As part of the GMES & Africa activities in Algeria, led by the Algerian Space Agency in partnership with the Sahara and Sahel Observatory under the project "Earth Observation for Sustainable Land and Water Management in North Africa", a national restitution workshop of the "Identification of End-User Needs, Diagnosis of the Existing and Definition of Pilot Service Areas" study was held on April 17th and 18th,2019 in Arzew, in the Space Techniques Center from the Algerian Space Agency (STC - ASAL).
The workshop aimed mainly at building on the work done on these topics and defining, with users, the national needs for cartographic products and applications based on the space tool.
The main issues discussed during this workshop are as follows:
• Presentation of the project to the participants, by the representatives of the different technical structures of the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Environment, by introducing them to the project context and its objectives, the expected results as well as the service development approach;
• Presentation and discussion of the services to be developed in the GMES & Africa context, as well as the different implementation approaches;
• Involvement of participants in defining pilot areas and building on the experiments carried out in relation with the three services;
• Exchange with partners to draw up a roadmap describing the different activities to be carried out at the national level.
It is worth reminding that the Algerian Space Agency (ASAL) is in charge of coordinating GMES & Africa project activities in Algeria. Within this framework and in order to develop operational services that best meet the needs of national users, ASAL has initiated a set of thematic meetings with the different technical departments of the three ministries in charge of the following sectors: Water, Environment and Agriculture to exchange with national partners and prepare for the identification of thematic needs, technical descriptions of services and building on the acquired knowledge and feedback of completed/ongoing projects in relation to the three GMES services.
A great deal of entities took part in these preparatory, exchange and brainstorming meetings:
• Representatives of the three ministries : Ministry of Agriculture, Sustainable Development and Fisheries (MASDF), Ministry of Environment and Renewable Energies (MERE), Ministry of Water Resources (MWR)
• The Integrated Water Resources Management Agency (AGIRE)
• The National Office of Irrigation and Drainage (NOID)
• The National Agency for Hydraulic Resources (NAHR)
• The General Directorate of Forests (GDF)
• The National Office of Studies for Sustainable Development (NOSSD).