CENTAUR - COPERNICUS ENHANCED TOOLS FOR ANTICIPATIVE RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE EMERGENCY AND SECURITY DOMAIN

Project Information

CENTAUR

Grant agreement ID: 101082720

DOI

10.3030/101082720

Project closed

EC signature date 18 October 2022

Start date 1 December 2022

End date 31 March 2026

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 4 913 846,25

EU contribution

€ 4 913 846,25

Coordinated by

E-GEOS SPA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CENTAUR (CENTAUR - COPERNICUS ENHANCED TOOLS FOR ANTICIPATIVE RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE EMERGENCY AND SECURITY DOMAIN)

Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2024-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Climate change is a fact and its impact on human lives and security is continuously growing. Floods and storms were the most prevalent events and floods are the most common type of disaster worldwide, accounting for 44% of total events registered in the last twenty years. A global temperature increase of the global climate is estimated to increase the frequency of potentially high impact natural hazard events across the world. Climate change is behing the environmental degradation is recognized as a threat multiplier and an aggravating factor for political instability with serious implications for peace and security across the globe.

Within HORIZON-CL4-2021-SPACE-01-43-Copernicus Security and Emergency Services evolution, the objective of CENTAUR is to respond to societal challenges deriving from Climate Change threats by developing and demonstrating new service components for the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) and the Copernicus Service in Support to EU External Action service (SEA), aiming to:
1. Improve situational awareness and preparedness around climate change and its impact on complex emergencies and multi-dimensional (security) crises;
2. Anticipate the occurrence and possible knock-on effects of crisis events, in particular those triggered by climatic extremes, thus contributing to resilience and effective adaptation.
In the emergency domain, this anticipative setting addresses the flood-related threats to population, assets and infrastructures in urban areas. In the Security domain, CENTAUR addresses water & food insecurity by defining and measuring indicators and crisis indexes that are sensitive to increased water/food insecurity and model subsequent risks political instability, conflicts and displacements risks in developing and fragile countries.
The two work streams are connected via a cross-cutting component focusing on exposure and vulnerability to climate change, as well as resilience and societal capacity for managing environmental risks and social conflict.
CENTAUR integrates data coming from multiple heterogeneous sources, combining with meteorological data, socio-economic data, and data coming from new sensors (e.g. traditional and social media). Thus, it will enhance current capacities to produce composite risk indexes and to perform multi-criteria analyses in the emergency and security domains.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Main achievements up to M18 are listed below:
1) Users' requirements collection through questionnaire and dedicated meetings for review (WP1). 7 cold cases selected for demonstration: 5 in UF (Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Mozambique) and 3 in WFS (Mali, Somalia, Mozambique). Two conceptual models of how CENTAUR integrates input data into higher composite indexes, for UF and WFS track were defined. The main expectations towards CENTAUR project are related to: i) Early-warning system: alerting every time a new event occurs; ii) Situational awareness at strategic and operational level, to anticipate crisis to warn personnel deployed/EU citizens in the affected countries.
2) The thematic product engineering (WP2) produced a data catalogue service that includes the input datasets to generate the CENTAUR innovate indicators (3 domains: geospatial, open-source and meteorological data) and the output datasets produced for UF, WFS and socio-economic/political related. 33 innovative indicators were identified, designed and generated through the appropriate pipelines: 4 components (UF) and 5 (WFS). Composite indices were then defined, the development of which is currently ongoing.
3) In terms of service deployment (WP3), the first prototype of the platform has been released. it is designed based on standards and COTS on open source technology. The project is based on a central node interacting with several local nodes, where each local node generates the different innovative indicators and crisis indices. Currently, the deployment in a Kubernetes cluster of the main components of the v1 platform and the configuration of the cloud environment including the central repository based on the S3 (Object Storage) service and all necessary services is underway.
4) The climate change crisis and natural disasters demonstration (WP4) has recently started in M10. Validation criteria and user feedback questionnaires to use during/after demonstrations with regards to UF/WFS have been defined. In addition, mail templates and the execution timeline for the first cold cases (Spain, France, Germany, Somalia, Mali) as per the proposed scenarios, considering WP2 and WP3 developments, have been finalized.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

CENTAUR system integrates and combines input data into higher order indicators and composite indexes, respectively, for its Urban Floods and Water & Food Security tracks.
Particularly, CENTAUR provides the herebelow mentioned operational benefits to both CEMS and CSS through:
- including a prototype urban flood layer within the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS) map viewer;
- improving early warning Integrating the CEMS mapping portfolio.
- enriching current portfolio by integrating new vulnerability and fragility indexes.
- reinforcing early warning capacities and pro-active geo-intelligence services for systematic surveillance of early signs of population movements, and conflicts in connection with food and water insecurity.

From a wider, long-term perspective, CENTAUR will address to the following impacts:
- scientific impacts (strengthening human capital in research and innovation, fostering diffusion of knowledge and open source, offering new strategies to combine heterogeneous data sources, fostering the design and implementation of new transversal services).
- societal impact (addressing EU policy priorities and global challenges through research and innovation, delivering benefits and impact through research and innovation missions, strengthening the uptake of research and innovation in society, providing means to early warng scenarios that can negatively impact on citizens worldwide, supporting UN SDGs).
- technological/economic impact (generating innovation-based growth, leveraging investment in research and innovation).