FAO Statistics at the 2025 Living Planet Symposium

FAO Statistics is at the European Space Agency’s Living Planet Symposium (LPS) – one of the largest Earth observation conferences in the world. The event will take place on 23–27 June 2025 in Vienna, Austria.

The event provides a forum to present and discuss the latest scientific findings and applications based on satellite data, and to review the contribution that data and technologies have made and could further make in addressing environmental and societal challenges. The symposium will showcase innovative products, services, missions and initiatives, with the overarching goal of demonstrating how science, society, policy-making, businesses and the economy can all benefit from observations made from space.

During the five-day event, diverse communities united by a common interest in exploiting Earth observation data will gather together, creating a unique opportunity to meet and network with space enthusiasts from a wide range of sectors.

FAO has partnered with the European Space Agency (ESA) to improve the exchange of expertise, knowledge and relevant data for the joint development of Earth Observation applications responding to the mandate of FAO. The two organizations have signed a Memorandum of Understanding in 2021 which will facilitate synergies of R&D efforts and to scale up solutions in particular the FAO capacity development work aimed at enabling countries in the use of Earth Observations for agricultural statistics and SDG monitoring, by allowing the standardization of methods/applications, increasing results accuracy and sustainability of solutions.

The LPS22 Agora will discuss with FAO experts working in different thematic domains the following topics:

• Requirements and challenges for using satellite Earth Observation data;
• Exchange of data sets from integrated household/field surveys, essential for calibration and validation of Earth Observation models;
  
• Developing innovative Earth Observation algorithms, products and applications relevant for the mandate of FAO making full use of latest IT capabilities, such as cloud computing;
  
• Demonstrating and validating Earth Observation capabilities for data generation under FAO’s mandate.