Increasing availability of new types of data strengthens geospatial research in different scientific fields and opens up opportunities to better measure results and evaluate the impacts of development interventions. A recent paper (published in the International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research in October 2018) presents examples where geospatial approaches have been applied in evaluations and thus demonstrate the potential use in informing policy design through scientifically sound evidence as well as learning.
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In particular, the paper discusses the impact evaluation of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) support to protected areas and protected area systems; and the evaluation of GIZ’s land-use planning and disaster risk management programme in the Philippines.
The first two speakers -who co-authored the paper- will present the methods used in these two evaluations and the main lessons learnt; they will furthermore discuss the possible use of geospatial evidence in evaluating interventions in other contexts.
The third speaker will present the full, free and open data policy that Copernicus has adopted for its satellite data and service products.
Copernicus is the European program for monitoring the Earth and is coordinated and managed by the European Commission. Today, it is the most ambitious Earth Observation programme in the world.
The development of the observation satellite infrastructure is performed under the aegis of the European Space Agency. It consists of a constellation of satellites carrying a range of technologies dedicated to land, ocean and atmospheric monitoring. Around 20 satellites will be launched during the first phase of the program, 7 satellites are already in orbit and fully operational.
Copernicus processes also these data and provides users with reliable and up-to-date information through a set of core and on-demand services related to environmental and security issues.
Please see here for more details.