Dubai: The UAE Space Agency on Thursday announced four key initiatives at the COP28 at Expo City Dubai.
“The UAE Space Agency is hosting Space Pavilion bringing local and international entities to promote space technology for tackling climate challenges,” said Sultan Al Zeidi, Senior Engineer Space Projects Development at UAE Space Agency.
According to Al Zeidi, the UAE Space Agency will host more than 20 international space agencies to discuss on leveraging from space technology and tackling climate challenges. The UAE Space Agency is also hosting over 60 sessions at the COP28 bringing together experts to promote space technology.
Hackathon
The UAE Space Agency will organise the “Climate Innovation Sprint — Earth Observation Solutions” hackathon at the Space Pavillion. Entrepreneurs, data scientists, and programmers will come together to train on the analytics tools provided and address sustainability challenges. The themes for the hackathon will be loss and damage, food security, land use, and climate-induced disasters.
Space Agencies Leaders’ Summit
On December 4, the UAE Space Agency will host a ‘Space Agencies Leaders’ Summit’, with the participation of more than 20 space agencies. The summit will address climate programmes and initiatives that will expedite the pathway to 1.5°C.
Al Zeidi said the summit will also raise awareness about climate change and the role of space-based technologies in addressing it, showcase innovative technological solutions, promote entrepreneurship in the space sector, encourage private sector investment in space-climate programmes, and explore opportunities for funding and financing of space-climate initiatives.
Al Zeidi said the results of four projects would be presented at COP28.
The Geospatial Analytics Platform, which is part of the space data centre, is a one-stop shop platform for satellite imagery. The others include providing an AI library, and promoting space applications for serving different sectors, including agriculture, environmental water resources.
Key players will be seen in the space pavilion — space agencies and companies — who will together reveal their programmes.
“We are offering a hackathon covering six challenges — related to loss and damage, food security, air quality, water pollution and client induced disasters,” Zeidi said.
