Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation

The CEOI ran a series of Science Challenge Workshops during 2007, leading to an Emerging Technologies Workshop in January 2008.

The concept of the challenge workshops is to draw through, the science drivers in each of the key earth system areas and begin to assess the requirements for instrumentation and technology.   The plethora of current science strategies provides the basis of the challenge e.g. The Changing Earth (ESA), IGOS theme reports (WMO), GMES position papers (e.g. BICEPS) (EU).  The work shops engage leading scientists to articulate the science case and leading technologists to overview the enabling technologies.  The initial five challenge workshops have been based around the themes of:

a)      Land Surface

b)      Ocean

c)      Atmosphere

d)      Cryosphere and Solid Earth

e)      Emerging technologies

Though the work-shops are themed, there are elements of cross-thematic thinking.    The core of the workshops are small challenge groups that work on distinct sub-areas to assess the scientific need, the required observations, assess the implementation options and enabling technologies.  A key principle of the workshops is to engage the broad EO community so representatives from NCEO/CEOs, NERC centres/surveys are invited as well as technologists from STFC and UKspace.  The output of each workshop is a short challenge report detailing the link for science requirements to conceptual instrument/mission ideas.

The final workshop in the series is entitled Emerging Technologies with the objective to draw together the outputs from the science workshops and explore the available technologies in their potential application to future missions.