Project description
Optimising Copernicus applications for forest monitoring
The European Commission introduced a new forest monitoring regulation in November 2023 aimed at enhancing European forest resilience. Building on existing Copernicus and national data, the regulation foresees establishing a comprehensive EU forest database and closing information gaps to facilitate decision-making and policy implementation across EU Member States. With its expertise in forest monitoring, Copernicus, AI and big data analysis, the EU-funded FUTUREFOR project will work closely with Copernicus and national stakeholders to determine and meet the needs of the regulation together. It will foster research and innovation and explore effective ways to optimise existing Copernicus-based data. Additionally, it will investigate potential aerial platforms and develop commercial business applications for forest owners and the earth observation industry.
Objective
The European Commission proposed a Regulation on a monitoring framework for resilient European forests in November 2023. It builds on Copernicus as well as existing national data and shall offer better information for decision making and policy implementation across Member States. The intended monitoring system will be comprehensive and reduce existing knowledge gaps through scattered, incomplete, and outdated data on EU forests. Besides the collection of better data for decision making and policy implementation, the proposed law will create business opportunities not only for the growing Copernicus and EO monitoring industry but also to forest owners for marketing their ecosystem services, such as carbon removals.
FUTUREFOR addresses key challenges deriving from the proposed law aiming at providing accurate and timely forest data for Europe. The project will closely liaise with Copernicus Entrusted Entities and key national stakeholders to assess the deriving needs from the Regulation together. The project will also support Ukraine adopting EU forest legislation, on its way becoming an EU member in the future.
Based on our experiences in forest monitoring, Copernicus, AI and big data analysis the FUTUREFOR project will carry out research and innovation to establish the needed knowledge and propose products and workflows to explore the feasibility and limitations of innovative new and improved existing Copernicus-based datasets. The project will build on operational services that members of the consortium already provide and experiences from earlier H2020 and Horizon European projects. FUTUREFOR will also investigate innovative aerial platforms collecting sensor and image data from the stratosphere. Finally, three commercial business applications will be developed to demonstrate the business opportunities evolving from open Copernicus- and complementing forest data.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
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Funding Scheme
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
82269 Geltendorf
Germany
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.