Assessment of European Earth Observation Research Projects for Policy-Relevant Services

This study presents a methodology for the prioritization of use cases to evaluate and demonstrate the potential of an ecosystem that the European Commission (EC) is outlining through the European Regional Group on Earth Observations (EuroGEO). This ecosystem will interconnect European technologies, digital infrastructures and data, enable the implementation of use cases and strengthen Europe's contribution to the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). This methodology can also be used to identify noteworthy research projects in the Earth observation (EO) domain that possess policy relevance and have the potential to be transformed into sustained and operational services beyond the funding period. The methodology has been applied to a Horizon 2020 project named "EuroGEO Showcases: Applications Powered by Europe (e-shape)", composed of 37 pilots. The analysis results reflect the current landscape within the e-shape project and to some extent in the European EO research activities more broadly, with respect to the methodology defined. The most prominent identified weak aspects are the lack of a) continuity potential of input data, (b) geographic scalability and (c) adherence to an open science approach. In addition, the analysis led to the prioritization of several pilots that can be used to develop sustained and operational services for public policy. Each pilot of the e-shape project has a Knowledge Package in the GEO Knowledge Hub. Readers can refer to the "Related links" section on this page to access the complete list of packages, along with a direct link to each one.