Users

Beneficaries of the Operational Scenario are the different geoland observatories. geoland addresses a portfolio of thematic geo-information products and services supporting the implementation of European and International policies, conventions, and European directives and their national implementation. It is branched into three broad communities of geo-information demand and supply:

geo-information communities present in geoland IP

1. Global vegetation and climate monitoring:

This community is driven by large European and national meteorological institutions (e.g. EUMETSAT, ECMWF), with established geo-information production and distribution architecture. The geoland products of Observatory ONC has got a good opportunity to get implemented in existing processing methods used by ECMWF such improving both the knowledge about natural carbon and water fluxes and the medium-range weather forecast. The core service bio-physical parametres results may be accepted as enlarging the portfolio of EUMETSAT's LandSAF.

2. International environmental and sustainable development organisations:

International Organisations and public agencies (UN, FAO, UNEP) are supporting the definition of the geoland products on crop monitoring and food security, and land cover and forest change. Typically their information provision is based on projects funded by donors, such as the European Commission's EDF (European Development Fund). The information is provided by public research institutions (e.g. JRC), public and - to a lesser degree - by private service providers.

3. European environmental and sustainable development:

The principle of subsidiary determines a fragmented situation within Europe across sectoral policies (e.g. agriculture, environment, regional planning) and European to local levels of administrative mandates (monitoring and management usually with regional/local bodies - national organisations setting-up implementation guidelines based on European and national regulations and aggregating the reported information). Future organisation of European co-funding of GMES services in this domain could follow three principles: (1) direct European procurement to cover common European information needs; (2) European co-funding of national-level activities based on commonly agreed programmes; (3) Interreg-type co-funding of regional authorities teaming-up to commonly procure geo-information services meeting European standards and quality guidelines.