Executive Committee of UN-GGIM: Europe holds first meeting of 2016

The Executive Committee of UN-GGIM: Europe held their first meeting of the year on 18^thFebruary 2016. The meeting was hosted by Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Spain at their head office in Madrid. The meeting focused on the work that is currently being carried out by the regional working groups, the first on Core Data and second on Data integration. At the meeting the Executive Committee approved the establishment of a third regional working group on the Global Geodetic Reference Frame, the regional work will be led by Finland.

At the last meeting of the Committee of Experts, UN-GGIM: Europe was given the mandate to lead the work on the determination of a minimum set of global fundamental geospatial data themes. In Madrid agreed and approved the Terms of Reference and Work Plan for UN-GGIM: WG Fundamental Data. The United Kingdom has been appointed by the Executive Committee of UN-GGIM: Europe to lead UN-GGIM: WG Fundamental Data, and will report directly to UN-GGIM: Europe ExCom.

Further items covered during the meeting included the a report from Denmark outlining the progress and work being made by the UN-GGIM Task Team on IAEG-SDG, an update on th work of the Global Working Group on National Institutional Arrangements, and the ECOSOC programme review of UN-GGIM in April. The meeting ended with a discussion on the participation and engagement in various UN-GGIM and geo-spatial events during the year.

The next ExCom meeting is scheduled for June 2016.