1. EU H2020 ERA-Planet/GEOEssential
Essential Variables for resources efficency and environmental management
Gregory Giuliani /

2. Some facts… 14 partners from 7 countries Total budget: €10,4mio
ABSTRACT:
GEOEssential is addressing the need for trusted sources of data and information to monitor the progresses made on environmental conditions towards policy targets. The project will demonstrate the feasibility of Essential Variables across GEO Societal Benefit Areas. It will create cross-thematic workflows to evaluate, predict and monitor natural resources to inform via Earth Observations the Sustainable Development Goals. Existing structures and platforms will be analysed in order to identify substantial gaps and synergies for addressing the needs of environmental policy in agriculture, soil, water, biodiversity, energy, light and raw materials. Solutions for improvements will be provided in cooperation with GEO and Copernicus programmes. GEOEssential will:
Enhance the existing Knowledge Base infrastructure on EVs;
Address identified gaps in the definition and selection of EVs;
Contribute to the in-situ data and infrastructure coordination in Europe;
Improve the availability of EVs services from GEOSS and Copernicus platforms;
Assess the potential of synergies between ground and satellite observations;
Develop specific data workflows and best practices to improve the interoperability;
Build the GEOEssential Hub with a dashboard from EVs to SDGs; and
Simplify and promote the use of EVs across the EO Communities of Practice.
The methodology proposed in GEOEssential is going beyond the outputs of the ConnectinGEO project that identified key gaps in the definition of GEO EVs. The main idea is to build demonstration workflows that will be using EVs served by the GEO infrastructure to derive policy relevant indicators. The GEOEssential project is addressing Strand 2 of the ERA-Planet project (Resource efficiency and environmental management) but it is also connected to the three other Strands through a common data infrastructure.
14 partners from 7 countries
Total budget: €10,4mio
Requested budget: €2.71mio September – August

3. The project aims at demonstrating the feasibility and generality of the concept of Essential Variables (EVs) across the Nexus of GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas (SBAs).
Sustainable and trustable sources of data and information to monitor the progresses made on environmental conditions
Cross-thematic workflows and knowledge base to evaluate, predict and monitor Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Gaps and synergies for addressing the needs of environmental policy in agriculture, soil, water, biodiversity, energy, light, and raw materials
GEO-ESSENTIAL is addressing the need for sustainable and trustable sources of data and information to monitor the progresses made on environmental conditions.
The project will demonstrate the feasibility and generality of the concept of Essential Variables (EVs) across the Nexus of GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas (SBAs).
It will create cross-thematic workflows to evaluate, predict and monitor natural resources to inform via Earth Observations a selection of targets from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Existing structures and platforms will be analysed in order to identify substantial gaps and synergies for addressing the needs of environmental policy in agriculture, soil, water, biodiversity, energy, light, and raw materials and to develop the GEO-ESSENTIAL HUB.

4. High-level Indicators
Generalisation of the EV concept across SBAs and connection with SDGs through a knowledge base
Sustainable development goals and targets
Knowledge base
SDGs indicators
<
Earth Observation
Essential Variables
Scenarios
High-level Indicators
Global policy WB
FAO
IAE
UNWATER
IPCC
IPBES
Figure 1. Proposed integration of EVs to create Essential Sustainability Variables feeding into a knowledge base linked to SDGs’ targets and goals.
The temptation is great, when defining SDGs or other integrated environmental indicators, to reinvent the wheel instead of using existing initiatives and data available for instance through GEOSS (e.g. (Giuliani et al. 2011)). From an Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) perspective, data interoperability and standardization is critical to improve data access and exchange. Efforts are being made to monitor the SBAs with EVs, for instance in the area of biodiversity(Scholes et al. 2012, Pereira et al. 2013), water (Lawford 2014), and climate (Bojinski et al. 2014). EVs are defined by ConnectinGEO (2016a) as “a minimal set of variables that determine the system’s state and developments, are crucial for predicting system evolution, and allow to define metrics that measure the trajectory of the system”. Other sources of information than remote sensing are based on the aggregation of national statistics, including the EU statistical agencies (Eurostat) or on efforts from other scientific communities and data mediators, for example in the biological domain the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Catalogue of Life (CoL), the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) and others. All these examples demonstrate the importance of ICT solutions and requisite data interoperability, but above the critical importance for any approach to creating and monitoring integrated environmental policies (e.g. SDGs, Nexus, IPBES) to be linked conceptually, operationally and institutionally to already ongoing efforts.
European policy
Raw materials
Agriculture policy
Energy strategy
WFD
Climate strategy
Biodiversity strategy
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Extractives
Soils
Energy
Water
Climate
Biodiversity
Data sharing (e.g. GEOSS, Copernicus)
National statistics (e.g. EDE)
Other data sources ...
Scientific evidences

5. WP9 Coordination and management Other strands
WP8 Impacts and dissemination
WP2 Stakeholder Engagement and Evs Gaps
WP3 EVs services
EVs workflows
WP9 Coordination and management
WP1 From data to knowledge
WP0 Interoperability development
Other strands
WP7 EU-SDGs dashboard
WP4 Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
WP5 Extractives and Artificial Light
WP6 Nexus Food-Water-Energy
The project is structured in 10 work packages (Figure 7 and Table 5). Based on the Nexus approach, essential and cross-thematic variables will be evaluated and identified for EO data usability for corresponding services. GEOEssential will define concepts and build workflows going beyond sectoral analysis to understand processes and interactions between different topics to increase efficiency on data use and information generation for resource efficient acting.
WP0 on Interoperability development will build the foundation of the project interoperability framework with its Key Enabling Technologies (KET) and the Knowledge base infrastructure for Essential Variables (Figure 5). WP1 on Data sharing, Management and Knowledge will essentially build the data management strategy. Both WP0 and WP1 will be partially shared with the three other Strands of ERA-PLANET. WP2 will continue the work of ConnectinGEO to engage with various stakeholders and update the list of EVs. WP3 will make available a maximum of GEOSS and Copernicus EV services. WP4, 5 and 6 will build different workflows from EVs to indicators in different domains. WP7 will bring together the outputs of the previous WPs to create a dashboard to of maps and indicators derived from EVs. WP8 will disseminate the outputs of the project while WP9 will deal with its management.

6. How can I use EO to help building Green Infrastructures across Europe ?

7. WP4 - Biodiversity and Ecosystem Workflows (SGN) - Aidin Niamir, Thomas Hickler
How can I use EO to help building Green Infrastructures across Europe ?
EEA, 2014d, ‘Spatial analysis of green infrastructure in Europe’. EEA Technical Report No 2/2014

8. What are the impacts of the extractive sector on natural resources?

9. What are the impacts of the extractive sector on natural resources?
WP5 - Extractive industry & light monitoring Workflows (UNIGE) - Pierre Lacroix
What are the impacts of the extractive sector on natural resources?

10. Do we have the necessary data to model the hydrology for assessing the Food-Water-Energy nexus ?

11. WP6 - The Food-Energy-Water Nexus (IIASA) - Ian McCallum, Steffen Fritz
Do we have the necessary data to model the hydrology for assessing the Food-Water-Energy nexus ?

12. WP7 - GEOEssential Dashboard: From EVs to Policy Goals (SDG) (UNIGE) - Grégory Giuliani
Figure 14: Overall workflow and work package 7 structure
The aim of this WP is to develop a generic (i.e., applicable to other indicators), replicable (i.e., expandable to other contexts), and scalable (i.e., national to regional to global) open web-based platform automating the transformation of Earth observation data into indicators (as graphs or/and maps) through EVs. This will demonstrate that EO, when matched with appropriate tools and services, can contribute filling the gap between science and policy for decisions, management and reporting.
This WP will develop an infrastructure to compute selected indicators (mostly SDGs) from available EO and statistical data repositories such as GEOSS, Copernicus, GBIF and others Global, European, National databases. The user interface (i.e. the GEOEssential Dashboard) developed in this WP will rely on services provided by the Knowledge base infrastructure (WP1). This WP will also make use of the workflows developed in the other WPs (4,5,6) and is aiming to demonstrate the data value chain from EVs to indicators (e.g. SDGs) (Figure 14).

13. GEOEssential Dashboard

16. SDG15: Life on land
Short introductory text

18. WP5 example: Tracking the impact of mining activities – a datacube approach
Some explanations here
blabla

21. WP8 - Dissemination, exploitation and Impacts (AUTH) - Petros Patias
T8.9 Communication activities (Website, leaflet, press releases, social media)
T8.1 Best practice Project portfolio and white paper on use of EVs for UN programs
T8.3 Dissemination toolkit for EV services and GEOEssential dashboard
T.8.6 Contribution to EV definition process
T8.5 Contribution to standard definition process
Figure 15: Overall workflow and work package 8 structure
This WP will develop specific actions to capitalize on the project results for societal impacts, to ease the transferability to user communities, to establish feedback loops, to foster the use of open access portals and platforms for dissemination of data and knowledge, and to ensure linkage to the GEO Work Plan and the ERA-PLANET Dissemination work package (Figure 15). An important aim will be to support policy and relevant stakeholder groups for decision making with close links to relevant GEO tools, services and platforms.
Earth observations and geospatial information contribute in novel and practical ways to support achievement of the SDGs.
Increase skills and capabilities in uses of Earth observations for SDG activities and their broader benefits.
Broaden interest and awareness of Earth observations support to the SDGs and social, environmental, and economic benefits.
T8.8 Represent a European contribution to GEO
T8.7 Scientific dissemination
T8.2 Massive Online Open Courses on the use of EV to assess progress towards policy goals
T8.4 Promotion of the GEOEssential Dashboard

22. WP8 - Dissemination, exploitation and Impacts (AUTH) - Petros Patias
PROPOSED NEW MOOC ON EARTH OBERVATION, GEO AND COPERNICUS
WHAT ARE THE POLICY NEEDS?
WHAT IS EARTH OBSERVATION ?
WHAT IS REMOTE SENSING?
WHAT ARE IN-SITU MEASUREMENTS?
WHAT ARE GEO AND COPERNICUS?
WHAT ARE ESSENTIAL VARIABLES?
WHAT IS INTEROPERABILITY?
WHAT IS GEOPROCESSING?
HOW CAN WE BRING IT INTO PRACTICE?

23. WP0 - Interoperability, Data Sharing and Management development (CNR) - Stefano Nativi
Figure 5. GEOEssential reference framework for interoperability
This WP contains a set of tasks aiming at adopting the key-enabling technologies (KET) and implementing the horizontal principles, guidelines and recommendations recognized by ERA-Planet (see Figure 4). ERA-Planet KET deals with interoperability, standardization, resources quality management, contributions to GEOSS, Copernicus, and collaboration with ESA TEPs. An additional objective is to coordinate the collected data with other in-situ observations in a cross thematic approach that can contribute later to the in-situ coordination efforts done in GEOSS

24. WP1 - Knowledge Management Services (CNR) - Stefano Nativi
Figure 7: Towards a GEOSS KB Management service (credit: S. Nativi, GEO Plenary 2016)
This WP contains a set of tasks aiming at facilitating information and knowledge generation from Earth observation data (Figure 8). These tasks contribute to the development of a Knowledge Management Platform, which provides the discovery, access and use of relevant knowledge bodies (e.g. business processes, workflows, semantic engines, best practices, etc.) for generating Essential Variables from Earth Observation data. The services provided in this WP are fundamental pieces where the dashboard elaborated in WP7 will stand.

25. WP2 - Stakeholder engagement and gaps in Essential Variables (CREAF) - Joan Maso
Figure 9: Overall workflow and work package 2 structure
This WP analyses the current structure of GEOSS and Copernicus services and associated data platforms to define gaps in terms of products, standards and data access. These gaps will be defined against existing targets and EVs for each single GEOEssential workflow (WP4,5,6) on the framework proposed by WP0 and WP1.
Activities in the WP will use instruments elaborated in WP8 to better connect with the stakeholders. Three levels of stakeholder engagement will be developed (Figure 16):
European Network of Earth observation Networks (ENEON)
ERA-PLANET stakeholders
GEO activities
This task will also provide a methodology to analyse the level of maturity of the concept of EV in all GEO SBAs and develop new EVs as well as a methodology to detect gaps in EO, both coming from ConnectinGEO H2020 project (ConnectingGEO 2016a, b, c) (Figure 9).

26. WP3 - GEOSS and Copernicus EVs services (GFZ) - Daniel Spengler
Figure 10: Overall workflow and work package 3 structure
The work package builds on the results of the gap analysis done by task 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4 (Figure 10). The analysis of existing services will be done against defined targets and needs with specific focus on cross-domain functionalities of EVs. Currently defined topic specific EVs will be analysed in terms of cross-domain operationality for future services and modelling purpose. Data (satellite+in-situ) will be evaluated in terms of availability, processing and quality standards regarding needs for EV estimation and usability. Thereby the WP analysis the potential of current and future sensor and data sources.

27. Main expected impacts/results:
Expected contributions to GEOSS and Copernicus programmes:
To build the EO Knowledge Base to match User needs with products and services;
To build on the ENEON commons for a better access to in-situ data;
To advance the definition and implementation of EVs across GEOSS and Copernicus;
To identify the existing gaps for implementing EV and monitoring SDGs;
For the Nexus, to demonstrate the feasibility of goal-driven workflows ingesting that to the GEOSS and Copernicus process;
To advance the present GEOSS Common Infrastructure by adding important capabilities; and
To increase public awareness towards the EU-SDGs targets and progresses.
The GEOSS Strategic Plan is based on three objectives: (a) advocacy of EO as the foundation of environmental information; (b) engagement with stakeholders to address everyday societal challenges, and (c) delivery of critical data, information and knowledge to inform decision-makers.