SESSION OVERVIEW

The program includes plenary session that will feature invited high-level presentations to introduce core themes. Subsequent breakout sessions will focus on sub-themes and consist of short presentations, panels, and discussions. After each breakout sessions, a plenary session will summarize the outcomes of the breakout sessions and provide input for subsequent sessions.

The following sessions are proposed:

• Joint Plenary Session A: (Jointly organized with Workshop 3): Changing Science for a Changing Planet The rapid changes in key variables of the planet (for example, biodiversity, atmospheric chemistry, ocean heat content, water cycle and sediment transport, ocean acidity, land cover, ice sheets, sea level) that are already taking place and expected to increase can lead to major challenges for humanity. We need to ask whether the current approach to science will be able to identify these challenges in a timely manner and provide the practice-relevant knowledge needed to address them, or whether a new approach to rapid knowledge creation is needed.
  
  
• Joint Breakout Sessions (Jointly organized with Workshop 3): Creating the practice-relevant knowledge to cope with global change The breakout sessions will review methods for knowledge creation related to key areas of global change while considering the potential for rapid changes that might challenge the traditional scientific approach.
  
  
• Joint Plenary Session B (Jointly organized with Workshop 3): Linking Science, Metrics, and Observation Systems In this session, we will aim to bring together science and goal-based metrics in order to better understand the requirements of future observing systems which will provide the data required to quantify the metrics and enable applications for societal benefits.
  
  
• Plenary Session 1: Leveraging a Never Ending Technological Revolution for the next GEOSS Technological revolutions are happening with an increasing frequency and we can expect to soon see a more or less continuous revolution. Concepts are often outdated before they can be validated and implemented. This requires a new approach to the development of GEOSS that anticipates to a greater degree what technologies might be available in the future and how to build these into conceptual developments from the start.
  
  
• Breakout Sessions Block 1: Emerging revolutions: challenges and opportunities for GEOSS The sessions will look at several anticipated revolutions and the impacts these might have on the way Earth observations are conducted, with particular focus on how the design of GEOSS could be impacted.
  
  
• Plenary Session 2: From Data to Knowledge Sharing Based on the previous plenary and breakout sessions, we will discuss potential technological revolutions that might have impacts on GEOSS.
  
  
• Plenary Session 3: Creating knowledge by applying a new sustainability and economic paradigm Changes are happening not only in science and technology but also in society in terms of creation, use, and value of, and access to, knowledge. How can GEOSS both make use of these changes and integrate them into a changing knowledge landscape? The use of crowd sourcing and citizen scientists, for example, provides new scientific and economic opportunities for data collection. Globally available cyber infrastructure changes access to information and opens novel ways for the creation of knowledge. What new economic avenues are developing to sustain public observing systems and information infrastructure? Which kind of public-private partnership (PPP) can be developed for sustained global observations? These are some of the questions this session will address.
  
  
• Breakout Sessions Block 2: Sustaining GEOSS in a Changing World The sessions will address emerging alternatives for data collection (such as crowd sourcing, citizen scientists, and autonomous sensors), business models for open access, and global data system governance.
  
  
• Plenary Session 4: Final Discussion and Conclusions: Setting Priorities for GEOSS Based on the previous sessions, priorities for Earth observations will be discussed and translated into recommendations.