Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CURE (Copernicus for Urban Resilience in Europe)
Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2023-04-30
Urban resilience refers to the ability of an urban system to maintain or rapidly return to desired functions in the face of a disturbance, to adapt to change, and to quickly transform systems that limit current or future adaptive capacity. Mitigation and adaptation actions are capable of enhancing the resilience, which is an important necessity for cities. For actions to be efficient, these need to be based on a sound understanding and quantification of the drivers of urban transformation and settlement structures, human and urban vulnerability, and of local and global climate change, as defined by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) and the New Urban Agenda. Understanding and quantification are only possible through observations.
Copernicus, as the means for the establishment of a European capacity for Earth Observation (EO), is based on its continuously evolving Core Services. A major challenge for the EO community is the innovative exploitation of the Copernicus products in dealing with the multidimensional problem of urban sustainability towards increasing urban resilience. To meet this challenge, information from more than one Copernicus Core Services, namely the Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), the Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), the Climate Change Service (C3S) and the Emergency Management Service (EMS), is needed. Furthermore, to address urban resilience, the urban planning community needs spatially disaggregated environmental information at local (neighbourhood) and city scales. Such information, for all parameters needed, is not yet directly available from the Copernicus Core Services, while several elements - data and products - from contemporary satellite missions consist valuable tools for retrieving urban environmental parameters at local scale. Cross-cutting applications among the above Copernicus Core Services are capable of coping with the required scale and granularity by integrating and exploiting satellite and third-party data, in-situ observations and modelling.
The CURE project (Copernicus for Urban Resilience in Europe) provides the means to cope with the EO data under-exploitation in the domain of sustainable and resilient urbanisation, by combining products of different Copernicus Core Services. Therefore, CURE enables Copernicus to better serve cross-cutting applications at European scale by introducing novel ideas on how applications for climate change adaptation and mitigation, healthy cities and social environments, as well as energy and economy are developed across Copernicus Core Services.
CURE demonstrated the potential of Copernicus to provide valuable information for urban resilience, supported by third-party data and in-situ observations. The main research question addresses, whether and to what extent the Copernicus Core Services are able to provide reliable information for enhancing the resilience of European cities. CURE answers this question by developing cross-cutting applications combining products from the four above-mentioned Copernicus Core Services.
Urban areas need to be resilient, sustainable, inclusive, safe, resource-efficient and innovative, incorporating a circular economy and smart infrastructure. Given the vast and growing inventory of Copernicus Core Services, there is an exciting opportunity to develop synergies among them, which would be able to provide city administrations with useful multifaceted information to improve urban resilience through the CURE System. The CURE System is expected to be a relevant and timely tool to help urban planners and policy-makers enhance or track the local progress on the achievements of the resilience targets (e.g. connected with SDG 11). Consequently, CURE has the potential to provide the necessary building blocks for development of downstream applications for impact assessment, urban planning and policy making, becoming in this way a focused evidence-based toolkit for assisting current and future policy making in the field.
Copernicus, as the means for the establishment of a European capacity for Earth Observation (EO), is based on its continuously evolving Core Services. A major challenge for the EO community is the innovative exploitation of the Copernicus products in dealing with the multidimensional problem of urban sustainability towards increasing urban resilience. To meet this challenge, information from more than one Copernicus Core Services, namely the Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), the Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), the Climate Change Service (C3S) and the Emergency Management Service (EMS), is needed. Furthermore, to address urban resilience, the urban planning community needs spatially disaggregated environmental information at local (neighbourhood) and city scales. Such information, for all parameters needed, is not yet directly available from the Copernicus Core Services, while several elements - data and products - from contemporary satellite missions consist valuable tools for retrieving urban environmental parameters at local scale. Cross-cutting applications among the above Copernicus Core Services are capable of coping with the required scale and granularity by integrating and exploiting satellite and third-party data, in-situ observations and modelling.
The CURE project (Copernicus for Urban Resilience in Europe) provides the means to cope with the EO data under-exploitation in the domain of sustainable and resilient urbanisation, by combining products of different Copernicus Core Services. Therefore, CURE enables Copernicus to better serve cross-cutting applications at European scale by introducing novel ideas on how applications for climate change adaptation and mitigation, healthy cities and social environments, as well as energy and economy are developed across Copernicus Core Services.
CURE demonstrated the potential of Copernicus to provide valuable information for urban resilience, supported by third-party data and in-situ observations. The main research question addresses, whether and to what extent the Copernicus Core Services are able to provide reliable information for enhancing the resilience of European cities. CURE answers this question by developing cross-cutting applications combining products from the four above-mentioned Copernicus Core Services.
Urban areas need to be resilient, sustainable, inclusive, safe, resource-efficient and innovative, incorporating a circular economy and smart infrastructure. Given the vast and growing inventory of Copernicus Core Services, there is an exciting opportunity to develop synergies among them, which would be able to provide city administrations with useful multifaceted information to improve urban resilience through the CURE System. The CURE System is expected to be a relevant and timely tool to help urban planners and policy-makers enhance or track the local progress on the achievements of the resilience targets (e.g. connected with SDG 11). Consequently, CURE has the potential to provide the necessary building blocks for development of downstream applications for impact assessment, urban planning and policy making, becoming in this way a focused evidence-based toolkit for assisting current and future policy making in the field.
The CURE consortium:
- achieved a stakeholders’ interfacing involving representatives from the front runner and follower cities, as well as the Knowledge and Innovation Community on Climate (Climate-KIC) and the European Environmental Agency;
- reviewed and analysed the existing Copernicus Services products, describing the ones with the highest support in the urban resilience context, and performed a cross-cutting gap analysis;
- designed an interface to allow efficient data flow from the Copernicus Core Services to the CURE System;
- collected and processed Copernicus and third-party data for the CURE to allow the eleven applications development;
- specified the methodologies of the 11 cross-cutting applications focusing on: i) climate change adaptation and mitigation; ii) healthy cities and social environments; and iii) energy and economy;
- concluded their development and provided a proof-of-concept that urban planning and management activities for enhancing the resilience of cities in Europe can be supported by Copernicus Core Services,;
- improved EO-based methods to estimate urban environmental parameters at local and city scales;
- developed strategic scenarios for the CURE integration in Copernicus;
- described and analysed the user requirements for the application transformation and development of the CURE System;
- developed the CURE System Platform on DIAS, including a portal;
- applied the CURE demonstration and evaluation framework;
- successfully organized the 2 Demonstration Workshops, involving representatives from the CURE cities, the Knowledge and Innovation Community on Climate (Climate-KIC) and the European Environmental Agency;
- detailed and applied a dissemination, communication and exploitation mechanism.
- achieved a stakeholders’ interfacing involving representatives from the front runner and follower cities, as well as the Knowledge and Innovation Community on Climate (Climate-KIC) and the European Environmental Agency;
- reviewed and analysed the existing Copernicus Services products, describing the ones with the highest support in the urban resilience context, and performed a cross-cutting gap analysis;
- designed an interface to allow efficient data flow from the Copernicus Core Services to the CURE System;
- collected and processed Copernicus and third-party data for the CURE to allow the eleven applications development;
- specified the methodologies of the 11 cross-cutting applications focusing on: i) climate change adaptation and mitigation; ii) healthy cities and social environments; and iii) energy and economy;
- concluded their development and provided a proof-of-concept that urban planning and management activities for enhancing the resilience of cities in Europe can be supported by Copernicus Core Services,;
- improved EO-based methods to estimate urban environmental parameters at local and city scales;
- developed strategic scenarios for the CURE integration in Copernicus;
- described and analysed the user requirements for the application transformation and development of the CURE System;
- developed the CURE System Platform on DIAS, including a portal;
- applied the CURE demonstration and evaluation framework;
- successfully organized the 2 Demonstration Workshops, involving representatives from the CURE cities, the Knowledge and Innovation Community on Climate (Climate-KIC) and the European Environmental Agency;
- detailed and applied a dissemination, communication and exploitation mechanism.
The innovation potential of CURE lies on the exploitation of the Copernicus offer for urban resilience, by cross-cutting applications combining products from CLMS, CAMS, C3S and EMS with third-party data The CURE System is integrating these applications, enabling its incorporation into operational applications and downstream services across Europe in the future.
ICURE advanced the current knowledge beyond the state-of-the-art by:
- Developing an interface to currently available and future Copernicus portfolio of Core Services, in order to standardise and streamline required inputs into the cross-cutting applications both for development and replication phases. The developed interface is extendable towards new Copernicus portfolio updates and enables integration of other data sources.
- Adapting, and improving existing EO-based methods to estimate the urban parameters in appropriate spatial and temporal resolutions for urban planning processes, using Copernicus Core Services products.
- Developing scenarios on how CURE could be integrated into the existing Copernicus service architecture.
- Supporting sustainable urban planning strategies relevant to climate change mitigation and adaptation in cities, towards enhancing urban resilience in Europe.
ICURE advanced the current knowledge beyond the state-of-the-art by:
- Developing an interface to currently available and future Copernicus portfolio of Core Services, in order to standardise and streamline required inputs into the cross-cutting applications both for development and replication phases. The developed interface is extendable towards new Copernicus portfolio updates and enables integration of other data sources.
- Adapting, and improving existing EO-based methods to estimate the urban parameters in appropriate spatial and temporal resolutions for urban planning processes, using Copernicus Core Services products.
- Developing scenarios on how CURE could be integrated into the existing Copernicus service architecture.
- Supporting sustainable urban planning strategies relevant to climate change mitigation and adaptation in cities, towards enhancing urban resilience in Europe.