Students and early career professionals can take advantage of a networking lunch with a host of international academic institutions for a 1-2-1 mentoring session.

With rapid urbanization, cities must integrate Earth Observation (EO) data, AI, and geospatial technologies for smart infrastructure planning, climate resilience, and sustainable land use management. This session will showcase EO’s role in heat island monitoring, air quality assessments, flood risk mapping, and smart mobility solutions.

This panel will explore the cascading risks posed by space weather and debris to our critical infrastructure in the New Space Economy. Using Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) systems as a key example. While PNT vulnerabilities highlight the immediate technical impacts of solar flares, geomagnetic storms, ionospheric disturbances and consequences from space debris, the discussion will broaden to address the systemic issue of coordination failure—risks from fragmented collaboration between space agencies, governments, service providers, infrastructure operators, and private stakeholders across the data to decision-making supply chain. Panellists will examine how fragmented risk assessments, inconsistent monitoring systems, and siloed decision-making can amplify the societal impacts of space weather and space debris events. The session will highlight knowledge and capability gaps as well as best practices for cross-sector coordination, risk mitigation strategies, and policy frameworks needed to safeguard not just space assets, but the terrestrial infrastructure that relies on them. By moving “beyond the signal,” this panel aims to foster a holistic dialogue on building resilience across technological, economic, and governance ecosystems.