The SnapEarth project is slowly coming to an end. At the end of November 2022, the consortium plans to complete works related to the project. After more than 2.5 years of activity, the partners organized over 15 events in total for user engagement, and for requirements and feedback collection, where over 400 requirements were collected, leading to the creation of the final versions of the SnapEarth services.
The first workshop in the project was Pilot Workshop # 1, which was conducted in September 2020. It was focused mainly on introducing participants to the first assumptions of the services in the project. 18 members of the SnapEarth User Group[1] attended the event. The result of this event was the initial collection of requirements from participants.
The second series of workshops took place from March to October 2021. Each of the consortium partners conducted a workshop separately. In this series of events, over 300 people participated who could see the first versions of all the services implemented within SnapEarth project. The aim of the workshop was to collect the further requirements for services and pilots and also receive feedback about the status of each service.
In January 2022, the “1st International Development Workshop” was conducted, which aimed at the extension of the project's activities to the zones outside the European Union. 17 participants attended the event. More about the event can be found in the last section - Past and upcoming international Events.
During June - July 2022, for each SnapEarth’s service a workshop was conducted aiming to receive feedback from each service’s end users. A total number of 95 participants attended 4 workshops. In each of these workshops, the current version of each service was demonstrated to its end-users, while questionnaires were prepared and provided to the participants in order to collect feedback about the presented services.
After two years of conducting all meetings virtually, the SnapEarth consortium organized a face-to-face plenary meeting on May 3 and 4, 2022. The plenary meeting was held in Nice, France, at QWANT’s headquarters. The first day of the event focused mainly on the presentation of the work status and the work for the integration conducted during this time of the project. In addition, the activities that should be conducted until the end of the project were discussed and an activity plan was created. The second day included Technical Sessions, where discussions about technical details with each pilot leader were conducted in order to properly map the EarthSignature platform with SnapEarth services and pilots. We are convinced that these were two fruitful days, during which the necessary conclusions were drafted and will bring results related to the technical aspects of the project.
Figure 1. SnapEarth’s consortium members during the meeting in Nice
We are currently in the 32nd month of the project, and all services are ready or at the final stage of completion – their evaluation during pilots. During the project, and according to the outcomes and conclusions resulted from all the aforementioned workshops, the SnapEarth services were improved. In addition, in each of the organised workshops a different dissemination strategy was followed, aiming to engage additional end-users in each phase and increase the service’s end-users network.
[1] SnapEarth User Group (SUG) - This group of users that works with leaders responsible for each SnapEarth service. They are active participants in the process of creating user requirements. Service leaders are responsible for collecting and consolidating user needs.