ERA-PLANET “the European Network for Observing our Changing Planet” is an ERA-NET co-funded action under the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (Grant Agreement number 689443), which aimed to strengthen the coordination of European research in the field of Earth Observation (EO) for the implementation of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO,
https://www.earthobservations.org/index.php(opens in new window)) Work Programme, and Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth Observation programme (www.copernicus.eu).
ERA-PLANET prepared and launched a two-stage joint transnational call to fund projects under the following Strands:
● Smart cities and resilient societies addressing issues such as urban growth, air quality, disasters, health, contaminated sites.
● Resource efficiency and environmental management including water, energy, food security, biodiversity.
● Global change and Environmental treaties addressing global observing systems for toxic and persistent pollutants, harmonization of monitoring and coupled atmosphere-ocean-terrestrial models, evaluation of ecosystem response to regional/global emission changes, and support of policy implementation. Climate being one of the major variables to be considered in assessing changes in pollutant cycling and the analysis of policy scenarios.
● Polar areas and natural resources in highly climate-sensitive regions, including the evaluation of the impact of energy resource exploitation, the impact of long-range transport of air pollutants and their atmospheric deposition, air-surface exchange mechanisms, and environmental pressure from increasing anthropogenic activity in areas with sensitive ecosystems.
After the evaluation process, four projects were selected by independent external experts. They were:
• SMart URBan Solutions for air quality, disasters and city growth, SMURBS
• Essential Variables workflows for resource efficiency and environmental management, GEOessential
• Integrated Global Observing Systems for Persistent Pollutants, iGOSP
• Integrative and Comprehensive Understanding on Polar Environments, iCUPE
The four projects started their activity on September 1st 2017 and ended on August 31st 2021, including 1-year extension reported in the amendment AMD-689443-169.