IncREO, which has been designed in support of emergency response management and risk-preparedness, aims at providing actors responsible for disaster management, risk prevention, civil protection and also spatial planning with Earth Observation (EO)-based solutions, contributing particularly to an improved preparedness and mitigation planning for areas highly vulnerable to natural disasters.

The related workshop will involve project partners and end-users in order to assess and validate the updated products developed by Geoville: flood exposure analysis related to the Region of Shkodra, derived from a merging process out of EO imagery and in situ data. The workshop is an important step to present and finalize the digital flood exposure maps as well as data to be made available to the government of Albania and to be fully operationalized into the DEWETRA system. The workshop will foresee the participation of those departments and agencies which gave a relevant contribution during the data gathering phase of the project.

The setting up of such a multi-stakeholders consultation is propaedeutic for fine tuning the newly developed digital maps with the requirements of main users involved in forecasting, preparedness and managing of disasters in the chosen testing area.

Representatives of the following organizations will be invited to take part in the workshop: Ministry of Interior, General directorate for Civil Emergency, Albania; CIMA Research Foundation - International Centre on Environmental Monitoring; Institute of Geosciences, Energy, Water and Environment (IGEWE); Prefecture of Shkodra; Institute of Statistics; and, National Committee on High Dams, Swiss Cooperation Agency, Pöyry Switzerland Ltd.

User representatives will be requested to assess and validate the elaborated digital products, so as to finalize well-tailored EO-derived products, capable to match its multi-scale definition and the multipurpose applications required by the end users and by the nature of the testing site.

The workshop intends to bring around a common table the General Directorate for Civil Emergencies of Albania, as first and main end user of the project, with identified stakeholders operating and being involved in the field of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and preparedness in the area of Shkodra Lake.

The aim is to present and share the products of IncREO at their end stage in order to acquire a final users’ feedback based on technical refinement during the second and final year of the project lifespan. This will mainly be done by the submission of a specific questionnaire to be followed by an open discussion.

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IncREO - Increasing Resilience through Earth Observation - (FP7-SPACE-2012-1) is funded by the European Commission under the programme Copernicus, which aims to enhance the EU’s capacity in Global Monitoring for Environment and Security. The UNESCO Venice Office is a partner of the project which is coordinated by Astrium Services.

IncREO website at: http://www.increo-fp7.eu/