The European Space Agency Glaciers Climate Change Initiative (Glaciers CCI) project has as main objective to contribute to the efforts of creating a globally complete and detailed glacier inventory as requested in action T2.1 by GCOS (2006). This activity has two major parts: One is data creation (glacier outlines) in selected and currently still missing key regions, and the other one is in establishing a more consistent framework for glacier entity identification to enhance the integrity and error characterization of the available data sets. As meltwater from glaciers and ice caps provide a substantial contribution to global sea-level rise, the project will also create two additional products in selected key regions, elevation changes and velocity fields