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We live on a blue planet, and Earth’s waters benefit many sectors of society. The future of our blue planet is increasingly reliant on the services delivered by marine, coastal and inland waters and on the advancement of effective, evidence-based decisions on sustainable development. ‘Oceans and Society: Blue Planet’ is an initiative of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) that aims to ensure the sustained development and use of ocean and coastal observations for the benefit of society. The initiative works to advance and exploit synergies among the many observational programmes devoted to ocean and coastal waters; to improve engagement with a variety of stakeholders for enhancing the timeliness, quality and range of information delivered; and to raise awareness of the societal benefits of ocean observations at the public and policy levels. This paper summarises the role of the initiative, current activities and considerations for future directions.

Mountain Research and Development, 38 (3), ISSN:0276-4741, ISSN:1994-7151

The combined effects of population growth, increasing demands for water to support agriculture, energy security, and industrial expansion, and the challenges of climate change give rise to an urgent need to carefully monitor and assess trends and variations in water resources. Doing so will ensure that sustainable access to adequate quantities of safe and useable water will serve as a foundation for water security. Both satellite and in situ observations combined with data assimilation and models are needed for effective, integrated monitoring of the water cycle's trends and variability in terms of both quantity and quality. On the basis of a review of existing observational systems, we argue that a new integrated monitoring capability for water security purposes is urgently needed. Furthermore, the components for this capability exist and could be integrated through the cooperation of national observational programmes. The Group on Earth Observations should play a central role in the design, implementation, management and analysis of this system and its products.

Hydrological modeling and water management intrinsically ask for better integration of data, information and models due to their complex and interdisciplinary nature. The challenge is to inform policy- and decision-makers with reliable data and efficient tools based on scientific models. The latest technological advances in Earth observation and Web technologies allowed the development of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) that are accelerating the pace of data sharing at regional and national scales, with the long-term vision of creating a global SDI. A series of recent European projects (e.g. ACQWA, enviroGRIDS, GEOWOW) are contributing to promote innovative Earth observation solutions to favor the uptake of scientific outcomes in water management and policy. Currently, hydrological, meteorological and climatological data still remain difficult to find, access, and integrate because of various accessibility and incompatibility issues. New data sources from remote sensing or crowd sourcing are also producing valuable information to improve our understanding of the water cycle, while field sensors are developing rapidly and becoming cheaper. International initiatives such as OGC, GEOSS and INSPIRE catalyze data sharing by promoting interoperability to maximize the use of data and by supporting easy access to and utilization of geospatial data. Emerging standards (e.g., WaterML, netCDF) are enhancing interoperability between hydrology and other scientific disciplines, allowing to share models and specific algorithms using the Web Processing Service (WPS). The System of Systems (SoS) approach appears to be a valuable and promising concept in order to lower the entry-level barrier to a real multi-disciplinary framework. The UncertWeb modeling framework is an attempt to quantify and efficiently communicate uncertainty of data and models, an essential pre-requisite for decision-making of adaptation strategies. Distributed computing infrastructures can handle complex and large hydrological data and models, while Web processing services bring the flexibility to develop and execute simple to complex workflows over the Internet. The brokering approach allows binding heterogeneous resources published by different data providers and adapting them to tools and interfaces commonly used by users of these resources. Successful SDIs rely on various aspects: a shared vision between all participants, necessity to solve a dominant problem, adequate data policies, incentives, and sufficient resources. Capacity building at human (education and training of individuals), infrastructure (installing/configuring/managing of the needed technology) and institutional (enhancing the understanding within organization and/or governments) levels is also a major element for reinforcing the commitment to SDI concepts. Consequently, SDIs certainly represent an important step toward removing barriers to data availability, accessibility, integration and modeling, which are needed to improve decisions on water resources. With all these technological improvements, large steps are being made to improve the science-policy interface. The most difficult step however remains to bring scientists and decision makers around the same table to build their project together with an adaptive strategy., JRC.H.6-Digital Earth and Reference Data

• launched in response to calls for action by the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, Earth Observation Summits, and by the G8 (Group of Eight) leading industrialized countries • voluntary partnership of governments and international organizations — 86 member governments + EC — 61 Participating Organizations (PO) • provides a framework within which these partners can develop new projects and coordinate their strategies and investments • charged with developing GEOSS

Observations The AfWCCI provides an emerging platform for testing new technologies for a continent with immense needs for better information and technology. There are many opportunities for international organizations and academic projects to contribute to AfWCCI. Active use of the GEO framework may be one way to ensure this happens.

Presents a collection of slides covering the following topics: GEOSS; GEO work plan for strategic target driven structure; decision making support infrastructure and development; water resources; integrated water information systems; ocean information coordinates; marine and coastal ecosystem monitoring; ocean forecast network; application to fisheries and aquaculture management; hydrometeorological extremes; information service for cold regions; and, water quality products.

Presents a collection of slides covering the following topics: water resource management; drought forecasting; flood forecasting; global drought monitoring; and global drought information system.