Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Stimulate the public sector in Europe to use space downstream products, involving SMEs and midcaps.
• Support to public stakeholders through specific funding tools, to develop, via pre-commercial procurement (PCP) innovative EGNSS and/or Copernicus based solutions.
• Encourage the public sector to be the “first customer” for innovative space based applications and contribute to speeding up the modernisation of the public sector.
• Enable public procurers to collectively implement PCPs to close the gap between supply and demand for innovative solutions that require e.g. precise location (from EGNOS/Galileo), spatial data and earth monitoring capabilities (from Copernicus).
• Bring radical improvements to the quality and efficiency of public services by encouraging the development,validation and certification (when applicable) of breakthrough space-based solutions.
• Prepare Galileo and/or Copernicus-based solutions for an integrated approach to support national public authorities to concretely uptake Galileo and/or Copernicus products and use them within their mandate and regulatory tasks and specifically helping them integrating Galileo and/or Copernicus in their regulatory systems, operational procedures and decision-making.
• Decrease of the prices of EGNSS and Copernicus based products/services, a smart use of the procurement budget to remove supplier lock-in and obtain more open, standardized solutions, shorter time-to-market facilitating the access of SMEs and midcaps to the procurement market and increased exploitation of IPRs and R&D results.

This topic is open to proposals for PCP actions in all areas of public sector interest requiring innovative solutions in different market segments that exploit space data. It is open both to proposals requiring improvements mainly based on one specific downstream space technology (e.g Galileo, Copernicus, GovsatCom), as well as to proposals requiring end-to-end solutions that need combinations of different space components.

The topic is dedicated to public administration to procure research and experimental development that exploits space data and services (e.g. Galileo and/or Copernicus) and that meets their needs. In addition, the proposals should build on the procurement needs of the participating organizations, supporting the EGNSS, Galileo and/or Copernicus market take-up across Europe and demonstrating a sustainability of solutions beyond the lifespan of the proposed project. Projects should focus on very specific and more mature applications and market segments, based on clearly identified needs. Promising areas of activities are the following, however, the choice of market segment and application is left to the proposer:

• EGNSS and/or Copernicus for mobility as a service, cooperative ITS, public transport, smart cities and air quality monitoring and forecasting, including support to new green policies.
• Integration of EGNSS into U-Space concept for drones.
• Monitoring of infrastructure with EGNSS and/or Copernicus (rail, road, critical infrastructure).
• Copernicus and/or EGNSS for crisis emergency management, including related to extreme events (i.e. storm surges, coastal floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, space weather).
• Copernicus and/or EGNSS for civil security applications and border management.
• Copernicus and/or EGNSS for sustainable development, climate change adaptation, mitigation and resilience services.
• Copernicus and/or EGNSS for coastal area monitoring and modelling, also related to coastal planning and operations.

Activities covered should reinforce the national policy frameworks and mobilise substantial additional national budgets, as well as awareness raising, technical assistance and/or capacity building to other procurers beyond the project to mainstream PCP implementation and to remove obstacles for introducing the innovative solutions to be procured into the market.

The requested solutions should be validated through field-testing by the participating procurers in at least two different countries across Europe.

Applicants should take particular attention to ensure giving sufficient time for the different PCP phases.

Applicants are recommended to use European data infrastructures such as, for example, the DIAS platforms and the Galileo Service Centre and EGNOS user support facilities.

Proposals addressing PRS (Public Regulated Service) related applications are not in the scope of this action.