About SAEON

Primary Investor:
The Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), which provides core funding on an annual but long-term basis

Lead organisation:
National Research Foundation (NRF)

Structure:
SAEON National Office

SAEON Advisory Board

SAEON Nodes

Participants:
Affiliated organisations that have signed the Accession Agreement with SAEON, participate in and fund SAEON activities, and subscribe to its objectives and organisational arrangement.

International Roles

SAEON Key Focus Areas

OBSERVATION science

Please click here for SAEON's Core Science Framework:Understanding Environmental Change in Complex Systems.

SAEON seeks to coordinate and support long-term in-situ environmental observation systems through two tiers of stakeholder advisory committees.

SAEON’s scientific design is adaptively refined to be responsive to emerging environmental issues and corresponds largely with the societal benefit areas of the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO).

Seven SAEON nodes have been established, not only at locations selected for geographical spread, but also in different host organisations for organisational spread.

The nodes are field centres coordinating and facilitating observation and information systems for four biome-based terrestrial regions, the coastal zone (divided into three bio-geographic regions) and offshore-marine systems (divided into three Large Marine Ecosystems).

INFORMATION management

SAEON has concluded a comprehensive review of the mandates, impacts and drivers that shape its Information Systems Strategy, and has identified a series of interrelated programs aimed at alignment with its stakeholders, user community, domain(s) of operation, and corporate objectives. Programmes are already underway to create the guideline architecture through extensions to the CoGIS Portal environment and the establishment of a number of supporting systems. One of the primary outcomes of this is the SAEON Data Portal.