e-shape EO Applications Powered by Europe

EuroGEO Showcases: Applications Powered by Europe

Planetek Italia is a member of the e-shape team.

e-shape is a unique initiative that brings together decades of public investment in Earth Observation and in cloud capabilities into services for the decision-makers, the citizens, the industry and the researchers.

It allows Europe to position itself as global force in Earth observation through leveraging Copernicus, making use of existing European capacities and improving user uptake of the data from GEO assets.

EuroGEO, as Europe's contribution to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), aims at bringing together Earth Observation resources in Europe.

Objectives

37 pilot applications under 7 thematic areas address societal challenges, foster entrepreneurship and support sustainable development, in alignment to the three main priorities of GEO (SDGs, Paris Agreement and Sendaï Framework).

e-shape aspires to:

  • Provide significant impetus to activities that will enable and accelerate a breakthrough in the European EO sector and the downstream markets that benefit from EO services.
  • Coordinate EO actions, leverage on existing European heritage benefiting from open science and link to GEO flagships and initiatives;
  • Deliver concrete EO-derived benefits with and for users through a rigorous co-design;
  • Implement a coordinated and comprehensive portfolio of activities with emphases on user uptake, operational services, business support and aggressive outreach strategy;
  • Onboard new pilots currently being developed outside the project, providing them access to the strategic knowledge and communication channels of e-shape.

e-shape will:

  • Support the coordinated exploitation of Earth Observation data and services across the whole ecosystem of actors in Europe and beyond;
  • Coordinate the European contribution to GEOSS, making the most of European investments in Copernicus and multiple major R&D projects;
  • Generate key tools that will help the sustainability of Earth Observation activities now and in the future, through open and inclusive processes;
  • Streamline the access to key resources (knowledge, technology, markets and capital) allowing researchers, developers and industrial actors to deliver services that bring concrete benefits to a number of key societal sectors;
  • Break through barriers, helping to scale up services to reach a critical mass of users across borders and sectors.

The e-shape project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 820852.

Started in May 2019 the project will last for 48 months and includes 54 partners from 17 countries.

Planetek is involved in two pilots:

  • Pilot 6.3 “Assessing Geo-hazard vulnerability of Cities & Critical Infrastructures”, having the multi-utility HERA SpA as final user.
    The ambition is to contribute to the UN SDG Goal 11 “make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” reducing the economic losses caused by disasters, developing and maintaining safer and more secure cities and infrastructures, by developing products and services exploiting Earth Observation technologies.
  • Pilot 5 Water awarded in October 2020 by the e-Shape consortium, which will develop the Rheticus® Aquaculture-Plus service designed to provide geospatial information and geo-analytics for aquaculture management and production.

Learn more: https://e-shape.eu