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 Space Symposium attracts thousands of representatives of the space industry, governments, militaries, research agencies and more. The event brings  all these groups together in one place to provide an opportunity to examine space issues from multiple perspectives, to promote dialog and to focus attention on critical space issues.

This year, the Space Symposium will be a hybrid in-person/virtual event, with the in-person sessions taking place in Boulder, Colorado, along with a vast exhibition display space which, this year, has been increased by 8,300 square metres.

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