The conference is likely the most important in the field of remote sensing, with the participation of thousands of delegates from academics, research and industry. The theme for IGARSS 2017 is “International Cooperation for Global Awareness” which emphasizes the need, organizers stressed, to work together to address many challenges we are facing today.

The talk has been given by Fabio Del Frate (University of Rome Tor Vergata). Announcement of the call for expression of interest recently launched by the project to increase the number of the partners has been also given. “In fact, very high ranked European Universities expressed preliminary interest for the initiative”, says Del Frate.

Which are the climate change impacts on agriculture at global level? How can satellite Earth observations help in this contest? Dr. Hideki Kanamaru from FAO explained some of these issues at the workshop prof. Fabio Del Frate organized on April, 4 at the School of Engineering at the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has been actively working to contribute to national policy planning on climate change, agriculture, and food security – Dr. Kanamaru underlined -. We need to understand better how climate change will affect agriculture and food security. Without that information, countries cannot plan climate change adaptation strategically.

How this can be achieved? Students and researchers took part at the discussion keeping more and more interesting the event.

There are three pillars in climate smart agriculture: increase, in a sustainable manner, productivity and income growth in agriculture; support adaptation across the agricultural sectors to expected climatic changes and build resilience; reduce, where possible, the greenhouse gas emissions of production systems.

For these purposes future approaches would be focused on the use of remote sensing in addressing climate change impact assessments (Filling spatial gaps in observation; investigating on difficult-to-measure variables such as soil moisture or vegetation amounts and types)

The use of remote sensing data is basic for analysis of historical trend; monitoring of current condition; early warning of developing condition (e.g. drought, pests and diseases); nowcasting of rapidly developing extreme events (e.g. flooding, landslide); forecasting (today, tomorrow, 3-days, week, month, season, decades).

The presentation provided an overview of the global issue with a focus on impacts of climate variability on the agriculture sectors and adaptation planning in developing countries. Ideas for enhancing the use of innovative technologies and of datasets from remote sensing and other sources to fill the information gap in the most vulnerable parts of the world should be solicited.

Everywhere and every time!

The first FabSpace 2.0 Open Day in Italy was held on 9 of March at the School of Engineering of University of Rome Tor Vergata.

Everybody interested in business opportunity and innovation from Earth Obs and Geo data were welcomed by the FabSpace team of Rome Tor Vergata. Experts from national research institutes and from the European and Italian space agencies showed the applicative possibilities of those data: protection of territory and environment, infrastructure design and maintenance, agricultural practices, could be improved thanks to satellite data access and geo-referred information already available in open-data world. Have a look at the agenda.

“Nowadays that we live in an era where space platform provide constantly an enormous amount of data, FabSpace has to be a physical place, where solid tech-sci competences may conceive a new generation of services based on satellite data, or other geo-data – stresses prof. Fabio Del Frate, FabSpace 2.0 project responsible for Italy – The goal is to give and realize these services for young entrepreneurial realities to be launched. New enterprises can innovate productive procedures in strategic sectors such as agro-food, transportations, infrastructures, territory and urban areas management”.

FabSpace shop at University of Rome Tor Vergata has been inaugurated on 20 of February and already starts with its creative help desk duty for people interested in Geo-Data.

Find here opening times and how to reach.