At the inaugural GEO Global Forum 2025 in Rome, the Mountain Research Initiative and GEO Mountains participated in key discussions on advancing Earth Observations (EO) for sustainable mountain development. Highlights included the dynamic Youth Ideathon, where early-career professionals, including the MRI’s Alex Massot, tackled real-world challenges through data-driven innovation. The Forum also marked the adoption of the GEO Post-2025 Work Programme, of which GEO Mountains was once again confirmed as a GEO Initiative.
From 5 to 9 May 2025, Rome hosted the first GEO Global Forum, drawing practitioners, researchers, and policymakers together for five days of plenaries, technical sessions, and side-events – thereby promoting a new path to empower informed and ambitious actions to ensure food security, restore ecosystems, prevent disasters, and confront the triple planetary crisis, transforming the Sustainable Development Goals into an achievable reality.
Among the Forum’s core themes were the transformation of complex datasets into decision-ready metrics, the reinforcement of open-data infrastructures, and the promotion of seamless interoperability. The GEO Global Forum also marked several milestones, including the launch of a dynamic platform for advancing Earth Intelligence for all, the celebration of GEO’s 20th anniversary, and the adoption of the Post-2025 GEO Work Programme to deliver on GEO’s ambitious new strategy.
The GEO Global Forum 2025 also placed a strong emphasis on youth engagement within the Earth Observations community. The Forum showcased the pivotal role of young professionals through initiatives like the Youth Ideathon, highlighting how new generations are driving innovation and shaping the future of Earth Intelligence for all. Additionally, the 2025 GEO Awards ceremony recognized outstanding individuals and organizations whose work has significantly advanced the use of Earth Observations for sustainable development, disaster resilience, and environmental stewardship, further demonstrating the GEO community’s dedication to fostering both innovation and impact.
In the lead up to the Global Forum, the GEO Youth Ideathon brought early career professionals together in Rome for an intensive, hands-on opportunity to discover and enhance skills in the application of Earth Observations to address a wide range of societal and environmental challenges. The event was also a great opportunity to receive inputs and coaching from experts and industry leaders, as well as network and expand professional links across the GEO community. Among the participants at this event was Alex Massot, Scientific Project Officer at the Mountain Research Initiative Coordination Office, who was one of the 11 selected participants from 230 applications. Over the course of the Ideathon, participants were grouped in teams and visited four field sites before embarking on rapid-prototype sprints. Every team applied a “problem-first” methodology, conducting structured interviews with local stakeholders—vineyard managers, aquaculturists, campsite operators and a regional GIS firm—so that each prototype directly addressed an operational need.
Together, the GEO Global Forum and Youth Ideathon delivered a powerful combination of strategic vision and grassroots innovation. For Massot, who is also part of the GEO Mountains Secretariat team:
“These events underscored the need for rigorous data standards, stakeholder and user-centred design, contributions towards shared community data and information repositories, and active collaboration with end users—cornerstones for unlocking EO’s full potential in fragile mountain environments.”
During the Forum’s Community Events segments, MRI Executive Director Dr. Carolina Adler and Prof. Antonello Provenzale from CNR Italy presented GEO Mountains in their role as its Co-Leads during a joint session with colleagues from ArcticGEOSS. This session gave an overview of current and future activities as part of the GEO Work Programme, including prospects for closer ‘cool collaborations’ on issues pertaining to cold-regions, worldwide. This impetus was also inspired by stated goals to close observation gaps as part of the observance of the UN-declared International Year for Glacier’s Presentation 2025, the 5-Years of Action for the Development of Mountain Regions 2023-2025, the UN-declared Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences 2025-2034, and the ramp up period towards the 5th International Polar Year 2032-33.
In parallel, GEO Mountains also featured an e-poster as part of an exhibition hosted by EuroGEO at the European Commission exhibition booth. In addition, the ODOK workshop showcased national GEO initiatives and their integration within national GEO Knowledge Hubs, while the GEO Knowledge Hub was presented as one of the GEO community’s key resources for discovering and sharing data and information. Contributors to the in situ data community shared ongoing efforts to enhance monitoring networks, close critical data gaps, and improve coordination among providers. The workshop concluded with a strong emphasis on the TRUST, FAIR, and CARE principles, and introduced DMP OPIDoR—a practical tool for defining data-management and sharing workflows across projects.
As part of the formal segments for the Forum, notably during the GEO-20 Plenary, a key outcome was the presentation and adoption by the Plenary of the GEO Post-2025 Work Programme, in which GEO Mountains is once again confirmed as a GEO Initiative. We take this opportunity to thank all involved in this great outcome for GEO and for mountains, including GEO Mountains and MRI members, the MRI Coordination Office, and GEO Mountains Secretariat, plus the grateful support and leadership from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment as Swiss GEO Principal and the Swiss Agency for Develpment and Cooperation for their financial contribution to GEO Mountains as part of the Adaptation at Altitude programme.