Date: 19 July 2024
Location: Panama City, Panama
Credit: Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, processed by the CopernicusLAC Panama Centre
Description:
Welcome to the first edition of the Image of the Week brought to you by the CopernicusLAC Panama Centre!
In this series, we will showcase Copernicus Sentinel satellite images of a location or event in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region, illustrating how Copernicus data can be leveraged to make an impact locally.
This image, acquired by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites on 19 July 2024, shows Panama City, Panama, the base of the CopernicusLAC Panama Centre.
Copernicus, the Earth Observation component of the European Union Space Programme, delivers free and open data to enable reliable monitoring of areas across the LAC region. This data provides communities and authorities with insights for a range of applications, including addressing challenges brought on by geohazards and climate change-induced extreme weather events.
As a hub for the region, the CopernicusLAC Panama Centre is boosting the resilience of LAC in the face of disasters and food insecurity, by supporting their spatial data management capacity and strategic use. The Centre’s objectives include increasing regional uptake of Copernicus open data and services, as well as developing regional capacity to process Copernicus Sentinel satellite data and to leverage Copernicus products for evidence-based decision-making.
The main activities of the Centre include stakeholder and user engagement, knowledge and skills transfer through training courses and online modules, co-development of EO-based disaster risk reduction geospatial pilot services in close cooperation with local stakeholders, and finally, support in the development of a high power and cloud computing infrastructure. The Centre will also develop entrepreneurial support activities such as hackathons, EU-LAC industrial matchmaking events, and support the design of business incubator programmes. Furthermore, the Centre will host political dialogues and community-building events which will foster cross-collaboration among Earth Observation and disaster risk reduction communities, as well as other relevant ecosystems in the region.
The Copernicus LAC Panama Centre’s activities take place within the overall context of the EU-LAC Digital Alliance, which is a strategic framework for promoting cooperation between the EU and the LAC region on digital and space issues under the EU Global Gateway umbrella. Within this context, the European Space Agency (ESA) is coordinating the Centre’s implementation on the basis of a Contribution Agreement with the Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA) of the European Commission, and in close collaboration with Panama’s government, MIRE (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Government Innovation Authority (AIG), and SENACYT (National Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation).
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