ESA, together with the National Remote Sensing Centre of China (NRSCC), an entity under the Ministry of Science and Technology of the P.R. China, have cooperated in the field of Earth observation application development for the last ten years. The cooperation has now taken on a new momentum with the creation of a dedicated three-year Earth Observation exploitation programme called Dragon (2004 to 2007). The programme formally kicked-off in April 2004 with a three day Symposium that was held in Xiamen city in P.R. China. The Dragon programme focuses on science and applications development in P.R. China using mainly data from the ERS and Envisat missions.

• The 2nd Dragon training course, devoted to Ocean Remote Sensing was held at the State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, Second Institute of Oceanography, State Ocean Administration, Hangzhou, P.R. China from 15 to 20 October 2007. The course was sponsored by NRSCC, SOED SIO and ESA. Read more (in English) (In Chinese 中文)
• Dragon scientists and young scientists presented their latest results at the Envisat Montreux Symposium that took place from 23 to 27 April 2007 in Switzerland. The conference was attended by 900 scientists from 50 countries world wide.

News SYMPOSIUM 2008 The 2008 Dragon final Symposium and Dragon 2 KO Symposium took place from 21 to 25 April 2008 in Beijing, P.R. China. The 2008 Symposium brought together the project teams to report on their final results and kick off the Dragon 2 Programme. Key Events DRAGON2 AO The Dragon 2 Announcement of Opportunity organised by ESA, MOST China and NRSCC is now closed. Project lead investigators have been informed of the outcome and have presented their projects at the 2008 Dragon Symposium from 24 to 25 April 2008. FINAL PROCEEDINGS The final results of the Dragon Programme are available as a joint ESA and NRSCC Special Publication (SP-655). The proceedings are available on DVD and on-line. The papers detail the final results of the projects after 4 years of activity. BROCHURE 2007 The 2007 Dragon Programme brochure presents the activities undertaken since the Lijiang Symposium in July 2006. The latest results in land, ocean and atmospheric applications in P.R. China are presented on a project by project basis. The brochure is available for download.

Objectives The Dragon Programme is targeted towards land, ocean and atmospheric investigations that are outlined by NRSCC in the ESA-MOST Dragon Proposal, available at http://eopi.esa.int/Dragon To promote the use of ESA EO data from the ERS and Envisat satellites To stimulate scientific exchange in EO science and technology by the formation of joint Sino-European teams To publish co-authored results of the research and applications development To provide training in processing, algorithm and product development from ESA EO data in land, ocean and atmospheric applications The benefit and contribution of the expected work is to research application development in 16 thematic application projects related to land, ocean and atmospheric monitoring.