AI-driven solutions for the European Green Deal and data strategy
Climate change and environmental degradation pose an existential threat to Europe and the world. The European Green Deal addresses these challenges, offering a roadmap towards making the EU a climate-neutral continent by 2050. Preparing the transition to a net-zero economy requires collection, processing and analysis of enormous quantities of data, such as environmental observations from satellites, ground-based systems or citizen science campaigns. To harness the value of data, the European strategy for data of February 2020 has set out the path to the creation of Common European Data Spaces in a number of strategic fields. They include health, agriculture, manufacturing, energy, mobility, financial, public administration, skills and the European Open Science Cloud. The green deal data space also stresses meeting the Green Deal’s objectives as a key priority. The challenges facing data sharing and reuse can be addressed by making data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). These four principles promote openness and collaboration, thereby maximising the potential value of the data for use in scientific research and other fields.
A FAIR approach to data
This new CORDIS Results Pack highlights research results funded under the EU Horizon Europe programme that make use of AI, machine learning and high-performance computing to enhance the FAIRness of environmental observation data. It also outlines lessons learnt as well as detailed guiding principles and future visions for implementing FAIRness in environmental observation workflows. Project partners developed tools to convert existing environmental platforms into fully interoperable digital ecosystems for European data access, sharing and interoperability. The objective was to turn these data into open and accessible knowledge at the regional and local level across all European regions and beyond. The pack also illustrates the significance of the project results for the implementation of the European Green Deal and the European strategy for data in general. The six Horizon Europe projects featured in this pack offer significant exploitation potential for developing a highly accurate ‘digital twin’ model of the Earth through the Destination Earth flagship initiative. The progress made by these projects is also essential to feed the public consultation launched by the European Commission to gather stakeholders’ views on the issues identified in the evaluation of the INSPIRE Directive, the challenges of a fast-evolving European data landscape and the possible policy approaches to address these issues.
EU-funded research for better data and improved governance
The EO4EU project employed learning models to extract valuable insights from massive amounts of consolidated environmental observation data, using a comprehensive all-in-one approach to share them with users via enhanced interfaces and extended reality. OEMC is using digitalisation collaboration and open access to incorporate and visualise the highest quality geospatial satellite data via a web-based app. The European Commission envisions a Green Deal Data Space in which all data are FAIR. The AD4GD project address the challenge of co-creating components and methodologies for a FAIR Green Deal Data Space infrastructure. B3 transforms biodiversity monitoring from a disconnected, labour-intensive activity into an agile and responsive process by employing the concept of data cubes to improve access to and coordinate data. The FAIRiCUBE project addresses fragmented data challenges through a cohesive framework centralising data access and processing for improved collaboration and usability. The USAGE project drives better decision-making and governance by supporting sustainability and resilience in areas such as climate change, circular economy, zero pollution and biodiversity, testing solutions to specific challenges in four European cities.