Mainstreaming Earth Intelligence: Harnessing Foundation Agents in Earth Observation
Convener: Thorsten Jelinek, Yubao QIU
Session Abstract:
AI has already transformed Big Earth Data into actionable Earth Intelligence, enabling resilient agriculture and urban planning, enhancing the monitoring of ice dynamics and permafrost, tracking wildfires and biodiversity, and improving disaster recovery efforts. Today, the rapid advancement of frontier AI, including the rise of foundation agents, signals a profound evolution across the entire Earth Observation (EO) process and ecosystem. At the same time, EO must be mainstreamed as both a digital public good and digital public infrastructure, ensuring equitable access and enabling evidence-based decision-making where it matters most: at the front lines of sustainable development.
This 2025 DBAR workshop brings together EO practitioners and stakeholders to share practical experiences in applying AI across EO functions, including data acquisition, processing, analysis, and operational use. The workshop will highlight emerging opportunities and persistent challenges related to data quality, model scalability, associated risks, governance frameworks, and the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration.
The goal is to distil lessons from real-world AI applications and collaboratively develop a roadmap for the future of EO—one that fully leverages foundation agents alongside existing capabilities. Such a roadmap should not only demonstrate how AI can enhance perception and inference across scales, but also help close the usage gap for decision-makers working at the forefront of digital sustainability.
Big Earth Data for Global Environmental Sustainable Development Goals
Convener: LIU Jie, Gretchen Kalonji
Session Abstract:
Assessing progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) faces challenges such as incomplete, inaccurate, and non-comparable data, as well as limited spatial granularity. Big Earth Data offers a solution to these limitations by filling gaps in traditional data collection, improving timeliness, and enhancing spatial detail. It opens new opportunities for more effective global monitoring and evaluation of environment-related SDGs. This special session will focus on addressing the environment-related SDG indicator data gaps by utilizing global-scale environmental gridded data products. It will disscuss how to explore and analyze the current status, trends, and impacts of global environmental issues, with the objective of providing decision-making support and recommendations through scientific data analysis to advance the environment-related SDG including SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 14 (Life Below Water), and SDG 15 (Life on Land).
Report Topic: How to use Big Earth Data to carry out standardized monitoring and evaluation of global sustainable development