The Earth Observation community will continue to provide freeware tools that can be used to handle freely available in-situ, airborne and space based environmental and Earth Observation data. Further developments will, besides access to more datasets, include coupling and integration of Earth Observation data, e.g. provided by GEONETCast and DDS, into open source assessment models and data assimilation tools. Also (distance education based) training materials and application demo’s are being developed, in direct collaboration with the user community. Access to capacity building materials and training opportunities is provided by the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) of the University of Twente, The Netherlands.