The ESA GDA Fragility, Conflict and Security (FCS) activity was presented as part of the Geospatial World Forum 2023 (GWF 2023) within the Space Data – Platforms, Products & Applications session held on 4 May 2023, and during the Land Rights Security through Technology Adoption session on 5 May 2023. The Forum took place in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, with the participation of 973 delegates from 78 countries and 521 organizations.
In a dedicated speech titled “Blending EO and OSINT data to address fragile and conflict-affected contexts”, Luisa Bettili, project manager at e-geos which is the leading company of the GDA AID FCS consortium, explained how Space and the geospatial sectors play a fundamental role in driving growth of the economies and navigating the response to natural disasters and climate change. Indeed, the geospatial industry provides subsequent spatial data infrastructure, value-added services, analytics, and actionable insights to the end-users of various industries and across global societies to support diverse user requirements. The combination of space and geospatial adds value for social, environmental, and economic benefits, especially with the emergence of New Space, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. In this framework, the ESA GDA FCS activity led by e-GEOS, engages with International Financial Institutions (IFIs) partners to co-design innovative tools through a multidisciplinary approach, blending Earth-Observation based products with OSINT data to improve decision making processes, within FCS affected contexts.
On 5 May 2023, Luisa Bettili gave a presentation titled “an interdisciplinary approach for analysing land tenure security and land property right within post conflict affected areas”, in which she went into further details about the methodology of combining Earth Observation data and Open-Source intelligence data that is used by the consortium to address fragility, conflict and security topics. For instance, it is applied to identify the drivers and instances of land-grabbing in the context of post conflict-affected areas and it helps designing and implementing IFIs’ land administration and management initiatives to protect land tenure rights.
Aside from the GDA AID Fragility, Conflict and Security consortium’s participation to GWF 2023, Alex Chunet, ESA representative to the World Bank, introduced together with Edward Anderson, Senior Specialist at the World Bank, the activities being implemented under the World Bank Bank Digital Earth Partnership (DEP) and their complementarity with the ESA Global Development Assistance programme.
“The GDA-DEP combined approach is essentially building on the complementarity between the expertise of ESA in the delivery of EO knowledge developments and the know-how of the World Bank in conducting organizational change and implementing capacity building activities”
Alex Chunet, ESA representative at the World Bank
