CSO has PREPARED A SECTION OF EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ABOUT ORBITAL MONITORING OF the ENVIRONMENT AND SECURITY
Prague, 6 April 2009 – Czech Space Office organized and prepared a special section dedicated to GMES programme (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) at the “TOWARDS eENVIRONMENT” conference, which had taken place in Prague between March 25th and 27th during the Czech Presidency of the EU.
“The conference meant the biggest event of this kind for the Czech Republic and it was also an important possibility for representatives of institutions, universities and companies, to get in touch with other people from the branch, but it was a source of inspiration for possible future projects within the GMES as well. The goal of this conference was primarily to open the gate towards the GMES programme to interested people from Central and East Europe”, says the GMES section manager at the Conference, Ondřej Mirovský from CSO.
Within this section, the users, representatives of industry and all the decision makers, were given the information about the state of affairs and they were informed, how countries from Central and East Europe can join the GMES programme – both the space and ground segment.
An important output of the whole conference was an indisputable agreement on a need to connect the GMES programme more firmly with other European programmes as SEIS (Shared Environmental Information Systems) and INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community), which would then lead to a more effective acquirement, exchange and assessment of information about the environment. Two main characters voicing such need were Executive Director to the European Environment Agency professor Jacqueline McGlade and Director of Earth Observation Programmes of ESA Volker Liebig.
What is GMES?
GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) is next to the Galileo navigation system the second main programme of the European community. The strategic goal of GMES is to acquire, using the output of observation satellites, current and first-rate information about the state of the specific area, which is needed for deciding about the development of certain regions, for damage control during catastrophes or for humanitarian actions. Another goal is to even out the differences in the various national standards in the area of global monitoring of the environment and security within the whole European Union.