Environmental Monitoring from Space & Geoinformation through the Excelsior H2020 Teaming Project

Abstract

The "EXCELSIOR" H2020 Widespread Teaming Phase 2 Project titled ERATOSTHENES: EXcellence Research Centre for Earth SurveiLlance and Space-Based MonItoring Of the EnviRonment is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 857510 for a 7-year project period to establish a Centre of Excellence in Cyprus. The Government of the Republic of Cyprus is providing additional resources to support the establishment of the ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence (ECoE). The ECoE seeks to fill the gap by carrying out spaceborne Earth Observation (EO) activities in the Eastern Mediterranean and becoming a regional key player in the Earth Observation sector. The ECoE as a Digital Innovation Hub adopts a two-axis model, where the horizontal axis consists of three Thematic Clusters for sustained excellence in research of the ECoE in the domains of Atmosphere and Climate, Resilient Society and Big Earth Data Analytics, while the vertical axis consists of four functional areas: Infrastructure, Research, Education, and Entrepreneurship. This paper presents existing state of the art research examples within the Centre that deals with the integration of earth observation and geoinformation for monitoring systematically the environment in the areas of Agriculture monitoring, Atmospheric monitoring and Disaster risk reduction in terms of earthquakes and landslides, fires and floods.