During the 1st year of the project all the groundwork that concerned DIANA service platform was laid down. As indicated in the 1st technical report users’ and stakeholders’ requirements were identified and analysed. The development of EO products and services took place and more specifically the methodology for mapping irrigated areas and the respective process chain. Furthermore, the architecture of the platform was described and the pilot deployment and co-evaluation plan was also introduced. Finally, effort was dedicated for setting the innovation and intellectual property rights strategy, while the business models that are considered as viable options were also recognized and selected from the partners.
Building upon that work, in the 2nd year of the project, the effort was focused towards the development of the service platform. The technical team brought together the input from other WPs, in order to develop the 1st version of the platform. In parallel with the work that was carried out for the implementation of the services, effort was also allocated in the pilots. The efforts in the 2nd year were concentrated on the co-valuation and validation of the results, as provided via the platform. At the same time the first round of validation of the business models, and in general the work carried out by the business team, was another important parameter that complemented the activities of the 2nd year. Communication was constant with partners across all WPs promoting DIANA and the first available results through different channels.
Most of the effort in the 3rd year of the project was assigned towards the pilots and the business plan, with the rest of the activities complementing the work done within those. The co-evaluation and co-validation of the results provided by the services of DIANA platform, was one of the main objectives in that last period of the project, since they would be the stepping stone for the launch of DIANA to the market. Having at their disposal a beta version of the platform that was shaped based on their feedback, pilots were able to attract even more stakeholders and users for that final round of evaluation. In order to achieve that boost in participation, many regional events were organized, to bring the different stakeholders together, which also provided a great opportunity for disseminating the project to targeted audiences and for building DIANAs’ customer base. This resulted from the parallel engagement of stakeholders and users, during the above mentioned events, for the evaluation of the results of the services, as provided by DIANA platform, as well as the validation of business model, pricing scheme and market uptake. That validation from users and stakeholders came as the succession of an initial validation by members of the core and wider Advisory Board members.
The activities for the pilots and business plan were complemented by other actions. The validation of the EO products with ground truth data was one such activity. An important advance that was made concerned the development of an innovative technique to detect irrigated tree crop and a method to estimate the crop water requirement under deficit condition. The deployment of the beta and final versions of the platform, were also implemented in that 3rd year. Pilot users initially and additional users later on provided their feedback and shaped the final version of the platform, ensuring the adoption after its’ commercial launch. An additional complementary activity that was an important piece of DIANA was the legal and institutional requirements and the briefs for policy makers and water managers, which are key elements for an enabling environment for the market uptake of the commercial service platform.
Finally, for all the above activities there were two common denominators: dissemination and management. Apart from the dissemination throughout the website, social media, participation in events organized by third parties and other such, DIANA partners organized various stakeholders and users events for the targeted promotion of DIANA platform, while all those happened under the coordinated efforts of the managing team.
