COPERNICUS


Europe's eyes on Earth

Copernicus is the European Programme for the establishment of a European capacity for Earth Observation. Copernicus encompasses a set of systems which collect data from multiple sources: earth observation satellites and in situ sensors such as ground stations, airborne and sea-borne sensors.

space4environment is active in one of the six thematic areas of Copernicus – the land domain – supporting applications including urban areas, environmental planning, forestry, climate change, sustainable development and tourism.

With respect to the in-situ component of Copernicus, space4environment is part of the EEA EIONET in-situ working group. The goal of the working group is to review and assess the in-situ data requirements of all the six Copernicus thematic areas and to support access to relevant sources at national level and within other organisations.

Even though the Copernicus programme is nowadays generally observed as a crucial information source in different policy domains, the actual exploitation of its full potential is still far from optimal. The Copernicus service offer still does not necessarily lead to the processing of this data into useful, usable, and used information – i.e. being transformed into knowledge for shaping evidence-based policies. space4environment supports user uptake activities which are a cardinal priority of the EEA.

Within the EAGLE activities space4environment is leading a group of experts working on the development of a future oriented land monitoring concept for Europe, by improving the integration of national and European land monitoring needs and technologies. In the framework of this 2nd generation Corine Land Cover - called CLC+ - a revised methodology for the production of land cover/land use mappings utilizing national data and EO-driven inputs is developed.

In the context of the Copernicus land services quality assessment/quality control operations for the implementation of pan-European and hot spot monitoring products, space4environment is responsible for the independent quality assurance of different datasets.

space4environment has implemented the Corine Land Cover (CLC) mapping projects for Luxembourg for the years 2006, 2012 and 2018. For the same reference years space4environment coordinated the implementation of CLC in the Western Balkan countries (in 2018 also including Cyprus, Denmark, Latvia and Switzerland). As part of the CLC Technical Team we are assisting countries in carrying out the CLC concept in their country by remote and on-site trainings and ensuring the quality of the CLC data through verifications and further checks on the country-produced CLC mappings.


Project highlights


Header image: © contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO