Develop Innovative Applications to Support the European Green Deal, Building on Meteorological Satellite Data

A successful proposal will be delivering new environmental information through the exploitation of Earth observations and promote application development and pre-operational European services through cloud infrastructures, supporting the GEO engagement priorities and the objectives of the European Green Deal.

They should be in line with the European strategy for data and Europe’s Digital Decade, thus developing new advanced products, adding value to safety and healthy critical applications of environmental observations and contributing to a strengthened Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS)^[1] and complementing or enhancing the Copernicus^[2] services.

Proposals are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:

• Uptake of the newly available environmental information and data at global and regional scale delivered through the Copernicus Sentinels and the EUMETSAT^[3] “Meteosat Third Generation (MTG)” and “EUMETSAT Polar System Second Generation (EPS SG)”;
• Preparation and implementation of high-quality (novel) satellite data products and applications using the next generation EUMETSAT and Copernicus instruments for the exploitation by advanced physical/chemical/biochemical models, and integrating in-situ data, to improve the implementation and operationalisation of new and advanced services and applications;
• Demonstrated use of these applications for Earth Systems predictions, long-term climate monitoring (i.e., re-analysis within the Copernicus climate services context) and disaster risk prediction and reduction (e.g., within the framework of the Copernicus Emergency Management service);
• Exploitation of the European cloud systems (e.g. Copernicus DIAS^[4], European Open Science Cloud^[5], European Weather Cloud) and a contribution to the Destination Earth initiative^[6];
• Demonstrated use of satellite derived environmental information to advance and improve seamless climate-weather and environmental services in Europe, and potentially beyond.

The successful applications should take up and enhance the development of new environmental information based on the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) and EUMETSAT Polar System Second Generation (EPS SG)^[7]. They should explore pre-operational European services through the exploitation of new Earth Observation (EO), digital infrastructures and modelling capabilities.

In the coming years, the MTG and EPS SG satellites will provide an unprecedented view of the Earth System offering opportunities for developing weather, climate, air-quality and marine applications. Copernicus Sentinels 4 and 5 will be collocated within the MTG and EPS-SG payloads, offering an important opportunity to develop synergetic products.

Ongoing Copernicus and EUMETSAT missions will complement this observational framework. EUMETSAT will facilitate the access to these data to the successful applications under this topic.

Proposals should build on these and other missions (e.g., Sentinel), designing new methods and data products to exploit the synergies across instruments and platforms and showcase pilot services for public and private users. They should turn existing and future EO measurements into new environmental information. Co-registration of measurements should allow for optimising the information extraction, as for example the life cycle of extreme weather events through lightning, hyperspectral and other instruments hosted by geostationary payloads.

Synergies should be considered for across-payloads (geostationary and polar orbiting systems) measurements, and through the use of advanced algorithms, machine learning/artificial intelligence, data assimilation techniques and atmospheric models and artificial intelligence/machine learning techniques. This should contribute to the design of new products exploiting the full spectrum of possibilities (as for example integrating chemistry and water cycle observations into new products/ knowledge). The tools and services developed under the successful applications should be made available for future integration in the Copernicus programme and in the common topical European open infrastructure, Destination Earth. Open-source data/information requires open access to data that is associated with important benefits for the society and economy when reused. They should furthermore ensure the collaboration with EuroGEO^[8] and the relevant EuroGEO projects as well as ESA initiatives (such as EO4SD^[9]).

Successful applications should also develop applications using the new environmental data/information within key domains (e.g., urban and coastal management, air quality and health, disaster risk reduction, sustainable blue economy and climate adaptation/mitigation), as enhancements of already available services.

Attention should be given the sustained uptake of data/services or these satellites by the European commercial sector.

[1] https://www.earthobservations.org/geoss.php.

[2] https://www.copernicus.eu/en.

[3] https://www.eumetsat.int/.

[4] https://www.copernicus.eu/en/access-data/dias.

[5] https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/strategy/strategy-2020-2024/our-digital-future/open-science/european-open-science-cloud-eosc_en

[6] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/destination-earth.

[7] These satellites have a specific focus on greenhouse gases, air quality, ocean and land biodiversity, high-impact weather events and climate extremes.

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

[9] https://eo4sd.esa.int/?msclkid=27bf6922c7a311ec9cd2c915ab1af722.