E2mC aims at demonstrating the technical and operational feasibility of the integration of social media analysis and crowdsourced information within both the Mapping and Early Warning Components of Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS). The Project will develop a prototype of a new EMS Service Component (Copernicus Witness), designed to exploit social media analysis and crowdsourcing capabilities to generate a new Product of the EMS Portfolio. The purpose of the new Copernicus Witness Service Component is to improve the timeliness and accuracy of geo-spatial information provided to Civil Protection authorities, on a 24/7 basis, during the overall crisis management cycle and, particularly, in the first hours immediately after the event. This will result in an early confirmation of alerts from running Early Warning Systems as well as first rapid impact assessment from the field. The technological enabler of the Copernicus Witness is the innovative and scalable Social&Crowd (S&C) Platform, developed by E2mC. Heterogeneous social media data streams (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,… and different data: text, image, video, …) will be analysed and sparse crowdsourcing communities will be federated (crisis specific as Tomnod, HOT, SBTF and generic as Crowdcrafting, EpiCollect,…). Two demonstration loops will validate the usefulness of Copernicus Witness and the S&C Platform suitability to allow EC to evaluate possible Copernicus EMS evolution options. E2mC will perform demonstrations within realistic and operational scenarios designed by the Users involved within the Project (Civil Protection Authorities and Humanitarian Aid operators, including their volunteer teams) and by the current Copernicus EMS Operational Service Providers that are part of the E2mC Consortium. The involvement of social media and crowdsourcing communities will foster the engagement of a large number of people in supporting crisis management; many more citizens will become aware of Copernicus.

Globally, there is increased concern of the potential impacts of extreme climate events and their impact on loss and damage of people, assets and property as a result of these events. Therefore, natural partners in using climate services to assess risk are the Global Insurance Sector, who are key implementers in increasing societies resilience and recovery of extreme events and who are integral, co-design partners in this programme. This project intends to operationalize a system, called the Oasis Loss Modelling Framework, that combines climate services with damage and loss information and provides a standardised risk assessment process that can assess potential losses, areas at most risk and quantify financial losses of modelled scenarios. We intend to prove the Oasis LMF system through undertaking a range of demonstrators linked and co-designed to ‘real’ situations and end-user communities in the insurance, municipalities and business sectors (see list of partners & collaborators). These demonstrators have already been agreed with our end-users and develop work around hydro-climatic risk (in the Danube Region), Typhoon Risk, African Farmer Risk – through using climate information to support the underwriting of micro-insurance, climate v health and climate v forest asset risk assessment. We also intend to further expand access by all sectors to the models, tools and services developed within this programme and the broader climate services sector by operationalizing an open eMarket place and matchmaking facility for catastrophe and climate data and models, tools and services and through broadening awareness in the climate modelling and end-users communities to the Framework, and the transparent and comparable standard it offers to support evidence based risk assessment and adaptation planning.

The Horizon Europe EvoLand (Evolution of the Copernicus Land Service portfolio) proposal aims at developing innovative methods, algorithms and candidate Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) prototypes monitoring the status and changes of land use/land cover and various land surface characteristics at high spatial and temporal resolution. Specifically, EvoLand will address eleven next-generation CLMS product candidates by integrating innovative approaches in data fusion, Machine Learning, continuous monitoring and biomass mapping, as well as through integration of novel EO and in-situ data. EvoLand will analyse policy, data and infrastructure requirements for the prototype services by interacting with the relevant Entrusted Entities as well as the main Copernicus Land stakeholders and users. These requirements will steer all methodological developments. Algorithms will be developed, tested and implemented in an efficient, modular and scalable way on open-source infrastructure on various representative test sites, located both within and outside Europe. In a subsequent demonstration phase, the candidate services will be prototypically implemented over larger regions, focusing on key thematic domains such as agriculture, forest, water, urban and general land cover. Finally, all candidate services will be regularly analysed in view of their innovation and policy support potential, technical excellence, and operational readiness, and a strategy to transferring these services to operations will be proposed. The ambition of EvoLand is thus to support the Entrusted Entities by dedicated research, providing tangible proof of the evolution potential of the CLMS in terms of improved information content, quality and timeliness, and enable well-informed and facts-based decision-making on the future of the CLMS.

Efforts to monitor and map changes of forest areas using Earth Observation (EO) technologies to support decision making in reversing deforestation/degradation has been increasing in the past decade. This has especially gained momentum due to key developments for example in the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) policy process related to countries reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) which requires an assessment of national historical and projected deforestation/degradation rates and statistics. The advent of the European Copernicus Programme’s Sentinel data with their high spatial resolution and revisit time at global, regional and national levels provides an unprecedented volume of data for improved forest monitoring which should be exploited by the European science and EO industry communities. The current Project aims to implement a co-ordination and consolidation of the existing European Capacity for EO based Forest Monitoring with relevant stakeholders, International Agencies, Research Community and Private Sector. A key outcome of the Project would then be a proposed framework for a Copernicus REDD+ Service which can make use of the planned Copernicus Data and Information Access Services (C-DIAS) Platform for improving EO data and product accessibility and functionality to end Users. Furthermore the identification of infrastructural and research gaps for EO Forest Monitoring on different scales (global to local) will result in the definition of future R&D Programmes addressing key gaps and priorities.