Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EIFFEL (REVEALING THE ROLE OF GEOSS AS THE DEFAULT DIGITAL PORTAL FOR BUILDING CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION & MITIGATION APPLICATIONS)
Reporting period: 2021-06-01 to 2022-11-30
The goal of EIFFEL is to offer the EO-based community the ground-breaking capacity of exploiting existing GEOSS and external datasets, with minimal new data collection activities. Added-value services interoperable with GEOSS are designed, using cognitive search and metadata augmentation tools based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), including Natural Language Processing. The tools leverage advanced cognitive features to extract meaningful information from and enrich GEOSS metadata. Moreover, novel methods (super resolution, data fusion) for augmenting the spatiotemporal resolution of explored EO data are developed, to address the needs of the diverse EIFFEL Climate Change adaptation and mitigation applications. The latter covers: (i) a set of five different GEO Societal Benefit Areas (SBAs), namely in Water and Land Use Management, Sustainable Agriculture, Transport Management, Sustainable Urban Development and Disaster Resilience domains; (ii) various EU geographical and climatic regions, at local, regional, national, cross-border and pan-European scales. EIFFEL in line with EuroGEO’s emphasis on early engagement and participation with stakeholders in the application design, ensures their active involvement during the project maximizing solutions adoption. EIFFEL complies with the framework of results-Oriented GEOSS, to improve the delivery of applications tailored to decision making centers and is actively participate in the GEO Work Programme post-2019. Last, it provides tangible proof of the value of GEOSS data for creating CC applications and encourages projects and initiatives to offer their data through the portal.
During the first reporting period EIFFEL has made significant technical progress inline with the technical objectives and the workplan. More specifically, the project has produced 21 deliverables, achieved 10 milestones and successfully completed 1 WP and 6 tasks. The main results are described briefly below:
All WP2 tasks fineshed. The co-design of climate-change related user stories/scenarios and project user requirements was completed, and the relevant deliverable was submitted. The specifications of the EIFFEL tools and Climate change applications and EIFFEL System architecture and integration plan were also successfully completed. The leading parties of the 5 pilot-based working groups have provided their input on cross-WP synergies to coordinate and align the user requirements with the horizontal technical WPs (3, 4) and WP5,7. Furthermore, the initial integrational approach has been designed and delivered as the initiation point.
The horizontal tools of WP3, WP4 have also reached their alpha versions and are producing tangible and useful to the pilots outcomes. WP3 is progressing according to schedule, where all the tools related to the augmentation of the GEOSS data exploration were initialized early and have been running in parallel. Additionally, 2 of the tasks were completed and the corresponding deliverables were submitted. WP4 is also progressing according to schedule, where the tools aiming to improve the temporal, spatial resolution and data quality of CC related datasets are in parallel ongoing. The functionalities of WP3/4 tools have been presented to WP5/7, in order to be aligned with the user requirements, which is strengthened through their early and active involvement. Pilots received access to the working versions of all the tools to test the functionalities, propose new additions and evaluate the usefulness of the results.
As far as the vertical applications-pilots are concerned, WP5 has started officially in month 10, and all applications have progressed towards their alpha versions. As all pilots need data for their model applications in the initial stages, most of the work was devoted to data gathering, followed by setting-up initial versions of the required models. The models have been subsequently tested and calibrated, so that in the alpha versions each pilot application can demonstrate some modelling results or more mature implementation processes.
In M15 WP6 has commenced. The tasks are running concurrently with preparatory actions and bilateral conversations that have already taken place with the pilots. In addition, early implementation cycles have been completed, yielding the initial results for both tasks. Following the integration plan, the first integration cycle started with the planning and specification phase. Bilateral meetings between partners that develop interacting tools have taken place and the tools have met the requirements for the 1st integrated version.
Finally, in the context of impact creation and EIFFEL sustainability (WP8) the consortium has made sure to encompass the items that constitute the concrete and tangible contribution in: dissemination and communication, stakeholder engagement and digital training, EIFFEL transferability potential and inclusion of results and best practices to Climate-ADAPT, contributions to GEO’s strategy and Work Programme and liaison with EuroGEO and Exploitation, business plan and IPR management, during the project’s lifetime. The consortium gave a great focus on establishing and promoting efficient collaboration with the GIDTT and the GEOSS Platform Operation and Evolution team as well as creating linkages with the GEO Work Programme.
All WP2 tasks fineshed. The co-design of climate-change related user stories/scenarios and project user requirements was completed, and the relevant deliverable was submitted. The specifications of the EIFFEL tools and Climate change applications and EIFFEL System architecture and integration plan were also successfully completed. The leading parties of the 5 pilot-based working groups have provided their input on cross-WP synergies to coordinate and align the user requirements with the horizontal technical WPs (3, 4) and WP5,7. Furthermore, the initial integrational approach has been designed and delivered as the initiation point.
The horizontal tools of WP3, WP4 have also reached their alpha versions and are producing tangible and useful to the pilots outcomes. WP3 is progressing according to schedule, where all the tools related to the augmentation of the GEOSS data exploration were initialized early and have been running in parallel. Additionally, 2 of the tasks were completed and the corresponding deliverables were submitted. WP4 is also progressing according to schedule, where the tools aiming to improve the temporal, spatial resolution and data quality of CC related datasets are in parallel ongoing. The functionalities of WP3/4 tools have been presented to WP5/7, in order to be aligned with the user requirements, which is strengthened through their early and active involvement. Pilots received access to the working versions of all the tools to test the functionalities, propose new additions and evaluate the usefulness of the results.
As far as the vertical applications-pilots are concerned, WP5 has started officially in month 10, and all applications have progressed towards their alpha versions. As all pilots need data for their model applications in the initial stages, most of the work was devoted to data gathering, followed by setting-up initial versions of the required models. The models have been subsequently tested and calibrated, so that in the alpha versions each pilot application can demonstrate some modelling results or more mature implementation processes.
In M15 WP6 has commenced. The tasks are running concurrently with preparatory actions and bilateral conversations that have already taken place with the pilots. In addition, early implementation cycles have been completed, yielding the initial results for both tasks. Following the integration plan, the first integration cycle started with the planning and specification phase. Bilateral meetings between partners that develop interacting tools have taken place and the tools have met the requirements for the 1st integrated version.
Finally, in the context of impact creation and EIFFEL sustainability (WP8) the consortium has made sure to encompass the items that constitute the concrete and tangible contribution in: dissemination and communication, stakeholder engagement and digital training, EIFFEL transferability potential and inclusion of results and best practices to Climate-ADAPT, contributions to GEO’s strategy and Work Programme and liaison with EuroGEO and Exploitation, business plan and IPR management, during the project’s lifetime. The consortium gave a great focus on establishing and promoting efficient collaboration with the GIDTT and the GEOSS Platform Operation and Evolution team as well as creating linkages with the GEO Work Programme.
Europe’s efforts towards the implementation of the Paris Agreement (PA) for Climate Change (CC) are substantial. In addition to national, European and global policies that are contributing such as the EU Water Framework Directive, the Flood Directive, the European Green Deal, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), Copernicus programme has launched (2014) the Climate Change Service (C3S) for providing information to increase the knowledge base to support adaptation and mitigation policies. Evem though PA is one of the three GEO’s engagement priorities and a set of projects that monitor CC adaptation or propose mitigation measures for Green House Gas (GHG) emissions across domains are funded by the EC/other sources, the contribution of GEOSS in this process is incremental. Despite the unquestionable presence of relevant big data, the lack of coordination in CC adaptation and mitigation activities and the fragmentation of the temporally and spatially high quality data to monitor and support CC measures continues to be a barrier. This is due to the lack of intuitive, dynamic and context-aware mechanisms that may exploit relevant results and existing datasets of Earth Observation (EO) data, including satellite, in-situ, crowd-sourced, and complementary sources, e.g. socio-economic data.
In order to address these challenges and impacts, EIFFEL offers the EO-based community the ground-breaking capacity of exploiting existing GEOSS and external datasets and build upon prior knowledge, with minimal new data collection activities. Added-value services interoperable with GEOSS are designed, using cognitive search and metadata augmentation tools based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), including Natural Language Processing. Moreover, novel methods (super resolution, data fusion) for augmenting the spatiotemporal resolution of explored EO data and explainable AI techniques to improve the credibility and comprehensiveness of such CC applications are developed. The tools exploit and make use of multi-source data combining satellite, in-situ and crowd-sourced information ensuring GEOSS reusability.
In order to address these challenges and impacts, EIFFEL offers the EO-based community the ground-breaking capacity of exploiting existing GEOSS and external datasets and build upon prior knowledge, with minimal new data collection activities. Added-value services interoperable with GEOSS are designed, using cognitive search and metadata augmentation tools based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), including Natural Language Processing. Moreover, novel methods (super resolution, data fusion) for augmenting the spatiotemporal resolution of explored EO data and explainable AI techniques to improve the credibility and comprehensiveness of such CC applications are developed. The tools exploit and make use of multi-source data combining satellite, in-situ and crowd-sourced information ensuring GEOSS reusability.