The Airbus Foundation, in partnership with the Solar Impulse Foundation and Space4Good, is inviting nonprofit organisations to submit projects that use aerospace technology to enhance nature-based climate resilience.

Scope

Selected projects will contribute to biodiversity protection, ecosystem restoration, and disaster risk reduction through the use of Airbus satellite data and aerospace capabilities, while making results publicly accessible.

Topics:

• Nature-based solutions
• Climate adaptation and resilience
• Disaster risk reduction
• Ecosystem restoration
• Biodiversity protection
• GIS and remote sensing applications

Proposals will contain a set of activities, but are not necessarily limited to, sustainable fishery management and practices, pollution reduction and sustainable shipping,prevention and control of invasive species, marine habitat preservation and protection, establishment of marine reserves impacts of climate change and nursery habitats. To safeguard biodiversity against climate change, adaptive management approaches are also expected to be considered as well as minimisation of cumulative impacts of other stressors.

Scope:

-Quantify the impact of climate change (acidification, sea-level rise, deoxygenation, ocean warmings, primary production, phytoplankton and zooplankton, etc.) on ocean and coastal ecosystems and biodiversity will be important to understand the stressors
-Support evidence-based data and awareness-raising on biodiversity conservation in relation to local/regional development and capacity building and will establish good practices for biodiversity-friendly local/regional initiatives and inspire specific transnational cooperation with EU Macro-regional regions

Topics:

-Enhance the implementation of the Biodiversity Strategy 2030
-Technological, logistical, social and economic innovations to counteract marine biodiversity loss
-Enhance basin-scale cooperation in the Atlantic and Arctic, including through transition arrangements that create socially and economically sustainable propositions for local stakeholders

External land borders of the European Union and of the Schengen area present different border surveillance challenges, ranging from those closer to the Mediterranean, to Nordic Countries’ external land borders, which may lead to difficulties in efficiently monitoring them, deterring illegal activities across the external borders, as well as tracking trafficking of human beings and exploitation of irregular migration that avoid border crossing points. Furthermore, the border surveillance capabilities needs along land borders may change in time, often just within a year or a season, and/or need to respond and adapt with relatively short notice. Solutions must hence allow to re-orient capacity and resources accordingly (through physical portability and/or other approaches).

Scope:

-Improve cooperation for surveillance along land borders through compatibility and interoperability among legacy and planned systems among EU and associated countries
-Exploitation of other information sharing environments, including the Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE) along with integration with the European Border Surveillance System (EUROSUR)
-Development of sustainable, cost and energy efficient equipment and technologies enabling land border surveillance

Topics:

-Increased land border surveillance capabilities, better performing and more cost-efficient, with data and fundamental rights protection by design
-Better surveillance of land border areas, supporting fight against illegal activities across external borders, as well as safety of people and operators in the border areas, including favouring border crossings through border crossing points
-More efficient and more flexible solutions, including relocation, reconfiguration and rapid deployment capabilities, comparable to physical barriers to deter and monitor irregular border crossings outside border crossing points

Proposals are expected to provide tangible results for the Copernicus service. Proposed research and development should be modular and scalable and should support the automation of different processes orchestration.

Scope:

-Development of new and innovative methods to integrate current land products into land surface, land use and cover change, and more sophisticated land planning and allocation models for different environment, including through cross services approaches and using all relevant Copernicus service products
-Development of an integrated, harmonized, and coherent product provision system making use of new and innovative methods and observations for an improved portfolio of the current inland and coastal/shore hydrological satellite observation products

Topics:

-Enhancing quality and efficiency of the Copernicus Land Monitoring service to respond to several Green Deal policy and/or user requirements
-Developing efficient and reliable new product chains, calling for new paradigms in data fusion, data processing and data visualisation essential for the Copernicus Land Service to handle more high-volume satellite data sets and product sets
-Developing a common leading-edge approach across services, and in the area of hydrological modelling services

Copernicus Security Services provide, today, a valuable contribution to civil security, law enforcement operations and crisis management in Europe as well as in support to its external actions. Technology and space capacities have been evolving significantly, creating opportunities for an increased outreach across a broader spectrum of related applications.

Scope:

R&D activities fostering:
-Innovative methods and technologies to explore new and enlarged data sets

-Development of applications addressing requirements not currently tackled by the current services.

-Supporting actions towards the evolution and scope of the security services to increase user reach to respond to specific regional needs and increase service added value in user operational scenarios

Topics:

-Enhanced current service fitness for better response to evolving policy and user requirements
-Enlargement of current service scope
-Enhanced technologies in detection capabilities
-Improved integration of non-space data along end-user intelligence supply chains

The Copernicus Global Land Service will procure a dynamic global land surface characterization, global annual land cover mapping and tropical forest monitoring products at 10m resolution. The procurement will ensure the continuity of the production of the Global Land Cover map collection, the provision of a continuous dynamic generation of land surface and cover characteristics on sub-annual and annual basis and the development and implementation of a tropical forest monitoring component.

The core objectives of this call for services are a continuation and an enhancement of the implementation and operation of the global land cover and land cover change product generation, including the generation of specific forest products.

Topics:

-Continuity of Copernicus Global Land Cover map collection.
-Generation of land surface and cover characteristics on sub-annual and annual basis.
-Development and implementation of tropical forest monitoring component.
-Improvement of land cover products: Finer spatial and temporal resolutions, higher accuracies, and use-oriented results.
-Provision of products at sub-annual time intervals in near real time.
-Frequent updates of land surface and land cover characteristics.

Applications will build on Copernicus data and the latest evolution of the Copernicus services and may combine these with other sources of data or services, in particular, where relevant, other space capacities like data collection, satcom, navigation, in particular the European satellite positioning/navigation/timing services and EGNSS technologies.

Scope:

Development of:
-Copernicus Emergency service downstream applications
-Copernicus Security service downstream applications
-Copernicus Marine service downstream applications
-Copernicus Land service downstream applications
-Copernicus Climate Change service downstream applications
-Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring service downstream applications

Topics:

-Develop a wide range of applications for businesses and policy-making, including ones that are transversal across several or all of the six services
-Enhance existing applications or develop new applications and products relying on Copernicus data and services, making impact on users, business and/or answering needs from public authorities

In the Danube river basin area and the Danube river delta more than 70% of its wetlands, flood plains, coastal wetlands such as salt marshes have been lost and/or disconnected and the remaining wetlands are under pressure from human activities, such as discharges of sewage and waste water, drainage for agricultural use and pollution. Yet, wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems and they are important hotspots of biodiversity. They provide key ecosystem services, such as water retention and purification, serve as a buffer in case of floods and droughts, remove excess nutrients and reduce of eutrophication as well as contribute to the management of riverine sediments. They have also a potential as carbon sinks reducing the input of greenhouse gas emissions in the future

-Demonstration of active and passive restoration of wetlands, flood plains, coastal wetlands such as salt marshes including in the transitional waters of the Danube river delta at a large scale
-Monitoring of carbon sequestration capacity of the wetlands, coastal wetlands such as salt marshes covered by the projects and of the impacts of changes in the climate system on this capacity as well as assessment of the impact of different ecosystem management methods and human activities in these ecosystems on their carbon sequestration capacity

-Contribute to the European Green Deal, the EU Biodiversity Strategy, the EU Zero Pollution Action Plan and the Water Framework Directive as well as other EU instruments and policies that concern freshwater ecosystem protection
-Contribute to the implementation of the protection and restoration of wetlands, flood plains and coastal wetlands and salt marshes under the 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance
-Reverse the deterioration of the wetlands, flood plains, and salt marshes in the Danube river basin
-Improve protection of local communities and ecosystems from extreme events

Cooperation with international partners, either public or private, is key to promoting the uptake of satellite navigation, position and timing, to enable non-EU countries to benefit from the advanced and unique features offered by EGNOS and Galileo, as well as allows promoting the uptake of Copernicus globally and build open data policy

Scope:

– Focus on technical developments of EU-space based applications/solutions, dissemination, awareness-raising, as well as provide opportunities for the creation of business-oriented partnerships of European industry with international partners

Topics:

– The use of EGNSS and sharing of expertise with public and/or private entities to introduce EU-space based applications/solutions leveraging their innovative, unique features, in particular Galileo differentiators and EU know-how
– The use of Copernicus data, to jointly develop algorithms, services and/or products, which serve local user needs and/or enhance the Copernicus global product quality
– The combined use of EGNSS and Copernicus to develop innovative downstream applications combining positing navigation and timing with Earth observation services

Subsoil refers to the horizons immediately below the topsoil. In the past, this layer has often been neglected as most land management practices (e.g. tillage, cover crops) are focused on the topsoil. The same goes for the availability of spatial datasets on soils at both national and EU-scale. However, the subsoil can have a large impact on a soil’s potential productivity and supply of ecosystem services. It is estimated for example that plants extract between 10 and 80% of their nutrient and water requirements from the subsoil. Also, subsoils play a key role in the carbon cycle: globally, subsoils store two times more soil organic carbon than the uppermost 30 cm.

-Identify drivers and pressures on the subsoil that impair a range of soil functions and ecosystem services as well as on subsoil degradation and identify indicators to assess changes in soil ecosystem functioning
-Develop tools and methods for risk assessment as regards subsoil degradation
-Identify existing as well as develop and test sustainable management practices to improve subsoil conditions (e.g. water retention, nutrient provision, habitat for soil biodiversity, carbon storage) and minimise soil disturbances
-Establish robust methods to spatially assess and monitor the state of subsoils and improve data collection. The long-term storage and access to subsoil data should be done in close collaboration with the European Soil Observatory (EUSO)

-Improved access to data and knowledge on the spatial variations in the chemical, physical and biological conditions and dynamics in subsoils for land managers and public authorities to support the development of sustainable management practices and financial and policy incentives
-Enhanced access and deployment of sustainable management practices to improve the protection, sustainable management and restoration of subsoil in agricultural and forest soils and to increase relevant soil-dependent ecosystem services such as the provision of food and fibre or the enhancement of soil biodiversity
-Improved understanding of the role of subsoil in climate change adaptation and mitigation, e.g. regarding carbon and water storage