On 26 January 2018, state secretary Rebekka Borsch from the Norwegian Ministry of Education opened the General Assembly during which the consortium for the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) was consolidated through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding.

On 26 January 2018, the first General Assembly of the SIOS consortium will mark the transition from the interim to the operational phase of SIOS. A representative from leadership of the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research will attend the meeting, sending out a clear message regarding SIOS’s high importance in Norway.

This summer, UNIS will be hosting ESA’s biennial remote sensing training course on the cryosphere from 11 – 16 June 2018. Bringing together some of the top experts in the field, this one-week course will create a unique learning experience for graduates, post-graduates, and young professionals working in Earth Observation (EO) with a focus on cryospheric sciences.

Three members of SIOS-KC, and our chairman Kim Holmén, attended the Svalbard Science Conference at Fornebu near Oslo from 6 - 8 November 2017. It was a great opportunity to meet and talk to many people in the Svalbard science community, make new contacts, and inform others about the newest developments within SIOS.

In September and October, SIOS provided training sessions on data management for three research groups that had gathered for workshops, funded through the Strategic Grant Call by Svalbard Science Forum. The workshops were held in Longyearbyen and Sicily by Øystein Godøy and Lara Ferrighi, respectively. Both are employed at Met.no and heavily involved in SIOS Data Management.