HCP international
Mark Noort is director/owner of HCP international. His passion is to help achieve successful application of geodata-based solutions in the fields of agriculture, water, land use, climate and environment, based on innovative technologies, with emphasis on Earth observation. Apart from implementing projects in Africa, Australia and Latin America, he carries out assignments as a consultant for the European Commission, Dutch ministries and several companies. He has more than 35 years of experience in working for both the public and private sector in an international environment. Since 2008 he has been active in different capacities for the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). He is a graduate of Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
He worked for five years in design and implementation of infrastructure projects with indigenous people in Ecuador, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. This experience, combined with the need for knowledge transfer for the creation of local capacity, shaped his career. To apply his expertise in a broader context, he managed capacity building and research projects in many countries for Delft University of Technology. He added the business aspect as head of marketing and project services at the International Institute of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC).
The establishment of HCP international in 2012 increased the focus on working with geodata, capacity building, innovation and business development in an international environment.
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| Mark Noort |
Other keywords for his work are: open data, data sharing, partnerships, scaling up of operations and local impact.
Current activities focus on food security (improving the lives of small farmers in developing countries) and sustainable use of resources (water, ecosystem accounting), notably through the Horizon 2020 projects AfriCultuReS (Enhancing Food Security in African Agricultural Systems with the Support of Remote Sensing) and TWIGA (Transforming Weather and Water data into value-added Information services for sustainable Growth in Africa) and the Horizon Europe projects TEMBO Africa (Transformative Environmental Monitoring to Boost Observations in Africa) and DINOSAR (Diagnostic tool that integrates optical, infrared and SAR data) for sugar cane in Colombia.
Mark Noort provides support to the Geodata for Agriculture and Water facility of the Dutch Government that benefits smallholder farmers in Africa and Asia and in the Group on Earth Observations he is active in capacity building, user engagement and ecosystem accounting.
