A vast amount of Earth Observation data is produced daily and made available through online services and repositories. Contemporary and historical data can be retrieved and used to power existing applications, to foster innovation and finally improve the EU citizens’ lives. However, an undersized audience follows this activity, leaving huge volumes of valuable information unexploited. EO4EU aims to provide innovative tools, methodologies and approaches that would assist a wide spectrum of users, from domain experts and professionals to simple citizens to benefit from EO data. EO4EU strives to deliver dynamic data mapping and labelling based on AI adding FAIRness to the system and data. EO4EU introduces an ecosystem for holistic management of EO data, bridging the gap among domain experts and end users, bringing in the foreground technological advances to address the market straightness towards a wider usage of EO data.
EO4EU envisages to boost the Earth Observation data market, providing a digestible data information modeling for a wide range of EO data, through dynamic data annotation and a state-of-the-art serverless processing by leveraging important European Cloud & HPC infrastructures.
36 months from 01/06/2022 to 30/05/2023
General aims
General objectives
The purpose of the EO4EU project is to provide innovative tools, services, methodologies and approaches utilising modern technologies that will assist a wide spectrum of users, from domain experts to simple citizens unaware of the plethora of data and capabilities offered by EU services, to access and process data and utilise the existing and future offered services. EO4EU will promote pre-operational European services like DestinE and will utilise existing platforms and services in a consolidated manner through the extensive use of disruptive technologies.
EO4EU aims to support the wider exploitation of EO data by delivering: (i) Machine Learning (ML) methodologies for Semantic Annotation of existing and growing data sources, (ii) semantically enhanced knowledge graphs that will enable structuring of content around diverse topic areas and building step by step journeys from different sources into a unified approach, (iii) data fusion techniques to extend the scalability of existing distributed systems, (iv) Augmented and Virtual Reality for interactive user experience, and (v) advanced data analytics visualizations for improved learning and evidence-based interpretations of environmental observations.
CMCC role
In EO4EU, CMCC will lead WP5 on EO Data Uptake Demonstration, which aims to evaluate the proposed system in terms of usability and effectiveness under real conditions. A set of demonstrators will be performed involving real installations and usage of the system. The aim is to reveal the performance of the EO4EU’s tools and validate the behavior certifying that the prototype meets the defined specifications. The result will be a high TRL platform that will be ready to be adopted in real conditions.
WP5 aims to: (i) deploy and configure the system for the planned demonstrators; (ii) execute the demonstrators and receive feedback; (iii) identify and apply slight modifications to the system for optimal performance; (iv) validate the expected behavior of the entire system; (v) produce a complete system evaluation report; (vi) get feedback from users and operators; (vii) reveal the usability in real demonstrators.
Specifically, WP5 consists of the following tasks:
- Task 5.1 Use cases Definition & Technical alignment
- Task 5.2 – Use Cases Lifecycle – Planning – Deploy – Assessment (leader CMCC)
- Task 5.3 User Acceptance & Impact Maximization
and CMCC will lead Task 5.2.
CMCC will also be involved in the following work packages by participating in specific tasks:
- WP1 Project Management & Technical Coordination
Specifically, CMCC will participate in
- Task 1.2 Technical and Scientific coordination
- WP2 Requirements Elicitation and Conceptual Framework Specification
Specifically, CMCC will participate in
- Task 2.1 – Multidisciplinary landscape analysis & Best of Breed Technologies
- Task 2.2 – Multi Stakeholders Requirement Analysis and Business Process Modeling
- Task 2.3 – Technical Specifications, interoperability Requirements and Scalability analysis
- WP3 – Data Orchestration & Machine Learning:
Specifically, CMCC will participate in
- Task 3.2 Systems and Services Orchestration
- WP6 – Communication, Dissemination & Exploitation
Specifically, CMCC will participate in
- Task 6.1 – Stakeholder Engagement and dissemination planning, Implementation and (Monitoring)
- Task 6.2 Onboarding of end-users & uptake monitoring
Moreover, CMCC will also lead the coordination and development of climate impact use cases, i.e., 1) Use case #3: Food Security, 2) Use case #4: Forest ecosystems, 3) Use case #5: Soil erosion, 4) Use case #6: Environmental Pests
Activities
The work plan of the project is arranged in 6 work packages:
- WP1: Project Management & Technical Coordination
- WP2: Requirements Elicitation and Conceptual Framework Specification
- WP3: Data Orchestration & Machine Learning
- WP4: EO4EU Data Marketplace Ecosystem
- WP5: EO Data Uptake Demonstration
- WP6: Communication, Dissemination & Exploitation
Moreover, EO4EU will demonstrate its operational and technical capacity on seven (7) distinct pilots that cover the thematic areas of (i) personalized health care, (ii) sea route planning, (iii) ocean monitoring, (iv) food security, (v) food ecosystems, (vi) soil erosion, (vii) environmental pest, and (viii) crisis (responders) management. These thematic areas will engage a wide spectrum of involved stakeholders, from EO providers, policy makers and actors, researchers and academics to citizen scientists and the general public to join efforts and provide their multidisciplinary expertise to support the Commission’s strategic goals towards the further exploitation of EO data. To further enhance the proposed approach, the project will utilize existing background technologies and will capitalize on available data sources and data exploitation initiatives, including Copernicus, GEOSS, INSPIRE, DestineE, Galileo, EGNOS, ECMWF, ESA/EPA, Datarade, CDP and Trucost Environmental.
Expected results
The project will deliver an EO4EU platform that will allow non-technical users to easily use EO data already available through various data providers through next generation tools.
EO4EU’s expected results have the potential to impact society positively by contributing to the development and further advancement of environmental knowledge, enabling accessibility and portability of an extended suite of services and datasets to businesses as well as citizens. Awareness raising of all stakeholders, including individuals, gradually shapes a sensitized society, offering the opportunity to be engaged in various events and activities and contribute to the climate change phenomenon. The obtained environmental knowledge will be aggregated, transferred, and compared on a local, EU and international level. This will benefit (i) raising awareness of citizens, decision makers, and private sector (ii) academic institutes for further research on social and behavioural aspects of environmental perception (iii) for awareness raising of the public, (iv) for training and awareness raising in public and private organizations. All these outcomes can benefit European policymakers in informed decisions towards realizing the UN’s policy on sustainability.
Partners
- EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR MEDIUM-RANGE WEATHER FORECASTS – UK (ECMWF)
- D.TSAKALIDIS-G.DOMALIS OE (NVCR) – Greece
- CINECA CONSORZIO INTERUNIVERSITARIO (CINECA) – Italy
- VILNIAUS UNIVERSITETAS (VU) – Lithuania
- LATVIJAS UNIVERSITATE (LU) – Latvia
- ILMATIETEEN LAITOS (FMI) – Finland
- FONDAZIONE CENTRO EUROMEDITERRANEO SUI CAMBIAMENTI CLIMATICI (CMCC) – Italy
- SISTEMA GMBH (SIS) – Austria
- DANAOS SHIPPING COMPANY LIMITED (DANAOS) – Cyprus
- KENTRO MELETON ASFALEIAS (KEMEA) – Greece
- EBOS TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED (EBOS) – Cyprus
- TRUST-IT SRL (TRUST-IT) – Italy
- COMMPLA SRL (COMMPLA) – Italy
- ENGINEERING – INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA SPA (ENG) – Italy
- INTELLIGENCE FOR ENVIRONMENT AND SECURITY SRL IES SOLUTIONS SRL (IES) – Italy
- METEOROLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL EARTH OBSERVATION SRL (MEEO) – Italy
- FRAUNHOFER GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG EV (IVI) – Germany
- HAUTE ECOLE SPECIALISEE DE SUISSE OCCIDENTALE (HES-SO) – Switzerland