 Myself, I'm Apostola Zimas, coordinator of currently of an EU research innovation project, Prime Water. As Samuel mentioned, Prime Water supports and has initiated this COV together with IWA and AquaWatch on how earth observations can be used effectively in water resources management. This is a big question. There is a lot of new science around these technologies and I think we try to demonstrate with these three presentations the possibilities around using earth observations for water management. Of course, detection is a very key and central let's say application, but then earth observations can also use and support planning decisions, but even more operational services like forecasting services in hydrology, water quality and so on. I think this is the first theme of our discussion, sharing experiences from other projects, from possible other uses from your site, applications from your site of this kind of services in all those different ways we've mentioned and even beyond that. So please don't hesitate to contribute either orally by adding a sticker on the board, but it would be really nice to understand and hear on your experiences working with earth observations in different types and ways. I don't mind starting. Please do. So I think we've been gathered here from around the world to hear about some technologies and I think we must all have very different experiences and I think a lot of those experiences will have to do with how old we are. So I'm going to suggest you how old I am by explaining my experience and I think I was possibly one of the first generations to come across earth observation data and I did that through the technology called Google Earth and I think Google Earth is probably the number one earth observation data tool that we use and I think a lot of users use it like I do which is that we come across it from an earlier age and there's this kind of wow factor and it's kind of you know this is everything we need and then perhaps this is not your experience but I felt that there's like an almost like it that like the brain kind of switches off and I kind of think okay Google Earth has everything I need and if I need more then I'm going to hire a consultant or I'm going to hire an expert and I'm going to but I feel like now 10 or 15 years after I first discovered Google Earth I think that's wrong. I think probably there's a lot of really accessible earth observation data that's way more powerful than Google Earth that speaks specifically to what I need when I'm looking at water quality like in Lake Victoria and I don't have to reach for a consultant I don't have to so I'm interested in I suppose the educational aspects of of getting the information into users hands so you know they're not immediate they're not like Google Earth is not the beginning and end of their earth observation experience one two they're not intimidated by a by the little bit more technical knowledge that is required but also by the cost I think we're often intimidated by you know Google Earth is free if you go beyond Google Earth you're going to have to pay for it that's that's an intimidation aspect there because a lot of the people I work with you know they don't have big budgets we're talking about very poor governments national governments or local governments or you know private sector businesses who don't have large you know overhead budgets so I made an understanding you know how how can we get real up-to-date information about what is excessive what is out there but also what is accessible like what is there's earth observation information which is accessible to everyone and there's other stuff for which you need a big budget so what is the difference and and what are the ways we can share that information that's what I'd love to hear about thank you well that's a very nice perspective when looking into that and I think it's very also realistic because it's it's it's a matter of how at the end of the day somebody can use these very valuable products results and it's also nice to hear that you feel that there is a high level of accessibility towards this direction because these in other cases seems to appear like a significant barrier in in the uptake of bus services so generally speaking water professionals they're not so much familiar with this kind of of new services new products because of the reasons you've mentioned I mean not easily I mean it's really it might be difficult to to have to gain access to exactly what you need or you might need a lot of time to spend searching around you nicely put it you know the cost issues as an implementation factor so all those things are really true and what you've mentioned for example the educational part of the whole process is is one of the key aspects that COP this particular COP that IWA has initiated is very much looking for so this is a thing I think this is very central to the objectives of these community of practice to to bring together in an easy and efficient way let's say the technology the technological factors with the professions with the water professionals and enable a little bit this this this this interconnection so I think I think this is this is really important you know as as a requirement I received your your contribution your reflection as a requirement out of this COP which I think is very very important now in terms of of not a very very quick comment before we somebody else can jump into the discussion so another thing that appears to be true nowadays is that there is a continuous investment in space technology that to a certain degree is available to the public is available to to the users but there is also certain levels of of of downstream services from that point on that create a margin for for for businesses and other other activities so it is really important to understand where let's say each one's needs lies so obviously if if if if if particular needs can be fulfilled from from those very nice very strong freely available let's say data that's that's really good of course they're they're premium they're niche areas beyond that that also might might be accessible but then cost cost implications might arise so there is this distinction between what's available and what it's not but certainly what happens is that day by day much more information good information becomes available to users from space technologies around the globe so and I think that's an advantage that's a very very very good thing to know so that's a that's a very very very small comment on my side anybody else any contributions from somebody else that is using that has experience working with observations or downstream services that are using observations like forecasts or or even other types of services let me put it another way is is I suppose working with in situ data is something that most of us are more familiar with I mean working with with sensors on the ground working with measurements taking on the ground um so how how how would you feel uh making this and I think that was a question I mean how would you feel how would you see this transition I mean this entering of new data into into the into the play new information into the play how would you find this opportunity would you be interested in investigating these opportunities or or um if you're reluctant towards the direction try to phrase a little bit the question to maybe incentivize people to enter in our discussion you can also just share your your experience based on your research if you're doing like a phd research or you know how you how you use our plan to use eo practices and data and services in your work so maybe christian you could tell us how you are interested in using it um okay and maybe I could share a little bit of our experience of a team in the university and we were working in a project called FIBAM and it's um focused on studying the river basin the Andean river basin so uh I was um working on quality control and homogenization of climatic data temperature precipitation are the most important variables I guess uh but other workmates were working on satellite precipitation data like satellites like chips or TRMM and we try to to work with this data because in the Andean and the Andean transition Andean Amazon so there is no field information and the data works well in flat areas where there is no the transition through mountains the transition Andean Andean and the Amazonas but in the transition there were a few problems because the precipitation data were not to be well represented so with this example I want to emphasize that still we need field data to collaborate or to complete our expectations with our observations thanks I mean do you do you um is there any particular sectors uh socioeconomic sectors you're interested around water water management in particular I mean is it um ecological services uh potable water hydro power or aqua watch aqua culture any particular um domain you would like to to to know more about about earth observations and how can be used yeah I'm working mostly with the agriculture water consumption right yeah and so we use a lot of remote sensing satellite data free to monitor and water consumption in irrigation field and rain pad field um so that they can adjust irrigation amount and in agriculture to save more water and and what I find is um like like the in the question in the main section they say um you need to complement remote sensing with institute data okay so I'll I'll start maybe uh if you want to come on camera and uh introduce um yourself since this is quite about our short little group so um I'll ask maybe um Sahara if you want to introduce yourself first thank you thank you thank you and the um I see hills so I'm from Vito remote sensing in Belgium um and I'm a partner in the water force European projects where we are defining the water component for the future Copernicus services thank you and the sopnet um hi hello everyone um my name is sopnet uh I am a master graduate from Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand and I have experience using observation data which is a gravity recovery and climate experiment to detect parameter uh dynamic yes thank you thank you so much for being here the um ideas of today's session is to um um in the first part experience share any experience of project and initiative that that you um you may um have related to this topic of today and you may be able to see my screen and um so um I don't know if you can access this with the link in the chat could you please confirm you are all in this board yeah so um if you want to contribute um so uh and as you see here there are some sticky notes already there and this is from uh this morning um session because we had meetings at the um at two times so uh you can just click on the um sticky note here on the left side and add your your contribution or just um share with me here um any input that you may have on on on this so I'll I'll open the floor for you anything um helps anything from you or sopnet anything any project or initiative that you know that has related to this topic of today um yes as I as I mentioned um the water force project and I see that Linda already added this this morning on on this um so as I said we are shaping the water component for the future Copernicus services and we have a component on water quality and on water quantity but also modeling is very important and and today I saw in the presentation by uh prime water that they are also integrating um modeling in their platform so these are the things that we also want to take on board in water force when we are developing our roadmap because we have to deliver a roadmap to the european uh commission on how um what are the different elements that are needed for the future Copernicus services related to water and of course also user needs and that and linda is in charge for that the you collecting the user needs um from policy and and um un and and international initiatives and we also collaborate with geo aqua watch um closely for example we have an we also work on um defining together with seos um analysis ready data so data which uh requires less effort from a user um to use in their in their work so that's also um we're also doing that together with the geo aqua watch so the idea of having analysis ready data is to make the um hurt observation more user friendly yes yes yes which is I think one of the challenges um users are not used to um to all data um especially how they have right to them is that correct yeah that's right um so seos analysis ready data that's the goal is to um yeah to have satellite data that have been processed to a minimum set of requirements and organized into a form that allows immediate analysis with minimum additional user efforts and interoperability and time and with other data sets so that requires a minimum of additional user efforts thank you and the um sock netlim do you have any um project or initiative that you you want to share with us yes um actually uh as I mentioned previously I used to uh use um satellite based data set which is uh called grace um to access the groundwater uh storage chain in my country in Cambodia yeah and it's like it's very uh useful for the country like Cambodia we have less uh very very little uh monitoring well in in our country so uh the satellite base have uh contribute uh enormously to our like policy maker or decision maker and I just know like my friend uh she also uh used um us observation data uh to uh detect the uh water quality like uh ability of water yes it's just now from uh like I don't have much experience so thanks you thank you thank you so much for for for that contribution um during the this morning session we discussed a bit about um how can a heart observation bring together people from different countries because depending on the countries there is a different need so there was a bit of a discussion on on on on that with your your contribution just remind me of that so I think um we I have some some some notes so thank you both for for for sharing uh let me see if um let me see let me see uh no I think um Daniel um joined the main session again so we can maybe move to the um second part of the meeting and I see other in the other groups people are there are adding some sticky notes which is nice um so the second part of the um of the discussion is a bit about more um the community of practice so this community of practice so what what do you um think um we could do to share more information do you think this kind of meeting this type of meeting are are useful um would you like more um a webinar a white paper that collects most information so any um suggestion on on that point I my my personal opinion I think a white paper from an organizations like IWA I think um would help to raise more to raise the awareness of earth observation in the water sector so do you see um you see a general white the topic of the white paper being quite general or because um we um we had thought about white papers um but um it's always difficult to find the topic of it because you don't want to make it too broad but you don't you don't want to make it to um narrow the topic so um what what what is your suggestion on that I think um we we will look into white paper because IWA member um do um appreciate them so I think it's a good way to share information um but also I'm I'm aware that people are very tired to read the documents in front of a computer so we thought more about um quick information like a 10 minute 5 minutes podcast or or a quick video would be more impactful but then you have to limit the kind of discussion that you do yeah so in I think in water force you have a communication strategy as well in prime water we do we do have but kind of how do you communicate information there um in water force there is a website and in the sticky note I've put to url so everybody can come can contribute to to our work so we have we will have yeah we have draft versions of reports and and it's a community-based effort so everybody can can contribute to uh to this and we also organize and that's what linda is doing um webinars there was one webinar on um SDG uh in February and the next one will be on Copernicus for Africa and we regularly organize um expert working uh workshops so for um for water quality for example we have a list of experts worldwide and and with also a lot of contribution from geo aqua watch uh members so for each of so for each of the the topics in water force we have uh identified a list of experts uh but this it's it's not a fixed list so this can this can uh can can grow um so we can add experts to um do this um and internally we have uh we have newsletters and the goal is also to have an external newsletter but I don't know exactly what the status is on that so newsletters are actually a good idea because um keeps people having all those collecting information all in one all in one um document so I'll maybe add it here okay so um we have about five five minutes but um we we can keep discussing on this or if you want to take a break and then we move back in today the main room is really um up to you and I see someone adding training which is what I was thinking um before I think um people still see our observation be far away from them so having training they could really um make this useful okay so um we'll we'll I'll bring people back into the main room in about five minutes um but um you can take this time to um take a short break um Sahada do you have anything to add okay I have a question to Lin that what type of challenges do you face while using with your data so uh do you mean uh the the challenge that I meet when I uh use uh satellite based data right yeah um so the satellite based data is uh like the the spatial resolution is uh very core like like great data is uh 55 by 55 kilometer so like if because my study area is a bit small so like when we interpret the data it's a bit how to say like um it's a bit uh challenging like for us so the core resolution is one problem I think um the the resolution for example for sentinel two um is 10 or 20 meter so and this is also what is used by um the company EOMAP the examples they showed for um or they also combine it with planet data but for for example for turbidity or for total suspended matter um sentinel two is used and it's at 10 or 20 meter resolution but thank you so much for your contribution well then I start the official welcome and introduction and then I see people are I see these but uh people are starting to work so I think yes let's let's bring it on um we are in this breakout room today I will ask you two questions as Samuela said before one is the experience with projects and initiatives and that means with regard to understanding the different types and applications of EOData but and the second one will be more on how you could imagine to engage in this cop so um before we start maybe Adele we can do a quick tour the topic maybe you want to introduce yourself and then we can also um let you know who we are yeah okay so um yeah I am a PhD uh candidate at IHE Delft in the Netherlands but I'm originally from Trinidad and Svego and so in terms of my experience with EOD observation data I have used previously some Landsat data to do um um flood detection analysis so looking at um trying to detect flooding particularly you know uh data scarce regions where you may not have um observations of flooding but in my experience it was a bit tricky especially with Landsat data because um I know it has like a much smaller temporal resolution so sometimes I would miss floods miss the actual dates of the floods and then I have actually tried to use Sentinel-1 to do that uh but the Sentinel-1 also in my experience misses some dates so even though tire resolution I had that problem uh in addition to that I have used um SRTM data for the DM delineation sometimes you're probably like you know that I work a lot in urban areas so I need high resolution data um but something I found those things everything here I realized now maybe more I use remote sensing data but I do use great observations and actually while we were sitting here I started googling okay remote sensing versus um eighth observations because I use a lot more rainfall data um so for example uh GPM data as you can I merge MS Web which I think is more reanalysis data uh so those might be the products I think I use more now on a D2D basis but previously in my last um research maybe about two or three years I would have used more Sentinel and the SRTM type data sources. That's very interesting thank you and uh I mean I'm just taking some notes here because we will put that you could also then if you want to have more ideas put that yourself on that board if you if you join the link I mean I hope I summarized it nicely I mean you were working flat mapping with Landsat data as well as Sentinel 1 then as SRTM data for DM delineation um and rainfall data and um yeah I think that would be remote sensing uh rainfall data um and I said GPM uh exactly this yeah yeah great so you are let's say you you already have hands on earth observation data I understand and um yeah good experiences yeah I would say like yeah my my research is actually in flood forecasting uh so it's um most of the data is just used um the verification of some sort of analysis so with the flood mapping it's um trying to verify what's in kind of forecasting that I've done if we were able to actually detect the flooding areas correctly and also um for the forecast of the rainfall we would also use like the remote sensing type uh data. So satellite or I say remote sensing data yeah data is used flood forecasting so remote sensing data is used for um validation great I think that's fine very good application field in terms of projects what do you plan to do or do you already have are you involved in these earth observation consortia or um is that no I'm not involved at the moment uh once upon a time I used to be part of a group that gosh I can't remember it was using just like space products for disaster risk reduction um so it was the similar type of products once again but outside of that um I'm not interested um like uh yeah I'm not associated with any particular consortium or any particular group but that has nothing to do basically with let's say an um yeah a barrier to use earth observation it's simply the type of work that you're doing at the moment you're yeah I think so yeah because we're also trying to understand because my second question in within this question I was saying well if you have experience please tell us about it and if you don't have experience well what is the reason um that you don't use earth observation more often or you're you're working with your projects and initiatives but in this case I think probably uh something to that I would say one of the challenges that I've had I mentioned before briefly because I work in urban areas and urban areas require such high resolution data a lot of times you can't supply earth observations especially with freely um really available data I know there are some high resolution data but you actually pay for it and I think this also applies I haven't worked very much using earth observation data in the Caribbean which where I'm from but of course being like a small island state you do have similar challenges with scale because we're just so small yeah exactly um but so damn beautiful yeah so I think um as I said I haven't specific because I haven't worked too much with um earth observation data within the Caribbean but my experience uh I can only imagine like what I do think about the application is that it would be quite similar um challenges with scale and that could possibly be a hindrance in applying in that sort of um case study of country as well thank you great okay and um I mean we have two questions I we have 15 minutes normally for each question but we are very small group so I wouldn't mind we can jump also back and forth I just show you our second topic of this discussion and breakout room and then we can go back and forth uh if you like so the question here is do you have any suggestion on what you can contribute to this community of practice so how can the cop further share information is it webinars white papers podcast theories also other ideas like a blog maybe um and the other question is if you would like to be a volunteer so this is just building up it's the first meeting the first cop meeting and um I mean depending on the response and and uptake there will be more meetings so I've asked if there is a regular schedule already which is not there yet but it depends a bit on the involvement or if you say you already have something I don't know you you publish frequently information in some format yeah if you could add that so I don't know you're happy to hear your thoughts on on that um first of all I might be all because is everyone else part of the group which is why they're not exactly Adele and I'm sorry I mean I was like you're the only one that is interviewed here because you're the only one who ended up in our group obviously okay okay Bilore is our rapporteur Karen is my colleague you know she has all the knowledge she's the wise woman about the water quality okay okay the head of the water quality department at EOMAP yeah hi hi I can say some few words hi Adele so first of all we have actually a colleague also from Chinidad and Tobago so Edward Edward Albeda so he's now he moved now to Santa Barbara two years I think but he was before in a large company called Smith Warner in Chinidad and Tobago and yeah actually we do a lot of things in the Caribbean especially with satellite drive symmetry also digital elevation models and yeah but as you said before you need to have this very high resolution data from the commercial satellites yeah like Worldview or even Planet so it's or Airbus like the Play Arts, Play Arts Neo et cetera so if you want to go to this very high resolution you need to have of course and there's a lot of applications here as well for all the survey or the engineering stuff and urban waters are always challenging and also from a resolution but also from the yeah there's a lot of sewage a lot of pollution so we work also a lot in India and here we really see as they are heavily affected like the river sections and you have a multiple stressors there like human activities industry and stuff so it's interesting yeah and so flood detection we don't do that much so of course we touch it so we do also use Sentinel-1 for water detection still it's not so not reliable but sometimes robust let's say yeah there's all the radar imagery so we always have problems also for oil spill monitoring you said no one sometimes yeah yeah okay that's nice interesting I because I did listen to your presentation with the water quality and it it was interesting to learn about it because at first when I saw it I was like oh geez I have I know nothing about this but it was nice to um to see the application of it because at first I was like how is this done how do you do this but then when you explained it I was like oh okay that would make sense um so no that's nice but to answer your question on this particular topic I think webinars are good um of course in this day and age webinars are there's so many of them now but um if in my self I I see with especially with observation like there's so many tools that you have to use or tools that are available like because post-processing of the data is such a huge part of it um maybe some people like you know about the products and you know the application but how to actually process the data you don't know I think those could always be good ways um to get people involved because everyone want people want to learn how to how to actually do it themselves so that could be nice um and of course blogs it would be good to like see the application of it um and then just reaching like a wider community um like once upon a time like so I because I do like a lot of work with like early warning systems um I do volunteer with like another group of young professionals that we have early warning systems young professionals group and we also try to engage people through um like these I guess maybe like technical events but also having more social events where people can just talk about their experiences uh and then people can see what they have in common like maybe two people are working on the exact same problem and they don't even know it uh so it's just in a nice way or um maybe just like gather understand who people are what they're working on and uh like similar to this just randomly putting people into rooms that I actually happened to me recently where I've gone into a group with someone and we realized that we had both been working on like serious game type stuff and we were able to help each other so that could be a really nice informal way uh but other than that I think you have very good suggestions of ways that it could actually be done um and then even like just having projects so even um we spoke about me personally I would love to see how these these sort of products could be used more abundantly in the Caribbean and in small island states maybe that could be like an interesting project for people to take on if if there's already like a specific problem that we know of uh people can work together and and come up with like a solution and how you might apply but maybe that's maybe that one's a little bit difficult depending but um something like that could be a nice idea if somebody proposes a problem and people work together as groups to come up with solutions. Great I think these are very nice ideas beyond the classical let's say good ideas of newsletters and white papers so I hope I got it right here um and I see Bibelora is raising the hand do we have to look at the time or is it did you just no no this is not for time I just wanted to um well ask the question I don't know if I could ask a question now according to my of course. They said we have to go back in two minutes okay great don't worry it's just going to be very quick yeah Karin talked about um you know the work you did in India talked about detection of wastewater pollution and all those and I also asked the question in the in the main group beyond okay in the context of Africa I would say maybe Nigeria um observation yes it's fine to observe you already know the problems are there anyways and so if I'm going to be talking about the context of Nigeria I'm talking about oil spill detection we're talking about wastewater sewage you know all that which will be easily captured now it's not just observing because we know the problems are there it's not you get so it is not what I'm looking at is um like what Adelaide said are you also looking at detecting the problem vessels what solution would work you know what cost effective solution is would work because detecting the problem is not enough here this is what else what what what works for us yeah so actually so we are of course we're not like a super big company so we are really focusing now on the monitoring to be honest and alerting and work together with others like Salem to really our local municipalities and to really go into the management of these because we don't have the the knowledge to be honest to have all the solution in place so we are rather let's say the observer and giving the information and turning this to a certain degree to some more additional information but we cannot in the whole create like this management procedure here we have to work together also in the prime water project we do this very closely together with drinking water um providers but they need they have their knowledge and they share with us and then we can combine it if we could get some some feedback from you built in terms of of your experience working with earth observation data potential ides to where you think the technology could be applied and then secondly on how you see the cop and and how you could potentially contribute to further you would say shed light on what we can do with with earth observation technology but the first part was was really on this sharing of experience um and again um I don't know if you can type and talk in the same time but you could put it on the jam border you can take the floor here i would be happy to your background and how you are currently uh working with earth observation data or ides for how you would like to to apply the technology anyone want to start can i start yes you're okay about me i'm in short jv because the name is very big okay simply j i'm basically a civil engineer then an environmental engineer now pursuing a phd in climate resilient urban water security uh my contributions are i've worked in isro for 32 and a half years as a ground support isro refers to indian space research organization and also professionally i'm an alumni and a mentor at international space university for 10 years now and a course for associate member and with regard to my involvement and contribution i'm basically a trainer also trainer trainer looking at the capacity building of urban local bodies and you know getting into the environmental management uh using a space data set has become very common now in a way uh especially i must thank the world water week last year when we had about 466 sessions and blue earth and such projects are really eye-openers so i want to just conclude at this first introduction that today unless we take further uh the space data set to the civic bodies and community enabling you'll be doing a little injustice this is my firm belief uh this has been my experience being in the id mp also the way more where we had a lot of reviews uh ongoing on the you know various academic institutions in the scandinavian countries working in south america for example and european university european union university is working in africa and many agencies in india also doing some work in africa so what i want to just say that uh as a professional i feel a training and capacity building of the community level between doubt to earth it can make a well of a difference because i'm not new to this water quality monitoring because jumps and who is there already in 1980s since 80s uh they have gone so much advanced in the who and quantification of uh the pollutants and also monitoring so i want to stop at this in simple terms it is training and capacity building which i feel is a very important area thank you great that's uh really yeah i know that i appreciate it and uh yeah having myself worked on that quite a bit capacity building uh i i tend to agree but uh i'm also aware about the challenge about uh bringing the the technologies you can say to none uh uh earth observation experts it takes some uh some thinking about how to do this in the right way and do you know overloading them with with um yeah with the latest technology which can be quite difficult to to to uptake i think and as you said it's not a new technology it's been around for a long long time but we tend to always focus on the latest on the newest and maybe forget sometimes that uh somebody it's not everybody working in in in our field but but uh definitely the important point thank you anybody anybody else we are not that many so i don't know mary i was just gonna say that i'd love to hear from from victor first but then i'm happy to go um so nice just go i'll be taking the notes thank you for taking the notes for us so i my background is is in traditional more the website um i was hired by the satellite um division in noah uh nested to work on a bunch of projects both in the united states as well as international um i put those on the jam board they are uh seos coast geo aqua watch which is the water quality initiative i also put the link in the chat to our meeting which is going on next week which all this all the stuff and we're talking about today and all the participants are very relevant so i think you'll find a home there too um and uh so i agree with you that the especially in the capacity building sector because i come from that background of being a water quality manager um i know what i need to know and satellite data helps me with that but i don't need to get a phd and satellite data to use it every day right for for what i what i need to know so we are struggling in the seos coast um and noah coast watch and geo aqua watch often to meet the managers where they um need to be met with enough information um also the contribution of countries i think and the and the local um stakeholders identified through capacity development really can be in that in-situ data collection that are so important on the uh the satellite data validation so because the um satellite folks are in deep need for local data uh and it and it helps it's it's a great way to build a partnership i think and i'll stop there no that's good and and again yeah just saying it's not about replacing each other but actually working together and i think that's a good way to bridge things and to to get people familiar with the technology is actually to involve them in the calibration validation part of the of the exercise and maybe also building the credibility because i guess many of the people on the ground may maybe you suspect uh in terms of the accuracy that can be achieved right i i will just say say one other thing there are many people on the science side of satellite oceanography who are trying to improve uh the measurement of sea surface temperature and the resources that are thrown at that uh and i'm just like oh my gosh you know let's focus over here on some of these other issues where um i i don't need to to increase the precision of sea surface temperature by you know a hundredth of a of a degree i need you to solve my water quality problem in in inland and coastal areas that nobody wants to go to because they're so complex so exactly but thanks a lot for sharing these and tom you want to have a go yeah sure hi everybody lovely to virtually meet you guys and you know i appreciate the issues you have down in florida mary with the the red tides and and what goes on i'm a process engineer so i always think uh what am i going to do with this data and i make and i work mainly in uh water quality drinking water originally but certainly looking at wastewater optimization uh and cso flows uh at a minute so my first thoughts uh around this and i've been watching this for several years now i've been in cities like toledo ohio where they have the big algal blooms um i spent quite a lot of time working with new york city on which reservoir to choose at any particular time because they they pump a billion gallons a day 120 miles so choosing a good source is is a good plan before you pump it into the city and throw chlorine at it um you know so there's lots of decision making um that can be optimized based on this kind of data um in the uk we're starting to use um eo data and hyper local uh weather forecasting to protect dams and uh other uh structures um locally my dam uh broke recently we had to evacuate the town uh and uh we've got a lot of aging infrastructure that's uh that needs protecting and getting that ai ability uh of predicting what the load's going to be on the sewers uh and what kind of spills you're going to have out the back of your wastewater treatment plants um down in in florida we're doing some actual uh we have a a real-time microbial activity monitor uh which is sort of a bio monitor and at late cane there we're tracking the algal blooms uh in real time um so that swimmers can get out and and and use um that information uh so in the uk we have some an app called rivers fit to swim um so you can take some of that information uh from uh the eo stuff so you can say okay look we've had some heavy rains and we're going to see some quality problems flowing downstream uh and you can update as that flows through the system and then say look it's good for swimming now you're you're great you're good to go um yeah so i think that engagement with the public is is the key um you know as as you said mary you've got large sections of coast where there's a whole load of tourists right uh and keeping them informed about what's going to happen but also having that predictive ability to know that the shruga plantation's going to flow through and you know would be would be really useful i i see so many exciting applications for this and just from the the geek side of me uh just playing with it myself you know you know i love to see the maps and what's going on in uh in different locations um but yeah there's so many fabulous uh ways that this can be applied um and um with apps now you can present data in such a consumable way um and being able to access that data and and draw it down not just for um you know high level process engineering sort of information but uh just public information as well uh to engage people with their local rivers yeah i know that's excellent points and i think uh exactly that point on the pattern because maybe it's not the most accurate or it doesn't compare in accuracy within tico but it has that spatial inside you know and feeling both temporal gaps and then the yeah the spatial patterns you could an impact area so you could you can often that's it's it's uh um it it can show you where to focus your attention so can uh when we're doing the big ocean stuff the the whole globe we need lots of uh data and we can't uh in situ monitor everything uh and and that changes over time so uh we can get use this big data to then generate where our hot spots are and where we should be focused in our attention right yeah exactly yeah good point um but it's uh i understood you are coming more from not exactly the eos but but you see it being increasingly taking up or is it more from just your curiosity that is taking it up or do actually see it being applied as well uh yeah absolutely yeah absolutely it's being applied um you know the uh the the big data uh ai models um are being used to to understand and particularly at the moment uh in the uk and we saw this coming uh many years ago but of course we didn't uh plan ahead in time uh but we have a lot of um flash flood uh problems now and uh our combined sewer system is not really fit to deal with that uh but having data around what's coming uh and what's happening there means that you can almost use the sewer as an extension of your treatment uh and storm tanks uh and and really start to do some quite interesting stuff once you have control of the whole network yeah that's interesting i was surprised to hear about uh you said a dam break in the uk or something we have been looking at a few in asia and brazil or was uh yeah but but that's something we really want to see if you can also use eos to have the risk indicator for for which of the failing or the dam switches in yeah you would say unstable or at risk of yeah so it was only a spillway that uh broke but it started to dig away at the core of the dam so that dam has had to be drained very similar to what happened in orville uh in california if you remember that it was the same year uh and the the orville spill well uh just above sacramento also collapsed uh fortunately not the whole dam uh but um there was some panic uh of course yeah i thought i was just being informed that we should also find time to to to discuss the second agenda item which was hearing if there's any suggestions on how we can move forward with the cop how you could eventually contribute to this community of practice right yeah uh i i filled out on the jam board that i think separating the best practices uh out from there's a lot of information out there and maybe pulling the best of that and helping to make it a global best practice instead of a the e u way of doing things or the us way of doing things um yeah i think that would be really helpful and it was nice to meet everybody lovely to be everybody yeah all right