Bio
Ashok Kumar Singh has a B.Tech. in Mining Engineering (in 1974) from Indian School of Mines (ISM), Dhanbad, India and was awarded Gold Medal of ISM and Pickering Medal of Mining, Geological & Metallurgical Institute of India (MGMI). He represents India in the Technical Sub-Committee on Coal Mine Methane of M2M Partnership of USEPA as member as well as Co-chair and is also a member of Indo-US Working Group; Executive Board & Academic Council of Indian School of Mines (ISM); Governing Council of Indian Institute of Coal Management (IICM); Standing Scientific Research Committee (SSRC); R&D Board of CIL; Mining, Geological & Metallurgical Institute of India (MGMI) and Indian Mine Manager's Association (IMMA).

Abstract
Geospatial in Mining & Exploration
Mining sector has great economic potential and contributing significantly in raising the global GDP. There is an urgent need to ensure that along the mineral sector growth, environment and sustainable mining issues should also be addressed by the stakeholders constructively. Geospatial technology played a very vital role in mineral exploration as well as in mining sector and closely associated with all the three stages of mining i.e, pre-mining, syn-mining and post-mining. Space/airborne remote sensing data are very vital in mineral resources assessment. The remote sensing data has been used in two ways: delineation of features favorable for localization of mineralisation such as folds, faults and fractures and secondly identifying features directly related to mineralisation such as alteration zones, gossans and specific host rock association. High resolution, multispectral satellite data in association with airborne geophysical data are very useful in locating the new mineral deposits. Satellite based GPS technology has completely changed the pattern of ground surveying. Boreholes drilled for exploration can be surveyed very rapidly and accurately using GPS. Further study and research in the field of geospatial technology is required for locating the sub-surface mineral deposits, its accurate lay and disposition for mine planning and rapid and accurate surveying in underground mines where satellite signals are not available due to ground cover.

Bio
He is a Diploma of engineer in Mineral Resources andIndustrial Minerals, University of Orleans, France. Post-graduate certificate in Analysis and Management of Geological Risks, University of Geneva, Switzerland. 28 years of experience in remote sensing applied to Earth Sciences, with particular focus on land use planning and development of applications of remote sensing and geographic information systems to environmental impacts of mining activities, mostly in South Africa and Europe. Co-ordinated the EU FP5 project MINEO (Assessing and Monitoring the Environmental Impact of Mining in Europe using advanced Earth Observation Techniques) and the FP6 Specific Support Action EO-LANDEG (Earth Observation Initiative in former homeland of South Africa in support to EU activities on land degradation and integrated catchment management). Currently coordinates the FP7 project EO-MINERS (Earth Observation for Monitoring and Observing the Environmental and Societal Impacts of Mineral Resources Exploration and Exploitation). Member of the French Society for Hyperspectral Remote Sensing (SFTH) and of the Geological Remote Sensing Group (GRSG).

Abstract
Contribution of Earth Observation in Monitoring the Environmental and Societal Impact of Mining Earth Observation (EO) offers a unique opportunity to collect necessary spatial parameters that play a key role in better assessments of mining-related environmental and societal impacts. Cumulative impacts must be adequately addressed at regional scale (valley, district...), including induced impacts (population migration, agriculture and livestock impacts …) with respect to the concept of heavily exploited area. Mining companies, regulatory bodies and stakeholders need various EO-based tools and methods adequately juxtaposed regarding the local contexts and applications. Objective, reliable and affordable products, tools and methods must be developed to feed a sound "trialogue" between industrialists, regulatory bodies and the civil society. The current developments carried out during the EO-MINERS FP7 to assess the societal and environmental footprint of three mining sites in Czech Republic, South Africa and Kyrgyzstan will be presented and discussed there.

Bio
Sathya Prasad Nanjundaiah, Global Practice Head of Geospatial Technologies manages Geospatial Technology related solutions and services in Tata Consultancy Services. His roles include technology presales, technology management and oversee project implementations related Geospatial Technologies. With an industry experience of 20 years, he has experience in GIS, Utilities, Government and IT companies.

Abstract
Collaborative GIS framework for Global Mining Conglomerates
M&A in Mining industry has lead the global mining conglomerates to address the challenge of disparate GIS tools and applications. The presentation is focused on adopting standard GIS frameworks that can work across different lines of business in multiple countries.

Bio
Patrícia Procópio is currently the general manager of GISMineral, the geographic information system of Vale for Ferrous Department. She has been working in its development since 2000. Patrícia has her degree in Geology since 1988. In 2000, she took a Post-Graduate Course in Geoinformation and began to focus their professional interest for the applications of GIS in the development of mineral exploration activities. During the past six years, Patrícia has continuously invested her time in understood how 3D and 4D environments will change the way people work . Her work with the GISMineral has received many national and international awards.

Abstract
Vale is the second biggest mining company in the world and the largest private company in Latin America. Headquartered in Brazil and operating in 38 countries, is the global leader in iron ore and the second biggest nickel producer. Vale also produce copper, coal, manganese, ferroalloys, fertilizers, cobalt and platinum group metals. In addition, we operate in the logistics, steel and energy sectors. Vale developed and set up this Advanced Decision Making Centre to motivate its teams and prepare them for a change in paradigm that the Virtual Reality environments will bring to the activities of project and plannig. This is because it believes that in the very near future, it will be these analyses and forecasts that will characterize the planning of new undertakings. With this technology, the evaluation of the impacts and consequences of projected interventions will become more realistic, and their results in tune with our motivations to execute increasingly sustainable undertakings. In the Ferrous Planning and Development Department, this technology will be used in the stages of risk evaluation, safety action plans, and geological, geotechnical and environmental studies, in addition to interaction in a dynamic manner for their presentation. It is also hoped that the use of technology as support for decision making at a distance will make it feasible to simulate and visualize environmental impacts and safety in the different phases of the projects. This Advanced Decision Making Centre is equipped to provoke visual, audio dynamic stimuli, which assure a high degree of immersion and interaction in scenario building, which represent the bases for the company’s operations.

Bio
Sajjad Sameer has been working as GIS Coordinator at Qatar Petroleum (QP) for the past 10 years. He played a key role in implementing an enterprise GIS in the corporation. He has managed several GIS implementation projects and has more than 20 years of experience in the field of geospatial technology. Before joining QP he worked in the State of Qatar Planning Department and in the faculty of Civil Engineering at National Institute of Technology, Surathkal, India. He holds masters degrees in Civil Engineering and in Geoinformatics

Abstract
Taking GIS Beyond Its Conventional Limits
Process plants in Oil & Gas Industry are characterized by myriad of pipelines and cables running between process batteries, storage tanks and pumping stations. The plant facilities are subject to continuous change under never seizing revamp and upgrade projects. Lack of up-to-date record of location of buried pipelines / cables can lead to safety related incidents and poor response during emergencies. Qatar Petroleum embarked on a challenging and unique project to map process and utility networks in one of its industrial plants into GIS based spatial networks. The project involved review of thousands of as-built engineering records, user needs study, development of data models, topographic survey, buried services mapping, geodatabase and network design and gathering and populating spatial and descriptive data. The GIS today provides an integrated view of multiple engineering networks and enables faster and more accurate decision making planning and emergency response. Impressed by the value of the system, it is now decided to extend the GIS implementation to cover all the process systems in the same plant and to implement similar systems in other industrial plants. This project extends the domain of GIS to include process plants with only the process batteries as exclusion zones. The system is providing benefits beyond its original objective of viewing the location of buried utilities. GIS is now serving as a versatile alternative to traditional as-built engineering records as “Geo-spatial As-Builts ”. This presentation outlines the process of GIS implementation, challenges faced, lessons learnt and future prospects.

Bio
Dr. Navulur has over 21 years of experience in the geospatial industry. He has doctoral degree from Purdue University. He is currently adjunct professor at Universtiy of Denver and Boulder. he is the Author of the book entitled "Multi-Spectral Image Analysis using Object Oriented Paradigm". He has authored several papers and presented in numerous conferences ober the years.Dr. Navulur currently runs the Next Generation Product Group at DigitalGlobe.

Abstract
Actionable Intelligence - Pixels to Decision Making As we see a deluge of data from variety of sensors, what are the key technoligies and trends DigitalGlobe is working towards, to ensure that we are solving customer needs in the field. The paper will talk about DigitalGlobe satellites and sensors, processing and delivery infra-structure, advanced image analysis and epxloitation methods, to quickly process and deliver actional intelligence to the end user. The paper will discuss various geospatial technologies including elevation models, crowd sourcing, taking advatnage of geocoded information from mobile devices, etc. to gather additional information to cretae a common operating picture on the ground.

Bio
Chris Jenkins has worked with Pitney Bowes Software for the last 6 years. An EMEA role that directly supports Encom products including Internal and Channel Enablement, Pre-sales consulting, Support, Training and Software Licensing. Chris has a strong understanding of the EMEAI geography in relation to Natural Resources solutions and is well acquainted with business cultures across EMEA specifically in Mineral Exploration and Mining. He has a deep level understanding of PBS products directly related to Mineral Exploration along with a high level understanding of complimentary solutions in both Mineral Exploration/Mining and the wider location intelligence industries.

Abstract
Exploration and mining companies frequently handle vast quantities of data - from historical maps to laboratory results. To determine whether or not a property contains an economically viable mineral deposit or not requires an enormous amount of data gathering, geological research, collection of samples and processing of information. Data will usually come in multiple formats and can be pushed through many different applications in the quest to map, analyse, target, model and visualise intuitive and decisive results. As there are multiple data types encountered during the exploration process; there are as many solutions for processing and analysing this data. The challenge can often be finding one single environment that allows the exploration geologist to carry out the necessary compilation, analysis and modelling they require for exploration planning and decision making. Time can be wasted importing and exporting data between applications along with the added complications of multiple license pools and installation rollouts of various different applications. Being able to work efficiently with this bulk of different information in a location intelligent way is critical to accurate scientific conclusions that support business decisions. This session discusses how one such organisation has done so using a leading GIS solution for geoscientists.

Bio
Piyush Kumar Pandey, co-founder and Managing Consultant, of EICE International Inc. is globally recognized in providing the energy industry with innovation and technology leadership in designing, developing and deploying innovative engineering solutions that transform reliable operations data into better and timely field management decisions. Decisions that increase production, lower lifting costs, extend the life of the asset, and eventually leave a smaller environmental footprint. He has over 20 years of energy and utility industry experience where we worked for pioneering companies such as SAIC, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Baker, BP, PDO, Total, Shell, etc. He earned his PhD in computational Fluid dynamics with Master (ME) in Environmental Engineering, Master’s in Business Admiration (MBA) and Graduation (BE) in Civil Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, India.

Abstract
Development of Onshore Integrated Pipelines System The development of the Onshore Integrated Pipeline system is about leveraging spatial engineering technology for improving Oil & Gas engineering business processes in pipeline management. The business drivers include laying the scientific foundation for visualizing the complexities of upstream and midstream Oil & Gas pipeline network, which in turn assist with enhancing the operation of gathering network, optimizing hydrocarbon production, improving operational safety, protecting the environment, maximizing and discovering reserves in addition to maintaining a competitive edge. The project landscape is awash with multidisciplinary geospatial & engineering data sets, legacy systems, proprietary and vendor data, encompassing a storm of engineering and live data streaming in from the field to provide cross-disciplinary data transparency and collaborative working environment across all ADNOC group of companies.

Bio
Played a key role in establishing the Geospatial Technology in coal mining industry. He has a rich experience in the fields of ATIR, LiDAR, GIS, GPS and digital Photogrammetry. Mr. Singh is overseeing the application of geospatial technology in coal mining sector like topographical mapping, mineral exploration, water resource survey, land use and vegetation cover mapping, coal mine fire mapping, excavation measurement, land reclamation monitoring, and utility management. Excavation of overburden (OB) and coal is an integral part of the opencast mining operation. With increase in coal production, requirement of measuring coal and OB volume with fast pace became inevitable for mine management. Rapid and accurate periodic excavation measurement is necessary for effective monitoring and operational planning of the open pit mines. Coal India has excavated about 695 million cubic meter of OB during the year 2010-2011 to win over 431 million tonnes of coal which is expected to substantially increase in near future. Periodic excavation measurement of such high volume by conventional method is time taking and difficult; therefore, it was warranted to evolve some new technique for excavation measurement in time-cost effective manner.

Abstract
Remote Sensing for Excavated Volume Measurement in Open Pit Coal Mines in India
In the present study, Cartosat-I Stereo data, ALTM and TLS were used concurrently to acquire the excavation data from number of coal mines to compute the volume of excavation having different mining conditions. The objective of study was to evaluate the accuracy of excavation measurement and time cost effectiveness against the conventional methods under practiced. Methodology was developed to resolve the low reflectivity problem of coal benches. Digital terrain model (DTM) for two spells of each mines were generated and volume was computed using ‘Difference Modelâ. Study reveals that variance in the excavation volume ranges from 0.80% to 1.3% against the conventional method in case of ALTM whereas it ranges from 1.18% to 1.40% in case of Terrestrial Laser scanner (TLS). In case of satellite data, variance is abnormally high because of poor vertical accuracy of the sensor (4.00m). Further, it was also observed that ALTM operation is cost intensive but much faster than TLS. At present due to poor availability of ALTM facility in India, excavation measurement is not possible on demand. TLS measurement reduces 75% time and 50% manpower with respect to conventional survey.

Bio
He studies BSc (Eng.) 1993 U and MSC (Eng.) 2003. He holds Higher Diploma in management 2006 from The African Internatioanl University. He completed MBA 2010 University of Sudan for Science & Technology

Abstract
SDI & KM in Petroleum Industry
The success of oil and gas exploration as a business venture has always depended on the availability of new ideas and supportive initiatives and technologies. Recently, knowledge management (KM) concepts glare the need and necessity for Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) and lead to efficient business decisions. This paper reflects the concepts and values in petroleum industry activities.

Bio
Matthew completed his Degree in Agricultural Science (Land Resource Management) in 1992 after which he commenced employment as an Environmental Officer in the Australian Coal Industry. Matthew completed further tertiary studies and moved into a Mining Engineers role before gaining his Queensland Mine Managers Certificate in 1999. He continued to work as Mining and Project Manager for various companies in the Coal Industry until 2007 when he started his own business. Atlass was created to supply topographic data to the Coal Industry utilising LiDAR based technology. In 2009 Atlass purchased a second LiDAR sensor and is now one of the largest suppliers of aerial survey data to the Australian Coal Industry.

Abstract
Transforming surveying in the Australian Coal Industry with airborne LiDAR In the 2006/07 just prior to the GFC, the Australian Coal Industry was experiencing the largest boom in its history. However the rush to development in order to take advantage of the unprecedented coal prices was starting to take a toll on Australia’s limited professional resources. A shortage of mining engineers to design the expanding list of projects resulted in the cannibalisation of the professional ranks. Mining surveyors were being targeted for mining engineering roles and qualified engineers were being promoted beyond their experience levels. The internal supply of accurate survey data to mining operations had been compromised by this situation. However, the need for this data was greater than ever. After 5 years of operations, Atlass now conducts regular aerial LiDAR surveys for 30 different mining sites. During this presentation it will take you through: 1) The major factors that led to this success; 2) The lessons learned while starting a new business and introducing a ‘new’ technology to the Australian Coal Industry; 3) How aerial LiDAR is transforming surveying in the Australian Coal Industry.

Bio
Eyal is a full professor at the Tel Aviv University (TAU) and the head of the Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL) within this department. He has more than 20 years experience in remote sensing of the Earth with a special emphasis on the Imaging Spectroscopy technology (IS), soil spectroscopy and environmental issues, and is the author of more than 200 publications. His researches are focusing on monitoring the earth from space and air domains and he has a worldwide reputation the IS technology for many applications and had developed novel approaches to monitor the Earth from afar. He served as the Department of Geography chair from 2005-2009. Currently he is an editor of Spectral Imaging Journal and chair of the ISPRS WG VII/3 Information Extracted from Hyper spectral Data and of EUFAR EWG Soil Spectroscopy. He organized and chaired the 6TH EARSEL SIG IS international conference in Tel Aviv March 2009 and the Quantitative Applications of Soil Spectroscopy in Potsdam Germany March 2010 and a continuation workshop in 2011. He is an owner and founder of Novospec LTD.

Abstract
Hyperspectral Change Detection General Framework for Mining Areas Change detection of hyperspectral remote sensing (HRS) data is an ongoing research branch for environmental monitoring. In past years there has been a lot of research in designing similarity measures, which take as an input two hyper-spectral images, and return a “heat image” where the value of each pixel represents the similarity of the corresponding pixels in the input images. To automate the analysis of such heat images, one needs a way of determining which values represent actual environmental change, and which represent “no change”, resulting from possible “noise” in the data. In this paper we introduce a new automated method, named “Spectral Overlapping Threshold (SOT)”, to derive an objective threshold to distinguish between “change” and “no change” areas. The method exploits the overlapping regions in multi-strip mosaic images, which are regarded as “no change” areas, as they were acquired a few minutes apart. The method consists of two steps. First, similarity measures (SMs) are applied to the overlapping areas. Then, the histogram of the similarity values are computed, from which thresholds for each land use land cover (LULC) category are determined. The method is independent of the underlying similarity measure used to detect changes, and is demonstrated for Spectral Angle Measure (SAM), Spectral Information Divergence (SID), Spectral Correlation Measure (SCM) and Euclidean Distance (ED) similarity measures. This process is demonstrated for a mosaic of 9 overlapping flight lines of HyMAP sensor data acquired in 2009 and 7 flight lines acquired in 2010 over Sokolov mining area, Czech Republic. Our results show that by using the SOT approach, better discrimination results of changes are obtained. The results are projected on Google-Earth interface that for the first time enable end-users and stake holders to use the thematic maps practically and easily.

Abstract
Image-based infoclouds – a tool for mining and exploration?
Leica Geosystems Geospatial Solutions Division is the leader in airborne mapping solutions, combining state-of-the-art imaging and lidar technologies with innovative workflows. Early on, Leica Geosystems’ workflow concept employed distributed processing, on-the-fly rectification and graphical quality control for Aerial Triangulation to speed up and simplify processing. Continuous improvement of the image load chain allows even the largest data sets to be accessed, viewed and processed in the fastest possible time. In 2011, once again Leica Geosystems has led the way and expanded its workflow capabilities by introducing a high performance digital surface module. Based on semi-global matching technology, this new module facilitates the generation of highly accurate and highly dense point clouds from airborne imagery, all inside one workflow. In addition to the location and elevation information, these multidimensional info clouds can be attributed with spectral (RGBN), time and classification information, which is directly derived from the imagery and thus offers a perfect fit. The accuracy and quality of these info-clouds combining elevation with imaging information provides a very reliable data source for mining and exploration applications.

Bio
Prof. Dr. F. (Freek) D. van der Meer (1966) has an MSc in structural geology and tectonics of the Free University of Amsterdam (1989) and a PhD in remote sensing from Wageningen Agricultural University (1995) both in the Netherlands. He started his career at Delft Geotechnics (now Geodelft) working on geophysical processing of ground penetrating radar data. In 1989 he was appointed lecturer in geology at the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC in Enschede, the Netherlands) where he worked to date in various positions. Since January 2010, ITC is the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente.. At present he is the chairman of the Department of Earth System Analysis (http://www.itc.nl/esa/). His research is directed toward the use of hyperspectral remote sensing for geological applications with the specific aim of use geostatistical approaches to integrate airborne and field data into geologic models.

Abstract
Hyperspectral Technology and Mining; Trends and Prospects
Geologists have used remote sensing data for since the advent of the technology for regional mapping, structural interpretation and to aid in prospecting for ores and hydrocarbons. In the the early days of Landsat Thematic Mapper, geologists developed band ratio techniques and selective principle component analysis to produce iron oxide and hydroxyl images that could be related to hydrothermal alteration. With the advent of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflectance Radiometer (ASTER) mission these products could be further detailed into qualitative surface mineral maps of clay minerals, sulfate minerals, carbonate minerals and silica (quartz) which allowed to map alteration facies. (propylitic, argillic etc). The step toward quantitative and validated surface mineralogic mapping was made with the advent of hyperspectral remote sensing. The products derived from hyperspectral sensors have found their way to the mining industry and are to a lesser extent taken up by the oil and gas sector. The main threat for geologic remote sensing lies in the lack of (satellite) data continuity. There is however a unique opportunity to develop standardized protocols leading to validated and reproducible products from satellite remote sensing for the geology community. By focusing on geologic mapping products such as mineral and lithologic maps, geochemistry, P-T paths, fluid pathways etc. the geologic remote sensing community can bridge the gap with the geosciences community. Increasingly workflows should be multidisciplinary and remote sensing data should be integrated with field observations and subsurface geophysical data to monitor and understand geologic processes. However there is also a wealth of new hyperspectral imaging techniques that are coming up in field imaging, core logging with hyperspectral technology and ore sorting. In this presentation some of the trends will be sketched as well as an outlook for the near future for use of optical remote sensing in particular hyperspectral remote sensing in and for the mining industries. Also new and potentially interesting areas of exploration will be discussed.

Bio
Norman is a registered Professional Land Surveyor in South Africa and has been active in the field since 1980. In 1996, he was a member of the team which developed the world’s first integrated airborne Lidar and digital camera. In 2006, he was a founder member of Southern Mapping Company, with the position of New Business Director, and currently holds the position of CEO in the company.

Abstract
Best Practice Examples for Innovative Geospatial Methods inExploration and Monitoring of Mining Areas Any mining activity, from exploration to abandoning as well as underground and open pit mining, has an impact to the environment and the public community. Therefore monitoring of areas affected by mining is mandatory all over the world. However the regulations are depending from country to country. In general for mining activities within member states of the European Union the regulations are very strict. Therefore mining companies are obliged to do high quality monitoring by using technically and economically most effective technologies. Even today, in all mining phases, both ground-based collections of data such as geological mapping and practices of engineering surveying as well as remote sensing data from aircraft and satellites such as airborne laser scanning, digital aerial cameras, multispectral scanners and radar systems are common tools. But they are rarely integrated or even used in form of standardized services. What is missing so far, is an integrated and combined use of these sensor systems e.g. hyperspectral data, multispectral mulitsensoral data or radar data in the context of concrete usage scenarios. Contributing to this approach, the paper will present innovative geospatial methods by best practice examples from real international mining projects. That covers examples from using GIS and remote sensing to support geophysical deposit exploration as well as laser scanning, GPS, radarinterferometry and GIS-based analysis tools for monitoring of deformation and ground movements caused by mining.

Bio
Christoph received a Diploma degree in Geoinformatics from the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of TU Bergakademie Freiberg in 2009. He joined the Sino-German Coal Fire research project at the German Aerospace Center as a research associate working on subsurface coal fire detection and quantification using thermal satellite imagery and energy balance modeling. In 2010 Christoph Ehrler joined the Applied Spectroscopy Team, part of the Land Surface Department at the German Remote Sensing Data Center where he started his PhD studies. He is now focusing on integrating airborne hyperspectral remote sensing data of the reflective and emissive domain to support material detection and distribution mapping in mining environments. His current fields of research are atmospheric preprocessing, hyperspectral airborne data analysis for mineral resources mapping, mineral extractive industry environmental impact analysis and temperature emissivity separation.


Abstract
Supporting Mineral Resources Management - Towards Standards and Protocols for Both Visible and Thermal Hyper-Spectral Data
Since the quick developments of remote sensing techniques involved a huge increase of the available data, it becomes more and more important to establish standards and protocols. From this point of view, within the EO-Miners project, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has been striving towards establishing and implementing a standardized processing and archiving facility (PAF) for airborne hyper-spectral sensors including the newly available thermal ones. Areas of interest have indeed grown from the 'classical' reflective-domain datasets towards including thermal information. However this extension imposes to establish generic protocols adapted to domains dominated by very distinct physical processes. These developments have furthermore been combined with quality assessment techniques in order to comply with national and international guidelines, e.g. under development with EUFAR or based on initiatives like QA4EO. This opens the way to the generation of standardized thematic application products (e.g. soil & mineral maps, environmental monitoring & impact analysis) which are not only of defined accuracy but also reproducible. The presentation will present important steps of these developments and their applications on different mining environments within the EO-Miners project.

The Role of Geological Surveys in Building Geoscientific Spatial Data Infrastructures
In order to create safe, healthy and wealthy places to live in, it is vital that we understand our planet. At national level the collection of information on the state of the solid Earth and its processes is normally mandated to Geological Surveys. In fact, a Geological Survey is the national institution responsible for the geological inventory, monitoring, knowledge and research for the security, health and prosperity of the society. In Europe, EuroGeoSurveys (EGS) is the organisation representing the Geological Surveys from 33 countries around Europe. EGS ’principal purpose is to provide geoscientific knowledge that underpins European policies and regulations for the benefit of society. EGS has been involved in the preparation and development of INSPIRE since its inception, and is contributing to its technical design. At the global scale, two Geological Surveys, BGS (British Geological Survey) and BRGM (French Geological Survey) are coordinating the OneGeology global initiative that promotes access and interoperability of geological information around the world with 116 countries involved. OneGeology has been recognized as a GEO/GEOSS flagship project delivering global coverage consistent with GEO principles. In Europe, the OneGeology project is coordinated by EGS and sets up the foundation of the EGDI (European Geological Data Infrastructure), in line with INSPIRE. The community of geological surveys around the world is also deeply involved in the development of interoperability standards in the field of geosciences through the IUGS/CGI international organisation.