHCP to GEO (Breakout Sessions)
  • Breakout Session 2a: The GHCP and the GEO Work Plan, the GEO Task Teams, and the GEO Committees
    
  • Breakout Session 2b: Science, Technology, and Infrastructure issues in relevant GEO Work Plan Tasks
    
• Session 3: Perspectives of the GHCP (Breakout Sessions)
  • Breakout Session 3a: The Supersite/Natural Laboratory Initiative
    
  • Breakout Session 3b: The GHCP: relations to end users, capacity building, and regional CoPs
• Session 4: Towards a Roadmap for the Geohazards Community of Practice

Sessions 1-4: For each of these sessions, two or more co-chairs will take responsibility for the organization of the session program. Sessions 1 and 4 should include a number of key notes, preferably based on brief position papers. For each of the breakout sessions, two co-chairs will be in charge of organizing the sessions and producing the anticipated output. The co-chairs are expected to find a good balance between invited presentations and sufficient discussion time. For each of these breakout sessions, a rapporteur will prepare a presentation and report back to the plenary.

Session 1: Geohazards in the GEO and GEOSS Framework

Description: The goal of this session is to review to what extent geohazards are currently addressed by the GEO Committees, the GEO Work Plan Tasks, and in which way geohazards are present in the Common GEOSS Infrastructure and the Architecture Implementation Pilots. The review will also aim to identify the key players within GEO that are relevant for geohazards. With respect to SBAs, geohazards are mostly associated with the Disaster SBA, but also relevant for other SBAs. The session therefore aims to map the relevance of the geohazards across all SBAs. The goal is to understand what the GEO components such as the Committees and Task Teams would expect of a Geohazards Community of Practice. Likewise, the session will consider the view of selected GEO Member Countries and Participating Organizations on the role and contribution of the GHCP.

Session 2: Contributions of the GHCP to GEO

Description: In two parallel breakout sessions, this session will consider different aspects of the potential contribution of the GHCP to the GEO Work Plan and Task Teams, as well as the GEO Committees.

• Breakout Session 2a: The GHCP and the GEO Work Plan, the GEO Task Teams, and the GEO: This breakout session will be a forum for the GEO Committees and Task Teams to discuss with members of the GHCP the role, potential linkages, and modes of contribution for the GHCP within the framework of GEO and GEOSS. Likewise, the breakout session will consider questions of adequacy and linkages of relevant regional and global organizations contributing to GEO. Organizational issues, including the support through a secretariat or bureau will also be addressed. The anticipate output would be a guidance of how the activities of the GHCP best would be coordinated and integrated into GEO and GEOSS.
• Breakout Session 2b: Science, Technology, and Infrastructure issues in relevant GEO Work Plan Tasks: In this breakout session, the GEO Work Plan will be reviewed with the goal to identify those issues related to science, technology, and infrastructure (including among others observations, basic data sets, and services) that need to be addressed in order to inform the Disaster SBA, other SBAs, and decision makers on relevant aspects of geohazards. The session aims to identify science and technology issues related to the understanding, mapping, assessing, and monitoring of geohazards throughout the SBAs and to prepare a description of the activities the GHCP could initiate, coordinate, or carry out in order to support the GEO Work Plan Tasks in addressing these science issues. Interoperability of products and services will also be addressed. The goal is to produce an input to the draft roadmap describing potential activities of the GHCP in the areas of science, technology, infrastructure, data access, services, and interoperability.

Session 3: Perspectives of the Geohazards Community of Practice

Description: In two parallel breakout sessions, this session will develop perspectives and strategies of the Geohazards Community of Practice in three key areas:

• Breakout Session 3a: The Supersite/Natural Laboratory Initiative: The current status of the Supersite Initiative, or Natural Laboratory Initiative, as some prefer to call it, will be reviewed with the goal to define activities for the Geohazards Community of Practice in support of this important initiative.
• Breakout Session 3b: The GHCP: relations to end users, capacity building, and regional CoPs: In this breakout session, a range of selected end users (such as relevant United Nations agencies, national and regional planners, insurances, etc.) will have a forum to advice the GHCP on how to connect to end users and to focus the activities on their needs. Acknowledging the importance of capacity building within the framework of GEO and for increased usage of GEOSS, the breakout session also aims to develop a conceptual basis for capacity building initiated, coordinated, or carried out by the GHCP both in terms of observations, mapping, assessing, and monitoring of geohazards and in utilizing the resulting data products and services for societal applications. This session will provide guidance for the development of a user and application-driven roadmap taking into account that full utilization of GEOSS often will require considerable capacity building.

Session 4: Towards a Roadmap for the Geohazards Community of Practice

Description: The goal of this session is to make progress towards a roadmap for the Geohazards Community of Practice, which would detail the activities to be pursued in order to inform GEO and its Committees and Task Teams about geohazards-related information needs of users in a wide range of scientific and societal areas. Moreover, the roadmap will describe activities to support the Task Teams of relevant GEO Work Plan Tasks in their work and to facilitate the implementation of relevant GEOSS contributions. The session will also address in a generic way potential avenues for funding of the identified activities.

Submission of Abstracts: For submission of abstracts, go to Venue, Registration, Abstracts.