On September 24, a video conference was held between Dr. Claudia Herrera Melgar, representing the Copernicus Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean, located in Panama, and the members of the Inter-American Defense Board's Disaster Cooperation Division, on the topic of satellite information and climate change.
In her speech, Dr. Claudia Melgar stated that Copernicus is a regional centre that will improve the resilience of Latin American and Caribbean countries, supporting their capacity to manage spatial data and its strategic use in a region particularly vulnerable to meteorological phenomena and geological and geomorphological threats induced by climate change.
The key objectives of the Centre in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region were presented at the conference, outlining the following:
- Promoting the use of spatial information and the regional adoption of Copernicus open data and services.
- Develop regional capacity to enable users to process data generated by Sentinel satellites and use Copernicus products in decision-making.
- Development of Earth Observation services to support disaster risk reduction (DRR) and risk mapping and recovery, in close cooperation with national and regional organizations in LAC, as well as fostering links between the Earth Observation (EO) and DRR communities in LAC.
- Serve as a hub for the development and use of EO products tailored to the specific needs of the LAC region.
During the presentation, the liaison officer explained that the launch of the Center is coordinated by the European Space Agency (ESA), within the framework of the EU-LAC Digital Alliance, through a Contribution Agreement with the Directorate General of International Associations of the European Commission (DG INTPA), and in partnership with the Government of Panama, and that in order to achieve the objectives, the main activities of the Copernicus Centre LAC Panama include the participation of stakeholders and users, the transfer of knowledge and skills (through a tailored training and capacity building programme), whose thematic lines are climate change, emergency management, land surface monitoring, atmospheric monitoring, marine monitoring and security, additionally developing business support activities through EU-LAC Hackathons, industrial matchmaking events and community building activities.
Finally, the Disaster Cooperation Division noted that this could be an important opportunity to strengthen integration ties between both parties, especially with regard to the meteorological monitoring procedures carried out by Copernicus LAC and their inclusion in the development of the software of the IADB's Disaster Cooperation Mechanism (MECODE).
