From EO to farm decisions: Designing platforms for decision making (Sergio Estella)

“From earth observation to farm decisions: Designing platforms for decision making” by Sergio Estella The Open-Earth Monitor Global Workshop 2026 "Next-Generation EO & GeoAI Built on Openness and Distributed Data" 7-9 October 2026, Barcelona, Spain https://earthmonitor.org/global-workshop-2026/ The way we monitor soils, water resources, and agricultural landscapes has been transformed by Earth Observation and environmental modelling over the last few years. Nevertheless, real decision-making remains a major challenge, as turning complex datasets into tools is not yet trivial for human purposes. In this talk, the audience will learn about lessons learned from designing platforms such as Soils Revealed, Aqueduct, Foodscapes, and Landgriffon. These tools combine satellite indicators, global environmental datasets, and workflows to help users better understand soil degradation, water risks, and food system dynamics, and to translate environmental data into platforms that support decision-making across scales, from regional planning to global analysis. We will also reflect on the challenges of moving from data to decision tools, combining scientific outputs with user needs, based on human-centered design to support exploration and comparison, and ensuring that complex environmental information is both scientifically rigorous and accessible. By combining Earth observation, modelling and interface design, these platforms demonstrate that environmental data is trustful acctionable knowledge to help inform land and water management.