The National Earth Observation Conference – Terra em Foco took place on 12 and 13 September at the University of Minho in Braga, bringing together more than 200 participants from academia, industry and policymakers. It was the meeting point for the Portuguese community in the field, covering topics such as the atmosphere, oceans, forests, new sensors and constellations. Organised by the Portuguese Space Agency and the UMinho School of Engineering (EEUM), the event also served as a showcase for new products, services and funding actions.
The opening ceremony took place on 12 September at the Gualtar campus and included the president of the Portuguese Space Agency, Ricardo Conde, the rector of UMinho, Rui Vieira de Castro, the president of EEUM, Pedro Arezes, and the councillor for Mobility of the Municipality of Braga, Olga Pereira. Ana Fonseca, a pioneer of remote sensing technology in Portugal and former director of Applied Geodesy at the National Civil Engineering Laboratory, spoke about Portugal’s progress in this area.
The programme also included parallel sessions with half a hundred speakers on eight thematic panels, thus broadening the options and networking for participants. Among the highlights, the head of Future Missions and Architecture at the European Space Agency, Juliette Lambin, discussed hybrid constellations and new advances in the design, launch and operation of satellites. The discussion was joined by representatives of the Portuguese Air Force and the companies N3O, Dragonfly, Tekever, Geosat and Open Cosmos. Also in the afternoon, the director of the Climate Change Unit at the University of Valencia (Spain), José António Sobriño, explored the progress of space technologies in monitoring the earth’s surface temperature, such as urban heat islands.
On 13 September, innovations in artificial intelligence for this sector were highlighted by Development Seed’s product manager, Daniel Wiesmann, followed by the deputy director-general of the Directorate-General for Territory, Mário Caetano, who presented SMOS, a new application for monitoring forests and agriculture. Both were also at the round table ‘The future of Earth observation in Portugal’, alongside Rui Teodoro (Army Geospatial Information Centre), Francisco Vilhena da Cunha (Geosat) and João Catalão (University of Lisbon). There was also an opportunity to explore funding strategies in the sector, with speakers from IAPMEI, the National Innovation Agency and CCDR-Norte.
The closing session was attended by the executive director of the Portuguese Space Agency, Hugo André Costa, and the president of EEUM, Pedro Arezes. The event included awards for the best posters and student papers. In the afternoon, the ‘World Café AtlanticSENSE’ was held to train municipalities, as well as seven workshops organised by companies and universities.
The conference has an official website ptspace.pt/terra-em-foco-2024. This was its second edition, following its debut in Évora in 2022, when it was dedicated to the European Union’s Earth Observation programme, Copernicus.