Participants of the Water-ForCE Kick-off Virtual Meeting. | Photo: IGB
Unprecedented availability of free-to-access satellite data from the Copernicus programme has started to transform approaches to the assessment, monitoring and sustainable management of our aquatic environments. However, whilst the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service delivers the first generation of inland water quantity and quality products, other directly related products are fragmented across other services (e.g. EMS, C3S, CMEMS, CAMS, CIS).
R&D capabilities have rapidly expanded through H2020 and ESA projects working on inland water challenges, but lack of coordination has led to a fragmented approach to evolving the service components and some confusion in a potentially broad user community. Thus, this expansion has not been matched by uptake of these products by decision makers, monitoring agencies, industry or the wider public. Water-ForCE will co-create a Roadmap for the development of the next phase of Copernicus Inland Water Services with the space sector, research community, policy, industry and third sector.
The Roadmap will be benchmarked against community requirements, recommending services that should be delivered centrally by Copernicus and innovation opportunities that are better suited for business and research development. The Roadmap will also provide the strategy to ensure effective uptake of water-related services by end users, further support the implementation of relevant directives and policies and evidence policy development.
This cross-disciplinary approach will align in situ and remote observation as this is essential to furthering the exploitation of operational observation platforms. A strategy to integrate in situ networks will be defined, integrating approaches to product validation and filling observation gaps and thus strengthen user confidence. Technical requirements for the future Copernicus sensors will also be specified for optimal inland water monitoring needs and future service development.
Official Water-ForCE project fact sheet
Water-ForCE twitter: @H2020WaterForCE
Schematic work plan of the Water-ForCE project.
Chlorophyll-a concentrations estimated from satellite imagery.
Participants of the Water-ForCE Kick-off Virtual Meeting. | Photo: IGB
Short Profile
Duration
Water-ForCE is a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) from H2020-SPACE-2020 Call (grant agreement number: 101004186)
Water-ForCE Project Coordinator – Tiit Kutser (University of Tartu); Linda van Duivenbode (Stichting dotSpace) Maria Jose Escorihuela (isardSAT); Ethel Pirola (Antea Belgium); Stefan Simis (Plymouth Marine Laboratory); Adriana Maria Constatinescu (GeoEcoMar); Angelos Amditis (Institute of Communication and Computer Systems); Andrew Tyler (University of Stirling); Ioana Popescu (IHE Delft Institute for Water Education); Alo Laas (Estonian University of Life Science); Mihaela Paun (Institutul National de Cercertare); Ann van Griensven (Vrije Universiteit Brussel); Carmen Cillero Castro (3edata); Claudia Giardino (Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche); Ils Reusen (Vlaamse Instelling voor Technologisch Onderzoek); Thomas Hein (Universitaet fuer Bodenkultur Wien); Lluis Pesquer (Centro de Investigacion Ecologica y Aplicaciones Forestales); Grega Milcinki (Sinergise Laboratory for Geographic Information Systems); Steef Peters (Water Insight)
