July 27, 2020

Mission

The first SCO initiatives aim to propose local decision-support tools and are therefore geared towards local projects studying climate change impacts. These projects are federating the scientific community, public authorities and innovative private firms around shared criteria such as making effective use of available satellite, climate, environmental and socio-economic data at the right resolution; leveraging research, data production and distribution infrastructures (Data Terra, Copernicus, DIAS, GEoportail, existing GIS platforms, etc.) and operational services; and guaranteeing that tools can be scaled and adapted to different territories.

The 24 national SCOs will select projects meeting these terms of reference for their territories. These projects are not being sponsored; they are the result of an identified local need and led by national SCO member organizations. France has 17 such member organizations, among them the national weather service Meteo France, the national scientific research centre CNRS, the IRD development research institute and the CEREMA hazards, environment, mobility and land planning research centre. The SCO label will make it easier to secure funding from large international organizations.

The results obtained after two years will be made available to the world’s scientific and political communities. They will be shared notably through yearly meetings organized by the SCO International’s secretariat general. Besides these results, data, models and algorithms will be shared freely so that they can directly benefit other territories.

While it is currently coordinating efforts to harmonize satellite and field data, the SCO is set to cast its net wider and transition to an international charter like the Charter on Space and Major Disasters. Ultimately, its ambition is to enable each nation to call on the SCO consortium to provide expertise in response to the local requirements of climate change coping projects.