Greening Consulting awarded new support contract to CEOS

Following the successful completion in 2011 of a 18 month period of support to the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) Systems Engineering Office, Greening Consulting is pleased to announce it has been awarded a new contract to continue this support for a further 12 months. This assignment requires Greening Consulting to support the CEOS Executive Officer in the delivery of CEOS activities in response to GEO (the Group on Earth Observations).

Further information available at:
> CEOS Systems Engineering Office is available at: www.ceos.org/seo
> Group on Earth Observations (GEO): www.earthobservations.org

Assuring Quality in Earth Observation

In general terms, information has “gone from scarce to superabundant,” according to The Economist. “This brings huge new benefits, but also big headaches.” At a recent workshop in the United Kingdom on data quality, Samy Gaiji, from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), further reflected on this fact and highlighted that, within the biodiversity field, there has been exponential growth in the number of occurrence records observed and collected over the last decade. At the same meeting, Dan Cornford, from the University of Aston, suggested that the subsequent challenge for the Earth Observation (EO) community rests with a growing number of EO data providers. Those supplying EO data should do so in the easiest and most robust, quality-assured way, in order to allow the user to make an informed judgment on the data’s fitness for his or her own particular purpose.

Thus began the discussions at the workshop on “Providing Harmonised Quality Information in Earth Observation Data by 2015,” held in October in Harwell, Oxfordshire.

View the full article at: www.earthzine.org/2012/02/08/assuring-quality-in-earth-observation/

Team building at Harwell

Greening Consulting is delighted to welcome Christine Hooker as its newest recruit. Christine will join Greening Consulting’s existing team based at the Harwell Science & Innovation Campus, Oxfordshire. She will provide full-time PA support to the recently established European Space Agency Harwell Centre (EHC).

Christine joins the team with over 15 years experience as a PA working for organisations including DHL Supply Chain and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Greening Consulting’s existing team currently working within the EHC includes:

Karen Woudberg
Karen is a Project Support Officer with Greening Consulting and is undertaking specific tasks for ESA to assist with the finalisation of procedures and administration infrastructure at the EHC. Karen joined Greening Consulting in September 2010 and has recently completed a 13 month PA assignment with the EHC. Prior to joining the company, Karen worked for over 10 years on Office Management and PA assignments with a variety of commercial and public sector organisations.

Catherine Downy
Catherine joined Greening Consulting in March 2011 as Consultant and is currently fulfilling the role of IGBP*-ESA Liaison Officer. Based at the EHC and working within the ESA Climate Office, Catherine acts as the interface between the ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI) and the IGBP community to ensure that the products derived from the CCI are fit for purpose and that the IGBP community is fully engaged in the development of the CCI programme. Prior to joining the company, Catherine was Science Manager for the QUEST programme, a £23m climate research programme funded by the Natural Environment Research Programme. She has a BSc honours degree in Geology from the University of Bristol.

*International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme