Delivering Earth Intelligence to accelerate the green and digital transition

Expected Outcome:

Successful proposals will contribute to the expected impact of this Destination on more accessible and interoperable environmental observations.

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• accelerate the green and digital transition of economic sectors through the development of end-user applications and decision support systems for operationalisation or commercialisation by public or private service providers;
• successful integration and consolidation of European and national GEO^[1] related activities across the EU Member States and Associated countries, that result in effective and operational contributions to the GEO work programme activities, with a clear path towards uptake in Europe and internationally in support of climate or biodiversity related policies and targets;
• contribute to the EuroGEO^[2] initiative and support the EC Knowledge Centre on Earth Observation (KCEO) on uptake of Environmental Observations (EO) for EU policy making.

Scope:

This action is an application-oriented initiative, responding to the new GEO post-2025 strategy and is aimed at combining and advancing existing European Earth observation services and solutions, that were prototyped under relevant Horizon, Copernicus, and other EU and national projects and initiatives, and scaling them up with end-users and customers towards wide adoption. In support of the European Green Deal targets, the project should develop, test, demonstrate and customise 2 to 3 integrated solutions, using advanced digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence, including generative AI, with a clear path towards operationalisation that should correspond to some of the following selected focus areas of the GEO Post-2025 implementation plan:

• Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security;
• Water Resilience;
• Ecosystems and Biodiversity;
• Carbon Management;
• Disaster Resilience.

The solutions should be co-designed with relevant European users, including local, regional and national governments (such as through the Copernicus National User Forums), and mature business plans should be developed in the project to ensure operational uptake after the project, including by public/private procurers or service providers, Copernicus services, or GEO flagships and initiatives.

The activity should leverage European infrastructures and where relevant integrate various remote sensing platforms such as satellites, manned and unmanned aviation (drones). It should further build on and contribute to the existing European digital ecosystem, including different research and service infrastructures, like European data spaces, citizen science initiatives and national, regional, and global databases of in-situ observation, and support their evolution. Clustering and cooperation with other selected projects under this call topic and other relevant projects should be ensured. To this end, proposals should earmark the appropriate resources for coordination activities accordingly in their work plan.

Outreach and training activities are expected to reach the wider European EO community and to support further the upscaling of European/national/sub-national EO services beyond this project and actively promote pan-European synergies. Efforts should be planned for active participation in relevant EuroGEO action groups and workshops as well as for engaging with the Copernicus stakeholder community at European (e.g. Entrusted Entities) and national level (e.g. Copernicus Ambassadors).

[1] Group on Earth Observations (GEO, https://earthobservations.org/) is an intergovernmental partnership working to improve the availability, access, and use of open Earth observations, including satellite remote sensing and in situ data, to impact policy and decision making in a wide range of sectors.

[2] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/knowledge-publications-tools-and-data/knowledge-centres-and-data-portals/eurogeo_en