 We've got everyone that we are thinking of having in our room number one. Okay, so if you agree, we might tell one or two sentences about us to know each other, you know, where we are from and, and what sort of experience do you have so let me start with myself. So I am from a communal scientific and industrial research organization, headquartered in Canberra, the capital of Australia where I'm now. And it's, it's night outside. So, you know, the time difference. And Catherine has very kindly spoke about my work and, and the mission that I have shared with you that I'm currently involved with. That's me. If Nure, if you say about you a little bit. Hello. My name is Nure, I'm from Turkey, Istanbul. I work for Turkish Water Institute, which is under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. It's the governmental Institute, but it is like a think tank. I'm an environmental engineer and I'm complete beginner for Earth observations that I've been using hydrological models for 10 years. So it is, it is really important to learn Earth observations to get some data for models, but still I'm a little bit anxious about how correct data from satellites. But I'm trying to learn about, learn more about Earth observations and how I can use them in my current work. So, thank you very much. You for this beautiful event. Thank you. Thank you, Nure. I think we know a little bit about Catherine, but if Catherine if you want to, if you want to say anything, please. Yeah, I guess in some of the other work that I'm doing with the Australian Water Partnership, which is with the MRC, the Mekong River Commission Regional Flood and Drought Management Center. They are particularly interested in using information from something called Mekong Dam Monitor, which is developed by Stimpson, which is a US based organization. And, but yeah, it's interesting because they're using basically the Mekong Dam Monitor is looking at levels of storage levels in dams across the Mekong, including upstream in China. So there are geopolitical sensitivities in addition to the science. So it's, so this is just something interesting that I just thought I'd share because it's an additional element because the data is important because the countries are not sharing data with each other. But at the same time there's this geopolitical sensitivities. So it's mostly quantity, Catherine. Yeah, that's focusing on quantity. Yeah. Okay. Let me go to Philip. Good morning. Good evening, everybody. My name is Philip de Souza. I'm from a small company called the Monty Management. We're based on in the Western Cape of Southern Africa of South Africa. Yeah, I experienced around, you know, Earth observation data is more around almost the kind of practical application thereof. And we have, you know, we do a lot of work on things like water safety planning. So kind of risk management for water supply and wastewater sanitation systems. And now looking at the impact of climate variability and change on those systems. So, you know, it's almost not like the kind of like nuts and bolts interface that we've been seeing today but almost like trying to understand, you know, what tools are available for our water service authorities which are largely municipalities to try and access so that they can draw quick and easy conclusions. We all know that, you know, there's uncertainty within these models and so forth. But the whole point is that, you know, some information should be better than no information. And so we want to, you know, get our utilities, in essence, on the right path to make sure that they are considering climate variability and change and building that into, you know, the way they operate the infrastructure, infrastructure, the way they design and build new infrastructure. So it's just trying to change their way of thinking. Yeah, so obviously interested in trying to, you know, there's so many models and systems out there and we're always looking at, you know, what is useful, what is easy for people to kind of absorb and get to those conclusions. And I think that's the tricky thing is, is the so what it's like all these fancy models and that looks wonderful but so what how do I use this. And that's the, the question we continue to ask ourselves and try to answer. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for a bit so powerful message. Any model is as good as it has got data to validate. In many countries as you are aware that we don't have a good storehouse of data. There are people that lack data but I guess the earth observation has such a powerful opportunity I would say, even though we know that there are not much good data available but it's still as information that will help, as you say it really decision maker, you know, to start somewhere with, rather than without having any information so thank you very much. And now, go to large boy answer. Yes. Hello everyone. Yes, my name is, is last boy Hansen I'm, I'm with DHI, an international consultancy company. I'm mainly known for for their developments on on modeling software. Yes, there's a brand called Mike, but there are different numerical models across a number of teams, urban environment, water resources, wastewater treatment and so on marine and all that. And I really like the comments raised so far about the, the linkage between data and models, because that's that's basically why my department was established within DHI. We were established 22 years ago. There was an early recognition that there's a lot of potential in the use of birth observation. So this, my, my department was established to sort of try and extract as much information of this new back then data source and try and see if we could link it to to the modeling community. And I should say the first 15 years. This was a slow process. But I think there's since, I don't know, 2015 or something a lot has really happened. There's a side on the capability side and so on so so now we see a huge move towards this integration of different data types and and sensors and so on. And for me that's a really big point in in in a combination of different types because well it's true that all data have flaws, you could say that by combining it. And this that you get a much more complete picture of the reality. So yeah, I mean concretely we've been working a lot with the European Space Agency over the past 20 years. We've run a few flagship projects. Recently, we were priming the earth observation for sustainable development project on on water resources. We are running the wetland Africa initiative. And we are currently running the world water initiative through the European Space Agency. Yeah, I think that was. Thank you. Thank you so much, Lars. We'll talk later because we do buy software from you guys in CSIRO. And you do charge us you do charge us quite heavily. But you get a lot of value for your money also. We'll talk about this from outside this meeting. Hi, and I'll go to Mariano. Sorry to interrupt. I would just like to point out that these five more minutes left for part one of the session. Fantastic, I think we have the last speaker, Mariano to share some I know please tell about yourself and share your work that you think is kind of linked to today's workshop. Me, sorry, I don't understand. Yes, yes. I don't understand what everybody and Mariano Brecciani and researcher in National Research Council in Italy. I'm ecologist expert in remote sensing. I collaborate with the IWA in a different age 2020 project. One of this is a prime water. Particularly mentioned by Catherine. Inside of prime water, we use different type of data in order to better acknowledge the status of different water in Lake and Reservoir. In particular, I'm expert in the passive satellite data, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3 and new hyperspectral data. And I think it's very important to have the possibility to integrate satellite and modeling data, obviously within situ data, in order to expand the information in terms of vertical information from in situ and modeling. Special information from remote sensing data and with a frequent revisiting time, both with new in situ technology such as the CSIRO hyperspectral instrument that we have similar in Italian lakes and with the high frequency of satellite data. Respect to previously mentioned by Philippe in this period, different companies, different researchers create different tools in order to use satellite data. I think it's very important that the possibility to use this big amount of data provided by NASA, ISA and other space agency to have important knowledge of our font of life that is the water. And some of these is completely free. For example, from an Italian, from a European space agency, we have the possibility to use SNAP. It's a very easy interface to processing satellite data such as Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3, but Landsat, for example. NASA provides different products, some years ago, working remote sensing because it's all level one, it's all radiances and complicated data. In these years we have reflectances, we have chlorophyllate products, total suspended matter products. It's very easy to access and use. Sometimes the product is not perfect because sometimes it happens that they use global algorithms and non-specific regional algorithm that is most accurate for the different case studies, but I think it's a good start to use satellite data. In South Africa, for example, I know and I have a contact with some researcher, for example, Mark Matthews or Bernard, that is one of the leaders of EOCCG, and many information was obtained from satellite data for the different case studies. For my point of view, apart the prime motor, we are in my institute and we are involved in the CCI project. It's a very important project from ESA, and one of the project is related to the lakes. And provide products for completely free, for more or less 2,000 lakes in the world. For different parameters inside of CCI lakes, the parameter is not only obtained with passive satellite, but include active satellite. The product is chlorophyllate, turbidity, surface temperature, altimetry, and size, the highest present. At the moment we are in the phase two of the project and a part of the option activities for the different case studies, one of that is strictly related to the Africa, in order to understand the changing with a long time series of the water quality in Africa due to the climate change. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mariano. I think we almost ran out of our allotted time. May I now request our last but not the least person, Nabila, to introduce yourself please. Hi, my name is Nabila Karim. Sorry, I didn't realize my video wasn't on. Hi everyone. My name is Nabila and I am from Cape Town, South Africa. I work at Satori in the water treatment department. And it's my first year. So I've only been here for a few months. I don't have much experience, but hope I can learn a lot from all of you. Indeed, now that's very nice of you, Nabila, and thank you for helping me out in this conversation. So I would suggest that we have Nabila to take our comments, our experience, and we will further discuss them in the general session. So if, if you guys are happy for me to close this session, we'd like to close and move to the general session. Tapas, I think that there's a second question because we still have a few more minutes. Is that correct? Yes, yes, we have 15 minutes for part two, which is do you have any suggestions on what you can contribute to the COP? How can the COP further share information such as webinars, white paper, podcasts, and can you volunteer? So we have 15 minutes for that, and then we're going to leave the breakout room. Yeah, I think I think we have probably eight minutes now. Well, yeah, yeah, we don't, we don't, we don't have that many minutes. Okay, so. So I can give a bit of insight because I helped think of these questions. So the idea behind it is, so we have this community of practice, but and we have such a breadth of experience. So the idea is, if you yourselves or if you think of things that other people could do in terms of contributing to be able to further share information. So, for example, in other groups that we have on digital water, there's development of white papers, or it could be webinars on specific topics, or it could be another discussion like this but on something specific. So that that was the idea behind it, just to give you some context. Yeah, and, and thank you. And I think on the top of that. We, I mean I came to know yesterday that there are about 260 glass people registered and I'm guessing that perhaps half of them in this session and the another half will be at the next session that will start my midnight. However, I would also request you to let others know I mean you know in terms of circulation of email or information exchange program. We can get other people aware of this community of practice. And then, you know, they can join they can suggest well, we want to know more about particular aspect of art observation, sort of thing, and then I w a COP will be able to assist you with with that sort of information but also as Catherine said that yep, if you would like to organize a webinar, or a special if there is a special workshop or seminar happening. If there is an event going on, and you know it's relevant to what this community of practice is all about. And then by all means, please let us know so that you know we, we are more informed sort of things and I think, we do have quite a bit of training program and information session that I do get email. It's not relevant to what we're talking about but but definitely some of them are relevant to this this particular group so you may because you are on the on the executive committee you would like to share them. What do you call it that go in the same way a lot, or any sort of things and they can then circulate to us. Certainly and I'll be happy to do that. Of course we need to find the balance on information overflow. We all get tired of all these promotional emails also so you need to find the proper balance and that's that's maybe something I would like a bit of feedback on from from from the general group here. What's the, how often do you want to get disturbed or I mean, what's when does it go from being informative to to annoying. Quite frankly, I do, I do fully appreciate we do, we do get bombardment of you know events and there are large number of you activities happening all over the world. There is Geo, there is Asian Geo, there is European Commission and, and then American NASA Space Center so you know often you're right lures I think this is a good point that we don't, you know, get fatigued by information. Right. Anyone has any other experience or opinion that you would like to share. I think we still have probably another five minutes. There's two minutes left for this session. I think it might run a bit longer because it started late, but yeah we'll see how it goes. Thank you. Let me see if others would like to share anything else. I can just from my other work I think. Yeah, I guess maybe just like for example we had presentations today on different examples of application of Earth observation I think that's quite helpful to understand how Earth observation is being used in different places. Through different tools. I think understanding how yeah observation for example is used in modeling and forecasting, but also how ground data is used to verify Earth observation and you know, kind of what is your, how can I explain like if you have gaps you know data, how much can, how much you rely on Earth observation versus ground data and that mix like how does that mix work. That's something I would be interested in learning about more for example. Yes, and I'm with you. This is one difficulties that we have had ground truth. There are lots of, you know, quote, claimed analysis ready data and quote, but I don't know how much of that is properly calibrated and particularly for water quality and this is one thing. That I do see people are claiming that they can do dissolve phosphorus in water they can do heavy metals in water. And gee, I mean, you know, those are the things we need to be careful of selling the idea that that we can only do certain things, but as of now we cannot do certain things. Yeah, I think understanding that difference is important when you're never getting this see we're going to end in about 30 seconds. That's right. I came. So let me take this opportunity to thank you for all your experience sharing and your opinion and your contribution I very much appreciate. Thank you so much, Victor. We have just a smaller as exercise to make it more interactive. Since we cannot speak at the same time. I've put a small link on the chat. It's small jumbo which helps us to like share experiences. Otherwise, so that we don't miss out these important projects that you might have or collaboration opportunities, which will be shared in the plenary with everybody. So as you can see from my screen is just a link that it's anonymous. You can put your elephant project or any project or any stuff that you might know. Then you can start putting it on these particular board as well. Also the world for the purposes of introduction. I see we have. I have myself kind of a bear from Detroit, Africa. I'm joined by Victor busu and someone later from a w a. Then also I'm joined by Andre Linda Santiago and Isabella. For example, Andrea can start with a small introduction about where he works and the amazing stuff is doing. Yeah, just one second. I'm trying to do the jumpboard in the same time. So well thank you as Linda said we are part of the same organization which is called those places foundation in the Netherlands, and then we're presently involved with two projects focusing on water. One is water force, which is a coordinate the sport action horizon 1020 project, which the topic is setting up the next company could services for inland water. We finished the first word package of the project where we look at policies, but also a business opportunities with Europe in the world, and then we came across with a lot of tools but also we come across a lot of ways that that policies and those businesses they are supporting at observation data to be used for water resources or what the quality. And also we recently started another project, which is another European project which is called idiot, which is the digital twin of the ocean. It's not quite fresh, but the ambition is to set up a digital kid of the ocean which will stem into the next digital twin of Europe, which is called destination art. And I think in the same order, your colleague will talk. Yeah, so my name is Nina, my camera doesn't, my weapon doesn't work. Yeah, also built space foundation Netherlands. In addition to what Andre already said, it's an open innovation network and platform. Maybe you can do it. Honestly, you know, put the ground station on space. Yes, so we have a platform where we give space to remote sensing initiative. This is our own project, but also articles. So, if any of you say well I'd like to post something about the work I'm doing, and we're happy to do that in our kind of our open innovation open collaboration platform. We are our objective is to unlock the market for remote sensing applications. This is what Lisa was asked and we recognize fully that the ability in getting users to trust and work with earth observation data is big hurdles. It's not just the technology but it's the visualization. That's why I'm sorry, I really like your digital earth initiative because I think, making a person visible and actionable for decision makers who are not experts in earth observation is, is really critical to stimulate the uptake and with more uptake come more, come more requirements and therefore also more investment into new sensors, new data applications. There's nothing else we tried to do and we do it by giving platform to stories or to projects or to use cases, and we do it by developing projects, such as, or taking part in projects so we do like space for smart cities. So, I think we should raise one of our important topics because we're based in the Netherlands, and water here is critical. Thank you so much Linda, and we appreciate the great work from H220 Copernicus program, and also we are aware of the 2035 programming is coming. So these are quite some work from Europe. So Santiago and CNS in France can introduce himself. Hi everyone. So I'm Santiago and in the French Space Agency called CNES and here I am in a team developing new applications for around hydrology. In a historic way, CNES always work just on the instruments and new new sensors. And this time we're working for the SWAT satellite which we change a little bit with new data for hydrology. It will be a satellite capable of providing water elevations, but in a global way up to now we had like navier altimetry, which was quite limited in coverage for, but it was still quite useful. We have all the JSON satellite Sentinel-3 and so on, but SWAT satellite will be able to provide a global coverage for all rivers and lakes around the world every 21 days, new measurements to three times, depending on the latitude. So we're developing new products that will be provided also with SWAT data. So we have also water surfaces. We're working in new algorithms for water quality. So we have different teams and we have, we're working especially with French laboratories to develop such products. So just to remember the way the portal that we will have will be called HydroWebNext. We have already one HydroWeb based on navier altimetry. The idea will be to have the next generation, which is called this HydroWebNext. Thank you so much Santiago. I also have a person from DWS in South Africa, Nyamande. Hi, thank you very much for the opportunity. In South Africa, actually within the department, we are busy with the development of the national electrification strategy to be specific. That's the way my interest is and we are, we need to venture into F observation, eutrophication monitoring program. So currently we are still doing the grape sample, kind of manual water quality sample. We take that to the laboratory for analysis. So we realize that we are actually missing time lag in between. By the time we are driving to the site, a lot could have happened compared to the observation of which the piloting was done already by Mark. That's where we are. Thanks. Thank you so much. Just as a context, I know it's quite pains and gains of doing manual testing and maybe you don't even know where to test. So at least at observation, like you using the central end to, you can just have an assessment of where you need to go to the ground and do further testing and also from the colleagues in the call who might have some programs on the same. Anyone else would be left out, Samuela? No, I think everyone, everyone had the opportunity to talk. Thank you, Kenneth. Yep. I like to talk as well, because also you are a practitioner. Yes, so thank you. So in, I just added a little sticker of the prime water European project, and the prime water European project that looks at the heart observation for water quality and quantity management. So you are, you're welcome to go to the website and check what the project is about. Thank you so much, Samuela. And I think the group is doing very well. So with the guidance of the group, I wish to ask for suggestions for this first call. For example, I put some sticker, a webinar, white paper, would you also like a mailing list, for example, how Samuela like us to continue with her guidance. So the idea of the second part of this preco-trume is to see what do you think the COP should go? Well, how can you contribute to the COP or what do you think the COP should do? So considering that we want to share information on the heart observation of different type of heart observation data and technology, so what do you think could be useful for that for the rest of the members? And then, so any suggestions on any product that you would like to see, for example, a blood series or a blog series or a podcast series. So what do you think could be useful in this COP? And I actually like the idea of the board, Kenneth, thank you for that. Don't worry, Samuela, we've been in this online for a while, actually worked the last three years by Tony, so this is just a blast because previously I was working for the UN Foundation now working through the Geoscience Australia. We really have to work remotely to reach our users as much as possible. And then also for colleagues in from Europe, I am aware there is a lot of Copernicus STGs and I know maybe it might have had so I think also through IWA it is that we already have a lot of segments just IWA is trying to bring us together because the positions, even I had a colleague from join from the UNEP, World Water Quality Alliance, which I sent a message around to know some of the staff around and they normally provide some ground data based on what has been provided by the member states. So just a question to go around the room. Do you think these meetings, these kind of meetings work? Do you have any feedback on this? Do you see the COP doing more of these meetings? Any ideas from the room? So I'm also typing in some sticky notes. Yeah, most definitely. I mean, we came, we found this one through our Water Force project, so the Horizon 2020 project we're part of. And they're always looking out for what related events and sort of last minute decided to join it and luckily also André and Nina who's in a different group and it just exposes you to a whole new community because we're very European based. I recognize this and so your viewpoint is very European and you just don't know what's going on in the rest of the world, not enough because there's so much going on that we're not aware of and this helps tremendously. And also just to say that we started also a community of users or stakeholders ourselves and then I think it's also maybe good to connect at this level as well because this community actually brings a lot of experience and knowledge to scientific areas but also worldwide representation. Yeah, yeah. So from most program perspectives, this is what we encountered as a challenge in the continent was, as my colleague from South Africa said, most of them have to do manual testing, for example, the case of water quality, and it's based on information. So the citizens will complain, oh, we have a lot of algae, we've seen this lake as nothing is happening. So there's an element of ground science, or also bring in some interest to politicians who've been in parliament and they're not talking about the issues in the ground. So the people have been empowered to communicate more to report. And from that, agencies can actually go and try to collect. The other side of the platforms like many we use in our observation is, there's another scope of scientists like my colleagues from GeoSense Australia. The algorithms they've developed to be used using our observation. So it depends on how many of them are open to the public to be used so there's another question for IWA to look at those areas. So we also had those of our side at NASA where there's a scientist who developed this algorithm for ocean. And he was not very keen to share some of the algorithms to go to the open data cube. So those are the people in the silos and we understand they are funded by different programs and as much they can share from what we provide. So we provide from what is available open and free to first support the governments and from there they can talk to projects like CNS, what they're doing to be supported further. Well, there's another point on those co-meetings. We are still lacking maybe those future potential users and this is quite difficult to convince and to have like a huge community behind because they have so many other inputs coming from others. Institutions or lobbies or everything. So maybe I see all the time that we are always like data providers or algorithm providers or people trying to cope with this death valley of use of special data. I see now I discovered this new platforms that are for instance this Digital Earth Africa. I discovered it today and I think it's incredible. This is huge quantity of information well displayed and and it has a really big potential but still is. I don't know. I still see that it's quite difficult to have all those institutions here supporting us and trying to do asking or begging for more data and what we see is like as Linda said, there is a big space for maybe private companies ready to the style of this data to provide the right answer the right indicator, especially for each of those public institutions so the policymakers and so on. So this is just an observation now new US ideas, but I think I discovered today this new community and we will try to with our colleagues from hardware web and so on from CNES will try to to be more present about that in the past was a listen roll, which was in the community. Thank you Santiago and so any other ideas I see here link with not European water initiative and then calls to action to politics. Yes. Yeah, I don't know if it would be. Maybe it's a bit outside the scope of this community but what we find here in Europe in the public sector, which should be a big customer for certain companies. We know that we know that they work with research organizations but we have this slogan, which we call from innovation to operation sites. It's all very well to have something new like earth observation and to have new products being developed by Research Institute. But until you get it into an operational environment, it remains too, too busy to ad hoc. But we also know that public authorities. I guess everywhere but certainly here in Europe, they have to adhere to quite strict procurement rules so we have the European procurement directive, which dictates how public authorities by services or or products or data. And that everyone has their routine so in your organization you come into a routine, and it's comfortable you know how to do it. And then if someone comes along with something new, you go like yeah I'm busy. How is it going to help me what's it going to cost. So even the effort of finding out about it is is often too much. You need some kind of open minded people in organization to even want to know about it. And then they have to be able to write it into their technical specifications or current specifications to able to buy it on a routine basis. I think those days for me believe that until we get it into real operational services. We are, we are in this technology push here where we keep saying to people yeah this is amazing. It's going to really help you. So for us procurement and making those buyers understand not just what they can buy but also how they can buy it. So through like a buyer groups is also very, very important to really get the market uptake going. So here, because I think the lady from DWS, which I think is a government organization in South Africa, how, how it's how it works in in your country to have something similar where you have certain procurement rules to follow how willing people to to write something new. I mean typically you have already specifications of what you want to buy, and it's easier to reuse what you have them to spend time in creating something new. Can you say a little bit about how that works in South Africa. Can I say, it's actually working the same in terms of community of practice, we do have a strategic water networks, we do have a cooperative governance in terms of private public partnership as well. So, I think it's also embedded in the legislation that we really need to focus on citizen science as well, bringing all the civil society into decision making kind of a thing. So it's actually the same to an extent that every technical project we embark on. So we have the duty to include a community of practice. So we have different levels of engagement you'll ever have a little bit of a technical like a project steering committee, then you have public meetings you have a case management forum meetings, depending on how you pitch your technical information into to filter through the different communities. So we pitch as well as the tools we are taking to the people. In terms of the presentation, then we will also have to scale it down to the common language kind of understanding. So it's the same principle. Maybe the question will be, how far are we in terms of percentages in terms of the, you know, a future target. Okay, we have about the four minutes remaining. So if you have any other input that you would like to share. Kenneth, I don't know if you want to share some some thoughts about this or any other ideas. Please, this is the time. I think from everyone who has spoken ideas are good. So the other issue will be how the barriers like if it's a webinar how often, and do you allow for translation for example, my colleague from CNS, at least he's speaking both languages. For example, we had guys from another continent. So it's becoming quite a real challenge for connecting with other persons, like the case in Africa where we have Francophone and Anglophone. Yes. So for some countries we are very lucky, like with my sister in South Africa was big English, but in other countries like in the West, French and Central Africa now it's even a different kind of French which Santiago will be laughing all through. Yes, so we are using this translation now more and more often, especially during the pandemic when we went completely remote, we had to learn. So this is something that we can do. I saw people in the chat that we're really interested in your, Kenneth in your automatic translation. So any information also that you can provide on that I think will be more than useful for us and for future meetings. I'm not sure if this can be done just in presentation mode, I guess, just when you present. I think there's a feature for Zoom, but it's quite an issue on up and some license. Yes, yes, this this we do in the webinars but in the meetings in the presentation I've never seen it so I think it's very useful. Okay, so I'll I think we have discussed a lot. Thank you all for your contribution. I'll ask when we go back into the main session, Kenneth and Nabila if you want to provide a bit of a summary of what happened during this breakout room. But I'll bring you all into the main session now. So just just stay there. I'll do it automatically. Is anyone saving the chat function. I think they'll also save, but also if you want the link to this. Yeah, it's anonymous link that you can actually copy and export from anywhere you are. Yeah, I saved it now I see now I need to find out how I find it again. The other time so the translation was very interesting Kenneth I'd like to know more, because this is this is something we also heard in our project, just English is not good enough. Yeah, it's a feature in the office, because also, like, things are really changing. Okay, so maybe we just get started so on committee, what do we have is it half an hour we've got. Could you just keep an eye on the time. Yes we have 30 minutes and 15 minutes in each session. Okay, thanks. Yeah so welcome again, Nina. Is it carlit and say now. So yeah so really the the the objective of the breakout rooms, as this is discussing a community of practice is to get some input from from all of you as well. We'd really like to hear about your experiences on projects initiatives related to the topic so related to understanding different types applications of Earth observation data. How have you use them how do you plan to use them. Yeah, and I think you'd like to share would be really useful and you can either do that in the chat or if you'd like to just talk to us and then that's also great. And we'll just be, yeah, we're recording the session and we'll just be taking notes as well so that we can add up all into the, the general community of practice information. And so, as anyone got anything they'd like to share it in terms of experience projects programs. What does anyone want to get us going because I'm sure the reason why you're all part of the community of practices because you do, you do have experiences or interests or needs. So, yeah, who wants to start or should I just ask someone to start I can go for it Nina. I can raise my hand virtually or that's fine. I can see you. Okay. Yeah, my background is a bit different. I'm not a water practitioner per se. What I've been doing is I've been doing consultancy for an EU project called water force, which is looking into the link between Copernicus, the Copernicus program, and water users, if I can put them all together in a big box. So, yeah, my interest is at the moment, I mean, sort of our initial initial analysis is sowing that sort of especially the inland water sector is very badly represented represented in the Copernicus program. I mean it's always been, it's always tagged on to some other Copernicus service or it's part of the land service and closely linked to agriculture. Or it's part of the, you know, marine service as well as where coastal issues come into so I mean there's nothing. There's no strong initiative just for and this this project is looking particularly inland waters. And so, you know, we're trying to understand why and what's missing and what can be done. That's why I'm attending this to just to try and see, you know, pick up hints and tips and see if we missing anything. Yeah, okay, interesting. And are you looking globally or you're focusing as is the Copernicus program on Europe. I'm not going to point Europe. I'm hearing this sort of moves a foot, I think to extend from Europe also to include Africa. But I don't think that wasn't part of the initial project so I don't know how it will be incorporated. It's really interesting because, you know, to me, coming from from the water sector, it always seems like such an obvious place to to in better integrate observation and especially the higher resolution data. And I guess, I mean, yeah, we always have agriculture as an entry point. So it's, it's often not the focus of often isn't water as such. So partly, a lot of that challenge just becomes comes from the fact that it's a resource that moves. It's, you know, it's not as easy to to assess as your landscape elements are. But why could I just ask you what what you found is you said you're looking at why that is, do you have you got to the stage of having any answers as to why, why it is that there isn't that focus. I think, well, just, but this is my personal opinion. This is not an analysis. I think the problem has been that, well, in my view, the water sector has to rely heavily on on complimentary in situ data. I don't want just be an initiative from the EO side, because this observation just cannot meet all the information requirements of water managers. So I think that's why because the Copernicus program is very much been pushed from the EO side. So my, my view is it's because EO is not. I wouldn't say it's never 100% capable in any field, but it's not, you know, it doesn't have the capability to to really meet the needs of the water sector on its own. That's that's been kind of like just ignored a little bit, but that's that's just a personal opinion. I don't know if anybody can substantiate that or agree with that or find a solution to that. I mean, I would, I would completely agree with that, you know, it's, it's, it is a challenge. And if you compare, you know, like I was saying some of the terrestrial things, so forests, for example, are an obvious resource to assess through Earth observation, whereas water is more challenging. And it's also because you're never going to have a comprehensive assessment of water from Earth observation. Yes, you might be able to do surface water like Ken has showed us or you might be able to look at water related ecosystems, but trying to look at that entire moving source is, it's, it is hugely challenging and you need the institute data, like you said. So, yeah, and I guess that's why we always end up in this position of, of having water assessing individual sectors such as agriculture. I want to just, yeah, if any of our other participants have any challenges that they face themselves in the use of Earth observation data from water or, yeah, please, Rabia, do you want to unmute and just join in the discussion there's just a few of us so yeah please go ahead. Hello, how are you all? Hi, hi. Apologies for joining in late, but I'm a doctoral student I'm working on inland water quality monitoring using multi-source Earth observation data. So what I find difficult is, you know, the different characteristics of the lakes, you know how they differ in terms of quality or elbow bloom production or the climatic variations. So I find it difficult to, you know, fit a general model to predict the water quality variables like peripheral A or turbidity or, you know, the elbow bloom production. With institute data availability, I feel like we need a lot of climatic variables to, you know, sort of like define the reasons behind those values and if you're just fitting a model with only chlorophyll A value that won't be that much accurate in my opinion. Thanks, Rabia. I'm afraid water quality is not my field at all. So it's, yeah, it's interesting to hear that you also have the challenges. I think more so because for water quality you're working at a much higher resolution and much more context specific than the broader assessments. Where are you working? Where's your research based? I'm a PhD candidate at State University of New York, Syracuse. You can say like upstate New York, USA. Sorry, I meant which inland water bodies, which lakes? Finger lakes primarily. Sorry, which ones? I didn't catch that. Finger lakes, you know, they're part of the great lakes, yeah. Okay, so I guess, yeah, I mean, to me, you're actually, so you possibly have even better access to in situ data than in other parts of the world in the Great Lakes area. True, yes. Great. Even with the data availability, there can be like, you know, calibration issues across various sensors and things like that. Yeah, sure. Can I ask other two participants, say now, or Hassan, if you have any examples of how you've used an observation data for any water related assessments, any projects, initiatives, programs you want to share with us. Sorry, is it Hassan or Kasri? I can see you but I can't see if you were trying to talk if you're unmuted. So in that case, maybe we can move on to the next question. Which is, do you have any suggestions for this community of practice, anything you'd like to see coming out of it, what would be useful, and is there any aspect of that that you would be interested in participating in, whether that's blogs or webinars, podcasts, is there anything of particular interest to you at any areas that you would be interested in contributing to. So, Rabia, as a doctoral student, I mean, I guess something like the community of practice might be useful for you to link up with others working in the same field. And is there any particular aspect of the community of practice that you think would be particularly useful? I'm not sure like if my answer really like 100% aligned with your question but I feel like in this field standardization is like one thing we could work on. Like even if we have the data, it's collected in so many different ways that you cannot really compare the results across different water bodies. Like it's either for even for the management of water quality, like I think there is need for standardization and that can like, you know, we as researchers, we can come up with those guidelines. Yeah, it's an interesting point because especially the water quality assessments are currently very context specific. Exactly. Yeah. And we cannot make any deductions, you know, without cross comparisons. Like if all the research is based on region specific sites, then it is not easy to deduce like what's what is really going on. Right. Yeah. So I guess one of the one of the challenges is at the moment with assessments of water quality not being so automated, you're always going to be very reliant on having that in situ data. In terms of standardizing it and designing approach that is applicable applicable across different types of lakes and water bodies, you'd need to first have access to quite a lot of in situ data to parameterize the approach. And so maybe something like a community of practice could help in bringing together people working on different water bodies as a way to do that. And then you can have like webinars and you know come up with ways where everyone is, you know, comfortable, because definitely if I think loop like very high end product like very expensive radiometers or reflectometers, then obviously not everyone or every researcher in every country across the globe cannot afford that that matters as well. You know, access to the equipment, the reliable equipment. Yes. No, that is a challenge. Yeah, it's not, it's not something that we can be that we can address, for example, through, you know, through some simple crowd sourcing. Yeah. But we can definitely do data sharing, so that you know we can develop a database which can be helpful for researchers across the world. I mean personally I think that's it's an important part of the community of practices is seeing how we can build on each other's experiences to strengthen and operationalize. Yeah, the more local applications and Nina what about you. Is there anything in particular that you would like to get out of the community of practice or are you just listening into some of the presentations today in relation to the project. Yeah, I mean it's more that way around although I mean maybe the community of practice would be a good source of, you know, information as far as we can carry out a survey or interviews or something like that. It depends what the profile of the members are, you know, because of our focus that's mainly on Europe at the moment. We have to keep that in mind. So I think we've made our way through our, yeah, the questions that were set out to us, say now I'm going to give you one last chance in case you had anything you wanted to add to any parts of the conversation or any experiences you wanted to share, and you don't have to talk. If that's a challenge you can just put it in the chat but we'd be really interested in hearing from you. And then on Kabed say, is there anything else we need to do here, how do we do we just do we leave or do we get put back. We get put back. Okay, then everyone can get take five, I guess we've got about five minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Is there anything else that you need on Kabed say for the reporting back or is that okay. No, I am good. I was able to capture the points. Okay. Okay, thanks Nina. Thanks, yeah. Thank you. Thank you just a housekeeping question so will the recording be available for the session. Yes, it will be available. Everything has been recorded and it will be available. Welcome to break out for I'm Eunice Bonba just what I'm a research manager with the water research commission in South Africa I'm also really for heavily involved in Earth observation based projects for water quality monitoring in South Africa and in Southern Africa so like Erin said, we do want to share our experiences for the first part of this breakout session. We would just like for you to share your experiences on some of the earth observation projects or work that you're involved in. And I think because we're quite an, not a big group, maybe what we could do is just do a quick round of introductions and then we can start that first part of the session if that's okay with everyone. Santos, my pronouncing that well. Hi, good morning. My name is Santos Balnero. I'm the head of no Asian of Spanish utility, and we have a million clients, more or less. We haven't started with Earth observation, but we are looking for, for an opportunity to, to look into our lakes into our reservoirs and for information about cyanobacteria or, or other, or other rooms. Thank you for that. Jody. Yeah, good morning. Jody. Yeah, Jody is the castle and kitchen of George. Good morning. I'm from the Spanish company call a data we developed automation and control systems for water quality monitoring. We are making a trial of a project with a head observation system and a water quality profiler in them to view the utility or the use of intelligent artificial, artificial, artificial intelligence to evaluate the quality. Thanks to space observation and online monitoring of water in them. Thank you so much. And then we have jumpy. Hi, everyone. So I'm from Japan. I'm a Japanese startup company. So we are developing a small. Right. And also my, my personal back story is a high quality and high dynamic. So that's why I'm interested. Thank you so much jumpy and then Arjun. Hello, everyone. Good day to good evening to everyone. My name is Arjun Yadav completed my masters in water and wastewater engineering, having a decade of experience from defense tech aviation and water and wastewater industry. Seven years I've worked significantly from design, operation commissioning and water and wastewater industry itself before coming to United Kingdom. Thanks. Thank you so much, Arjun. And then we have Aziza. Hello, everyone. My name is Aziza. I'm researcher at hydrosystem engineering research unit at the University of all of Finland. We are studying alteration of river regime and its effect on estuarine wetlands and on land like locked lakes and direct lakes in the Middle East and Central Asia. And we also using earth observation data and also in situ data and these two regions lack some in situ data. So we have issues with this, especially hydrological data. I think I missed the last part Aziza. I think she mentioned hydrological data and then. Yeah, she finished hydrological data. Did you, did you get it? Did you hear it, Eunice? No. Okay, so we have an issue with the in situ hydrological data. So this data is not openly shared and the remote sensing data is not good enough to be used instead of the in situ data. Okay, all right. Okay, thank you so much Aziza for that. Okay, so I think then maybe we can jump in then to share more specifics around maybe some of the projects that have caused some challenges. I like the variety of kind of water resources we're dealing with. We've got wetlands, dams, different applications both from an academic point of view and more of a utilities point of view in terms of also that research transfer. I think Catherine touched on to it how Earth observation is always at least I think it was Lisa who said that Earth observation is a growing domain but really translating it to utilities for them to use it and see it as a as a valid way for water quality management is a little bit difficult and it's also something we are struggling with here in South Africa, although it's working. We do know, obviously there are problems with data collection sometimes, whether you're going to use Sentinel what you know, in terms of cost as well financial implications but I think if we probably have some ideas how to overcome that, that we that we could share among each other that would be good to help the community of practice in general. So don't know who wants to start off first, maybe jump in because I think I like the angle that you're coming from when you introduced yourself. Yeah, actually, so I don't have this specific project, but my personal backstory is the Hadamacar one so I do I use a demo testing for the water surface area estimation for dams. So estimating what the one so we can estimate the water levels for each dam so and also we are using the insert technology so land slide. Can hear calls the sedimentation so we approach that so integrated approach for the dam management. So it's not totally to the topic but I just have such a project actually. Thank you anyone else. If you want I try to explain my project and my problem. I can say, during many years we have been developing monitoring real time online monitoring systems for water quality. One of our clients is public administrations that manage dams that are used for drinking water. The problem is that is dam is very big you cannot measure everything everywhere at the time. So, finally what we joined it with the public administration decided to monitor the profile of the water quality, near the intake of the water to the drinking water treatment. So we have in some places more than 10 years of profiles. In general, every four times per day, because we have seen that it's not necessarily to have more information. There's no pollution in the water quality. So fast in a dam, please in the Spanish dams. But the problem is that we just can monitor one place that is near the out the intake to the water treatment. So we are trying to see if thanks to the satellite observation we are able to make forecast of all the quality all around the dam. We know there are some problems because one of the problems is the frequency of the image. You don't have so much frequency you just have one image every if everything goes well every five days. If there are clouds or there are rains then you have less demand. The second problem is the depth of the image you get in general you just can get the image from the surface of the water, not of the underground water. So these two things is that we are trying to see if thanks to the artificial intelligence we can join with the online real time profile to see if we can predict these alga blooms. In the previous presentation they have they have said that this is not a problem in Europe. It's a problem in Europe, at least in the south of Europe where we have a heat weather or so we have this problem. And this is what we are trying to do at this moment. As I have said we have the profiler installed it in a lot of dams in Spain, and we are starting to make the analysis of the image. Fortunately we have history of image and data from profilers so now we are seeing if there's possibility to make this forecast or this provision of problems in that. Thank you Jordi. I think for us here in South Africa also we have a lot of issues with our dams. Eutrophication is a big problem obviously because we do have a lot of agricultural activities and there's also been the whole upstream story so upstream management to change policy there. It's difficult so now we are trying to sort of solve a solution from the once it has happened, you know, instead of really dealing with emissions and you know, water quality from that point of view you know what comes out at your point and source point so for eutrophication we do also have, we started this Sino Lakes. It's an app that we a mobile app that we've been successfully been able to use to monitor eutrophication in quite a number of our large dams but like you said the surface area is in resolution is where the problem is so the bigger dams it's much easier to do. And when you do obviously it's you to monitoring it correlates nicely with what we're seeing on the app and this is also web based app, I'm sorry, a computer based application as well. But your smaller dams where it's managed by farmers in, you know, especially where they are involved in export production then it becomes a problem so you find that yes what utilities can use it nicely, because they have quite large dams but when it comes to smaller dams and the resolution is not as great and obviously it's also a paid service. So then the financial costs comes into play as well but at least we do have something that we've been able to translate nicely where even for recreational use you know if you wanted to go and swim somewhere you could also download it on your phone and can give you a health risk level basically to say okay it's safe to swim in the water today or maybe to roll if you wanted or fish but yeah so we're still struggling as well but at least we are making movements when it comes to eutrophication I think for us it's the other words of quality parameters that we're still struggling with, especially with maybe some of our emerging contaminants and things like that. Thank you for that. I don't know Arjun Santos Aziza. Hello, yeah. Thanks for all your insights. See with regards to utilizing the satellites and processing the data. To be honest I didn't get an appropriate answer in the session which I asked the question. When you're having loads of data coming in and what I heard from Maria that it has not been done on regular basis, you're not annual basis. That's what I heard but I didn't really quite get it. If you're accumulating so much of data and you're filtering out annually it won't make any good desired output you have to keep on regularly cleaning up filtering and targeting those data which is essential. Those which are not required, let's say 80 to 90% you should immediately delete it so it's not essential. So you have to keep those things which are most essential one. So that has to be processed in milliseconds every now and then. So I really don't know how it has been done annually it's quite not clear. This one thing. Second thing is when you're accessing the data from the ground to the satellite. So it's only one direct link I don't think it will be sufficient enough to get their objectives. You have to keep separate segregated stations let's say underground sensors, drones, aerial drones for certain surface water for let's say on surface water on surfacing aerial drones for your contaminants underground water at certain level underground drones with sensors for XYZ contaminants. And let's say for buoys, let's say like you can install buoys in this river beds and where the, let's say when it before reaches the treatment plants, 10 kilometers in the river basins of buoys floating buoys where they can really observe all the contaminants. So these data process and the aerial drones will collect it and that will send to the satellite so by this each and every step by step there'll be a segregated transformation and data storage and data cleaning method and overall it can be accumulated in satellite and give a proper output. So I don't think it's going to be only one cent less you cannot get everything so me being having an experience in operating the plants looking at the SCADA data it was not that easy. So as and when you decentralize it as and when you look into it thoroughly, then only things will go better. And according to different geographical trends you need particular sensors you cannot have one sensor you have to customize a lot, and you have to customize with its coding programming and you have to calibrated precise levels, what, what, what contaminants you're targeting at what level it should be calibrated so there's a lot of stuff. So, yeah, and this needs too much involvement. We need many people together skilled professions to involve those who worked in the site while the experience and field work. I think those people should come in forward to promote this in a bigger way because it's really a fantastic technology and futuristic as well by implementing this you will get rid of all the chemical based testing and the huge laborious method that is involved. So I'm really support great supporter of this deck and also I am strongly advocating that AI should be fully implemented in water and wastewater and water is at its highest level. And I'm happy to help anyone on one hundred basis or on internship basis and looking forward for any opportunity. Thank you so much, and actually that was quite a nice lead up then to the second part of our breakout, which basically we want to find out from our participants, what you can contribute to the community of practice, whether it's through maybe webinars. I've also mentioned the experiences and training that you can provide. Then there's also podcast series, white papers. So just different ways of, of contributing to the community of practice addressing these kinds of issues that we've picked up because I think just from our small group here we can see that different countries are at different stages with regard to application of Earth observation so you don't need to have to walk the same road that maybe another geographic location has worked you can just leapfrog and maybe know how to better data like Adjunis saying or how Jordy gave his example of maybe starting off first with just one, looking at one intake building your data for a very long time so that you already know how your models look like before you transit to Earth observation so I think if we can maybe have if you have any suggestions on how you think you can contribute to the corp that would be useful and obviously that information will then be made available to everybody who is part of this community. Maybe we can start with Santos. Hi again. I'm just for the moment I'm just listening because we don't have any progress. What Adjun has said is very, very interesting because it's it gives us a lot of ideas because we have now a contract where we go to our recipients to our dams to take samples of the water to know if we have alga balloons or whatever and that takes us a lot of people to go there. There are security risks there to go with a boat and we want to avoid that but with all the contributions that you have made at the moment. What I have learned is that we have to work in parallel with this continuing taking samples and at the same time taking this data from Earth observation or drones or the boys to take the sample and to work in parallel so to know that this data taken from Earth observation are feasible are reliable so to us it's very, very interesting. Maybe Santos I don't know how you guys will document that are you are you publishing or are you reporting it somewhere that everyone can have access to because I think maybe quite a number of people in this community will also be at the starting stage you know. The question please. So I was saying that are you how are you guys documenting this process of you, you guys getting involved into transitioning from your traditional monitoring methods to Earth observation is that a way is there was somewhere you're reporting it. Not for the moment we are thinking how to do it and we are just we are attending at this kind of events so to learn and to do it for in a better way. Okay, alright, okay. Good. And then a Caesar maybe I just wanted to follow up with the work that you've been doing around wetlands. I think also that's quite nice. I mean that those are the kinds of boundaries we deal with in terms of water resource quality. So it's not necessarily your water but it's an important issue when it comes to obviously water quality regulation. I wanted to talk about other projects that they have. It's on urban lakes. In Oulu we have two small lakes that are mainly used for recreational purposes. And we also have algae blooms there. And one of my projects that I'm just waiting for the grant to implement, but I started some monitoring already. We want to make a digital twin. So this lakes. I think all of you know this concept. And we placed a sensors. Now only we had a budget for the dissolved oxygen sensors. So basically those sensors take information every 10 minutes. But I can't directly get this information from the sensors. Like I placed it in November and now I will take them out after the ice breaks in April, and then I can collect the information. So it's not basically a digital twin because in the digital twin technologies you have immediate data like constant flow of data. With remote sensing it's better but also we don't have the like satellites flowing through this like above those lakes every day or like every hour. So we have to combine all this data, in-situ data, so sensor data. And we also need to use these 5G, 6G technologies and artificial intelligence to combine all the data. And not doing it manually or like collecting and filtering it manually, but to make it like a process that is constant and automatic. But we are just starting this process. Okay, and with you guys also are you going to be reporting it somewhere or are you documenting the process somewhere? Is there like a website maybe for the project? We are going to make an app for the city because these lakes are used for the swimming. So we will share this data with the city and with residents. We also made a survey among the residents to find out their opinion and they already told us that they can absorb algae blooms. There was a fish death events as well. So there is a problem with water quality. But people also are mainly concerned on the color of water because in these northern lakes and rivers, we have the brown water issue in Finland. Yeah, so there are many issues that we have to look at it. And also the satellites can be quite useful in this case. Thank you. Arjun, your hand is up. Thanks Aziza for bringing your information. See what I like to bring up on my experiences. When you're addressing, when you're utilizing the sensors and targeting any measurements, it also depends upon how are you talking and why are you targeting. Let's say that you're targeting contaminants, organic or not contaminants or microbial contaminants. Let's say you're targeting crypto or algae, the size of the crypto. What's this heat signature? What's this dimension? Whether you're going related to heat signature based sensors or optical imaging based sensors? So let's say you're going for an EIML algorithm. So you have to feed that proper data to the algorithm that what is the crypto? What is the size of it? How does it seem? What is the density? What is the measurement? Based on that, it will start collecting as a plan. You have to calibrate as per that. So it's not like just put a sensor and get everything. So it also depends upon what data feed that you're giving into those algorithms that the sensors will detect and as you calibrate it, it will verify it properly. So there is some, I think we should be more deep and more specific in how we address our issues rather than being generic. So that's what I would like to bring in. Thank you so much, everybody. We're going to be taking back to the main room right now, but I think the discussions that we had were really good. Thank you.