COPERNICUS 4 BULGARIA 2020

Greeting addresses

The current state of the EU space program – Copernicus, as well as what to expect in the future programming period will be presented.

The presentation will present the planned missions of the Sentinels satellites, as well as future new developments that will complement the space segment of the program.
In response to a request from the European Commission, DG DEFIS, ESA has been working with a range of industrial and research institutions throughout Europe to develop, demonstrate and verify EO based techniques to characterize the various impacts of Covid19 on European states and to monitor the extent to which economic activity recovers following periods of lock-down. This has resulted in a dedicated dash-board supporting an indicator based assessment of impact and recovery.
This presentation will illustrate the background to the developments, some examples of EO based characterization of impacts and how these can be structured as useful indicators as well as information on the dedicated dashboard.

The first part of the presentation will address the extended role of EUSPA in market development and user uptake, as proposed in the new Space Regulation. Leveraging on a proven methodology and tools, the goal will be to support SMEs and start-ups, growing the non-core users and further developing the Copernicus economy. The second part of the presentation will address more specifically the synergies between European GNSS and Copernicus at application level, explaining practical examples and addressing area of further development.

As the world-leading Earth Observation programme, Copernicus substantially contributes to socio-economic benefits, as well as smart, sustainable and inclusive growth with its’ data, information and services. The last decade has seen a growing number of innovation programmes, funded by public institutions and industry, that have firmly positioned the use of Copernicus, also for commercial purposes. This presentation will provide an update on some of the main innovation initiatives in the field of Copernicus (and Galileo) and how the Bulgarian scientific and business communities could benefit from them.

EO4GEO is the Erasmus+ Sector Skills Alliance for the Space/Geospatial sector. The 26 core and 34 associated partners of the Alliance work together on a Strategy and Long-Term Action Plan to continuously monitor the technological and societal trends, and to assess the evolving skills requirements for the sector. In practical terms, a comprehensive Body of Knowledge for Geographic Information and Earth Observation (BoK for GI/EO) is being developed with more than 160 experts, while a set of tools have been developed that allows to explore this BoK, design curricula, define an occupational profile, publish a Job Offer, etc., all based on this BoK. Moreover, a series of case-based learning actions in the sub-sectors of climate change, smart cities and integrated applications are currently being prepared for execution in Autumn 2020 and Spring 2021. EO4GEO will offer all the project outcomes according to open licenses for re-use by the community, but will also continue to operate after the project life-time.

The network of European regions using space technologies, NEREUS provides a dynamic platform for all regions in order to improve the use of space applications to provide effective policies for the benefit of citizens. Examples of how and where Copernicus data and services are applied in Europe will be provided by the Secretary General of NEREUS.

Through the Copernicus programme satellite data are made available to everyone, but processing the ever-growing amount of data still poses challenges. Sentinel Hub will present how we are spreading awareness as well as making satellite data accessible and easy to use for the general public and developers. We will showcase how our satellite data visualization scripting contests and powerful tools help people provide real life solutions, and why we make a great deal of our code and tools freely available for everyone.

The emergence of big data provided by the Copernicus programme provides both new opportunities and challenges for research, businesses and software/data providers, where new techniques such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) are needed to capitalise and make sense of the vast amounts of data. This talk will present the work of ESA’s Phi-Lab to explore the power of AI for EO and Copernicus data, and the various research, activities and partnerships to achieve this.

The available high-performance computer systems as hardware for processing of unprecedented volume of satellite data are presented. Modern methods and algorithms for processing satellite information, in which we have trained specialists for work, are also considered. The possible application areas are specified.

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How the Space Program is developed from Horizon 2020 to Horizon Europe

The presentation will comment on issues related to the use, exchange and management of open data and information from Earth Observations received from the Global System of Observation Systems GEOSS and in particular from the Copernicus program of the EC. Emphasis will be placed on the efficient use of European and national resources for the EO, EuroGEOSS (as part of GEOSS) and diverse data (including space, air and ground) to develop products, services or solutions that are accessible and useful for the economic, social and societal development of modern society.

Copernicus Academy and Copernicus Relay are part of the Copernicus User-uptake Copernicus initiative. Members of their networks are scientific organizations, SMEs, NGOs and others working in the field of application of Earth Observation. The role of Copernicus Academy and Copernicus Relay is to raise awareness of the Copernicus program in each country. In the presentation you will learn who these organizations are in Bulgaria and what are their activities related to Copernicus.

The presentation will cover the conducted so far Copernicus Hackathons in Bulgaria.

The talk will present the vision for the future Copernicus Academy&Relays Bulgaria Web Portal.

We will briefly outline the main thematic areas of the Atmosphere service (CAMS) related to air pollution and health, solar energy, greenhouse gases and climate forcing. Emphasis will be put on products for air quality forecasts on regional and global scale, providing examples for data access and tools for their visualisation, including the newly developed resources in support of the COVID-19 crisis (opportunities by CAMS microsite). The functionalities of the Atmosphere Data Store (ADS), replacing the CAMS Catalogue will be presented. The Policy Support tools shall be also commented providing examples for forecasted source contributions to particulate matter concentrations in Sofia.

We will present the information about the World Ocean, which is provided in real time and for the past climatic period. The available products are divided thematically as Blue Ocean – the physical parameters, Green Ocean – biogeochemical parameters and White Ocean – parameters for the ice cover. We will give explanation on how to find and download the variables you are interested in. We will also look at the newly developed Ocean Monitoring Indicators and Ocean State Report. Special attention will be paid to the Black Sea and what is happening there – the trends in temperature, sea level, circulation and dissolved oxygen content. We will also present the development strategy for the next phase in the light of the transition to Copernicus 2.0.

In the presentation, we will briefly present the “Emergency” service of the Copernicus Program, the way to activate the service, the data, and products that are provided for certified and public access, as well as the prospects for its future development. The three systems of the thematic service for prevention and planning, early warning and monitoring of disasters will be briefly examined: the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS), the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) and the European Drought Observatory (EDO). Some examples for which the “Emergency” service for Bulgaria is activated and the opportunities for end-users to access the data and products for this thematic service will be also commented.

In the presentation we will present the information about the global biogeophysical products, pan-European products for land use and land cover, local products with high resolution; how to find satellite images and reference data on the Internet and use them in our daily work. We will pay special attention to mapping of agricultural crops with the help of data from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 for the territory of Bulgaria. A comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the multitemporal supervised classification will be made using radar and optical data from the Copernicus program. We will also present the strategy for the development of CLMS in the next phase in the light of the transition to Copernicus 2.0.

In the presentation we will explain how we can access Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) products and data, what is available now and what is planned for the future. We will access data from the Climate Data Store, process them with its Toolbox and Python libraries, and introduce the C3S Demonstrator. What specialized training to expect from C3S User Learning Service in Bulgaria and when.

In the presentation we will learn what Copernicus Security Service provides, what is available now and what is planned for the future.

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