Join us for the first session in our ‘Locate Connect’ online learning series! Hear from Scott Dewar, Director, Chris Hewett, Assistant Secretary GEOINT Capability and Development & Phil Shears, Director DEF799 Phase 2.

In this session from 1300 – 1400, the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO) will be launching the Defence Geospatial-Intelligence (GEOINT) Strategy, a document that addresses how the Defence GEOINT Community will transform to meet the future needs of the Australian Defence Force. The AGO Executive will also provide an update on their GEOINT projects and announce upcoming opportunities for industry and discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the organisation.

Then from 1430 – 1545, AGO, along with Frontier SI will describe how The Analytics Lab Program (AGO Labs) fits into the bigger picture of AGO capability and summarise the outcomes of their 2019 activities. AGO Labs, coordinated through FrontierSI, is investigating a number of ways to better engage and work with industry. Specifically, the AGO is keen to attract a wider pool of companies and technologies to draw on for automated geospatial intelligence. The primary focus of this program is to address AGO capability challenges through a small number of short-term industry projects, with a focus on machine learning and analytics for producing automated imagery analysis, including automated object classification. AGO will announce a new 2020 program of challenges hoping to find innovative solutions through their partnership with FrontierSI.

The Three Day Mini-Conference will be delivered in July, with 21 speakers over 3 days and taking place for 2 hours late in the afternoon. This exciting event will feature highly anticipated keynote speakers such as Bruce Thompson, Dr Karen Joyce and Nyall Dawson covering topics such as smart cities, surveying, sustainable development objectives, key projects and much, much more.

Wednesday 8 July – Friday 10 July 2020  – 1530 – 1730
Program: Download the program HERE
Cost: $90 – Mini-Conference attendee
Full access to all 3 days of the Mini-Conference, and access to the recording post-event

BEYOND THE 2026 AGENDA

The presentation will focus on a major initiative called the 2030 Space and Spatial Industry Growth Roadmap. The Government has set three key objectives for the space industry by 2030; 20,000 new jobs, $12B additional contribution to GDP and an extra one billion dollars into the investment pipeline. The combination of space and spatial working together will make a great contribution to meeting these targets. The space industry sets up critical elements of the communications supply chains (satcoms) together with content (GNSS and EO). The spatial industry provides the vast bulk of the data infrastructure, value-added content and analytics, and the ‘last yard’ delivery channels to customers. Getting this ecosystem right creates a premium competitive advantage for Australia and greatly strengthens our sovereignty and security. The presentation will discuss the next steps in the development of the roadmap; the development of a white paper which sets out the critical issues, the creation of an ecosystem map will help identify key areas for investment, and a risk analysis that will set out Australia’s critical dependence on space based assets and the steps we can take as a nation to improve our resilience, and sovereignty over, these assets. It will also provide an update on the latest developments of the 2026 Spatial Industry Transformation and Growth Agenda and how this initiative will contribute to the roadmap.

During GEO Week 2021, the Group on Earth Observations will present the multidisciplinary activities of the GEO Work Programme that address policy agendas involved in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP26, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP15, the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration.

The online event will include the GEO-17 plenary, plus anchor and side events. Time will be scheduled each day for virtual networking. On Monday, November 22, the 56th Executive Committee will be held as a closed meeting.

Of particular importance will be the anchor events: These are the main events designed by GEO week 2021 organisers to explain the multidisciplinary nature of GEO through the concept of nexus thinking. Working on multiple topics simultaneously is essential in today’s rapidly changing environmental and social conditions. For example, work in one area will have a knock-on effect or impact in another area, such as the water, energy and food nexus. These events are linked to the global policy agendas that underpin most of GEO’s work.

Image credit: NASA

Advancing Earth Observation Forum 2022 will be a face-to-face, fully interactive forum. It will host user, industry, government, research and technical focused plenaries and interactive panels, poster and workshop sessions to interest and engage end-users, industry, researchers, government, analysts, start-up companies, educators and students.