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Disaster resilience is officially a high priority on the portfolio of the e-shape project and BEYOND Center of Excellence is an important player in this initiative.

It is in this context that the BEYOND team is committed to provide innovative and mature services for the protection of citizens, economies and ecosystems against natural and human induced disasters; leveraging on European EO resources, but also in-house systems, algorithms and models.

Active and fully operational, the BEYOND Center has the means to coordinate the e-shape value added community through significant positive, proactive and substantial contribution by:

  • Amplifying active participation and collaboration between research centers and private/public sector (co-designers).
  • Leveraging existing validated methodologies, processes and protocols, and use of platforms.
  • Engaging operational data infrastructures, and advanced modeling approaches for in-situ, space, and crowd data gathering/analysis (e.g. Sentinel Data Hubs, Mirror Sites, GEOSS GCI, RDH GEO-CRADLE, DIAS, ACTRIS, ECMWF models).
  • Supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Our services are not confined solely to the disaster resilience thematic area, since the Center is designed to “equip” the wider community of energy and agriculture by leading the e-shape pilots:

  • “Solar Energy nowcasting and short-term forecasting system (nextSENSE)” building on the service SENSE developed for stakeholders all around the SE Mediterranean area in the GEO-CARDLE EU project, yet a GEO initiative. The pilot will be a holistic solar energy management system in support to the European energy handling entities, the solar energy producers and the transmission and distribution system operators. It will utilize Earth Observation datasets focusing on Copernicus services and satellite-based operational retrievals in conjunction with the SENSE and a novel cloud motion vector forecasting approach. The service is bringing in radiative transfer models, machine learning and ready-to-use products and services for solar energy monitoring and short-term forecasting.
  • “EU-CAP_Support” for the support of the farmers towards the transition from CAP compliance to Farm performance. The pilot will assist farmers in the adoption and implementation of Smart Farming practices, leveraging on Copernicus datasets and in-situ data based on well-established sensor networks and citizen source streams. The BEYOND team will capitalize on the technological legacy of the H2020 project RECAP, bringing in machine learning algorithms and ready-to-use products and services for agriculture monitoring.
  • “ReSAgri – Resilient and Sustainable ecosystems including Agriculture and food”. This pilot would integrate an advanced hazard forecasting system to explore the links between heatwaves, wildfires, and floods for the development of an innovative meteo modelling solution in higher grid resolution and with EO based assimilation processes. The pilot will ultimately deliver index based insurance products for insurance companies using vulnerability study’s information (leveraging on EO data, meteo data, historical extreme events etc.)

The BEYOND Center of Excellence is thriving by expanding its disaster management services and enhancing the opportunity to transfer valuable technological and innovative research know-how to European level, in the framework of EuroGEOSS.