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Items of the month:
Note that since April 2014, I am publishing these items in my blog at http://runninginfog.wordpress.com/.

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Selected Recent Presentations and Publication

Story of the month ...

May 2012: Are the best building Earth's cockpit? We agree, I believe, that only the best engineers should be engaged in building the cockpit of a modern airplane intended to carry some 800 people across the Atlantic Ocean. Wouldn't it be even more important that only the best are engaged in building the cockpit of Planet Earth? By now more than 7 billion passengers of this unique spaceship, our home planet, depend on the pilots to be informed about the current and future trajectory of the planet so that they can react in a timely manner if things are tending to get out of hand.

The Global Earth Observation System of System (GEOSS) is intended to provide this cockpit. It is the mandate of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) to implement GEOSS. The minsters of an illustres group of countries came together in 2005 and endorsed the Ten Year Implementation Plan and established GEO to implement this plan. And we tried. The ministers forgot that a poor man's cockpit might not be a good choice, and they left the finding of resources to a voluntary effort of a few enthusiasts - one of them being me.

However, I don't believe the best of the world are still on board in this adventure of building Earth's cockpit. I just participated in the Board meetings and can assure (or worry) you with the fact that most Board members are engaged in looking at themselves. After the recent reorganization of the GEO, the new Boards are in a process of self-finding, and they showed little considerations for the needs of the Tasks or the users. All they were concerned with is whether the ExCOM will be satisfied with their monitoring of the Tasks. More than half a year has passed since the new structure was decided, and little has been achieved in implementing the structure. And the world continues to travel on its trajectory without sufficient monitoring and without the “pilots” having the information they would need to make informed decisions. Not a good perspective for humanity ...


If you have a story, thought, or picture worth to be considered as story, thought or picture of the month, please feel free to inform me about it by sending an e-mail to hpplag@unr.edu.