A collaboration with the international monitoring community
To make sure the EO based WorldCereal system meets the needs of our end users, interaction and collaboration throughout the project are key. Recognizing that this is a huge and unprecedented undertaking, we believe that it can only be successful through a collaborative approach that engages with the various players within the international monitoring community and leverages the extensive existing efforts, experience and expertise within this community.
During WorldCereal Phase I, the consortium has been supported by the WorldCereal Champion users. The selected key user organizations have set the requirements for the WorldCereal products and system. They also validated and assessed the utility of the products and supported the consortium with access to reference data sets and their expertise on agricultural mapping and monitoring. Three specific influential user organizations representative of key communities across the agricultural sector (humanitarian, markets and trade and industry) were chosen:
- GEOGLAM, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Flagship Initiative on Global Agricultural Monitoring
- the G20 Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) (Policy/Economics/Trade)
- the FAO with its Global Early Warning and Information System of Food and Agriculture (GIEWS) department and the Land and Water department (Humanitarian/Early Warning/Water use efficiency)
In addition to the Champion Users, WorldCereal also engaged with the broad international GEOGLAM community through the Crop Monitor, NASA Harvest networks and international research organizations. As such, WorldCereal has built up a huge user network for in situ data collection, co-validation of the products and to showcase the usage of the WorldCereal products: AAFC, AFSIS, BAGE, CIMMYT, CIMMYT-GLTEN, DSSI, EU-JRC, GODAN, ICARDA, ICRISAT, IFPRI, INTA, JECAM, N2AFRICA, NASA Harvest, ONESOIL, Plant Village, RADI, ROTHAMSTED RESEARCH, WFP etc.
Lastly, GEOSYS - an Urthecast company – has offered its support to the WorldCereal project as a key end user covering the agricultural business aspects.