UN-SPIDER organized this Expert Meeting with the support and cooperation of the Government of Austria (through the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology of Austria) and the Secure World Foundation. It brought together 72 experts and practitioners from 21 countries and was organised back-to-back with the International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM 2011) (http://crisismappers.net/page/iccm-geneva-2011). This ensured the participation of the crisis mapping community which converged in Geneva to attend their annual meeting as well as the humanitarian community based in Geneva. The agenda of this second Expert Meeting built upon the recommendations and conclusions of the first Expert Meeting, which took place in Vienna earlier this year. It focused on exploring possible ways of contributing to improve coordination between the crowdsource communities and the space technology community and on overall improvement of its involvement to facilitate the preparation and processing of space-based products to be used by the disaster risk reduction and emergency response community. The discussions targeted opportunities concerning space-based information which is available for disaster risk reduction and emergency response, including their access and use, as well as the further involvement of existing mechanisms to ensure increased coordination and cooperation of all three communities. The Samoa Simulation Exercise, proposed during the first Expert Meeting, was also discussed and fine-tuned during this second Expert Meeting.
