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GMFS

Description

GMFS

Global Monitoring for Food Security
Contact  Sven Gilliams Start (End) Date  - (31/08/2013)
Consortium  6 partners Project Coordination  VITO
Website           www.gmfs.info
(new window)       		Related
Projects		  Globam, MARS,   
 DevCoCast, Garnet-E
Keywords       

 food security, early warning, agricultural area estimates, 
 CFSAM         

 

Project Objectives
Global Monitoring for Food Security (GMFS) is an ESA Earth Watch Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) Service Element (GSE) which started in 2003 and entered its third stage in June 2010. This third stage of GMFS (GMFS3) “Food Security Information Services Extension and Transfer 2009-2012”is aimed at the sustainable transfer of operational services to the user community. Its outcomes are planned to last beyond May 2013, the lifetime of the ESA project. The overall objective for GMFS3 is to establish operational services for crop monitoring in support of Food Security Monitoring Systems to serve policy makers and operational users. For these operational services the GMFS3 partnership is focusing on those aspects of Food Security Monitoring where satellite- derived technology brings added value.

Methodology
GMFS3 provides 7 different services. All these services have an operational, capacity building and R&D component. The GMFS3 services are:
• Crop Yield and Vegetation Monitoring Service
• FAST Service
• Soil Moisture Service
• Support to the Optimization of the National Agricultural Survey Service
• Agricultural Mapping Service
• SAR Knowledge Transfer Service
• Support to Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission Service
In addition to these 7 services there are two R&D activities which will support the evolution of the Crop and vegetation monitoring Service and the SAR Knowledge Transfer Service.
These services are implemented country specific (see illustration).
To ensure that the consortium provides the correct services to the users and that the methodologies are state of the art, the project is guided by a user board, consisting of all users and a scientific board with members of FEWSNET, JRC, FAO and the University of Bonn

(Expected) Results

  • Close collaboration with FAO, JRC, WFP on agricultural area and yield estimates,
  • Transfer of methodology to FAO system,
  • A good African user network (through capacity building, data dissemination)

VITO Contribution

  • Operational delivery of MERIS RR based EWS indicators
  • Support GMFS3 users and ESA on the implementations of ESA DDS service and upgrade DDS tool developed during the previous stage of GMFS
  • Support FAO in the Crop and Food Security Assessment Missions (CFSAM)
  • VITO staff member is placed at FAO HQ in Rome to streamline collaboration and integration of services
  • Research on agricultural change mapping
  • Dissemination activities
  • Overall project management

Partners

  • Consorzio ITA (Italy)
  • EARS (the Netherlands)
  • EFTAS (Germany)
  • Sarmap (Switzerland)
  • ULg (Belgium)
  • Geoville (Austria)

Illustration



Illustration of EWS service, fAPAR indicator based on MERIS LR for East Africa, sent automatically after each decade and cluster analysis for the 2009 growing season in Ethiopia.



Contact:


Sven Gilliams
Tel. + 32 14 33 68 27
Fax + 32 14 32 27 95
Send a message to Sven Gilliams


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