The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) provides continuous data and information on atmospheric composition. The service describes the current situation in the atmosphere, forecasts the situation a few days ahead and analyses consistently retrospective data records for recent years. CAMS supports many applications in a variety of domains including health, environmental monitoring, renewable energies, meteorology and climatology.
The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) provides regular and systematic reference information on the physical and biogeochemical state, variability and dynamics of the ocean and marine ecosystems for the global ocean and the European regional seas. The observations and forecasts produced by the service support all marine applications, including: marine safety, marine resources, coastal and marine environment, weather, seasonal forecasting and climate.
The Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) provides geographical information on land cover and its changes, land use, vegetation state, water cycle and Earth’s surface energy variables to a broad range of users in Europe and across the world in the field of environmental terrestrial applications. It supports applications in a variety of domains such as spatial and urban planning, forest management, water management, agriculture and food security, nature conservation and restoration, rural development, ecosystem accounting, and mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) supports society by providing authoritative information about the past, present and future climate in Europe and the rest of the world. The C3S missionsupports the adaptation and mitigation policies of the European Union by providing consistent and authoritative information about climate change. They offer free and open access to climate data and tools based on the best available science and aim to help their users meet their goals in dealing with the impacts of climate change.
Each of these services produces a vast amount of data on a daily basis. AI can be used to understand that data and make it manageable. For example: AI could be used to identify features in satellite images, or track changes in satellite images over a period of time.
EUMETSAT is an intergovernmental organisation based in Darmstadt, Germany – currently with 30 member states. EUMETSAT provides data, products and support services to the Copernicus information services and user communities, with a focus on marine, atmosphere and climate. This involves delivering Earth observation data services to Copernicus from the Sentinel satellites, from its own Metop and Meteosat missions, from the ocean-monitoring Sentinel-3 satellites and Jason-3 and Sentinel-6, and from missions of its international partners (such as USA, China, India and Japan). EUMETSAT is responsible for operating the Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-6 satellites and will also operate and deliver products from the Sentinel-4, and Sentinel-5 instruments onboard Meteosat Third Generation and Metop Second Generations satellites, respectively.
ECMWF is both a research institute and a 24/7 operational service, producing global numerical weather predictions. ECMWF has one of the largest supercomputer facilities and meteorological data archives in the world. They also operate two services from the EU’s Copernicus Earth observation programme, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), whilst also contributing to the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS).
Mercator Océan International is a non-profit company providing ocean science-based services of general interest focused on the conservation and the sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources. Mercator Océan implements the Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS).
The European Environment Agency (EEA) is an agency of the European Union. They provide sound, independent information on the environment and they are a major information source for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing and evaluating environmental policy, and also the general public. The EEA co-ordinates the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS).
Together, EUMETSAT, ECMWF, Mercator Océan and the European Environment Agency implement the WEkEO DIAS cloud computing platform. WEkEO is the EU’s Copernicus DIAS reference service for environmental data, virtual environments for data processing and skilled user support.
The EU has various initiatives that support the implementation of AI throughout EO, and to provide information and guidance of how AI can add value to products across a broad range of EO applications.
For example:
The AI4EU Consortium was established in 2019 to build the first European artificial intelligence on-demand platform and ecosystem with the support of the European Commission under the Horizon2020 programme. The activities of the project include:
- The creation and support of a large European ecosystem spanning the 28 countries to facilitate collaboration people in Europe who use AI
- The implementation of industry-led pilots through the AI4EU platform, which demonstrate the capabilities of the platform to enable real applications and foster innovation
- Research activities in five key interconnected AI scientific areas (Explainable AI, Physical AI ,Verifiable AI, Collaborative AI, Integrative AI), which arise from the application of AI in real-world scenarios
- The funding of SMEs and start-ups benefitting from AI resources available on the platform (cascade funding plan of €3m) to solve AI challenges and promote new solutions with AI
- The creation of a European Ethical Observatory to ensure that European AI projects adhere to high ethical, legal, and socio-economical standards
AI4Copernicus
The EU-funded AI4Copernicus project will bridge the EU AI on-demand platform AI4EU with Copernicus Data and Information Access Services (DIAS) platforms, such as WEkEO to allow innovative players break new ground. The project will organise and fund four open calls for SMEs, realising eight small-scale experiments and nine larger-scale use-cases. Through its technological contribution and open-calls, AI4Copernicus will deepen the integration of AI4EU with multiple DIAS platforms. At the same time, it will enrich the European arsenal with sustainable, cutting edge applications in domains of high economic and societal impact, such as in Agriculture, Energy, Environment and Security.
Deepcube DeepCube is a Horizon 2020 project funded by the European Union. Its aim is to unlock the potential of Copernicus data, using advances in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Semantic Web - in an explainable way. The ultimate goal of DeepCube is to address new and ambitious problems that have a high environmental and societal impact, enhance our understanding of Earth’s processes that are correlated with climate change
Supporting businesses using Copernicus data and services The Copernicus Accelerator is a 12-month acceleration programme designed explicitly for driven entrepreneurs and start-ups ready to turn their transformative business cases into impactful commercial solutions. It provides one-on-one guidance with expert mentors, a virtual training programme focused on start-up needs, and two boot camps held at leading industry events around Europe. This offers an opportunity for start-ups and entrepreneurs to develop their ideas on how to use Earth observation data into real companies.
The Copernicus Masters is an international competition that awards prizes to innovative solutions, developments and concepts for business and society based on Earth observation data. EO and big data from space offer great potential for the creation of innovative products and applications for business and society. A wide variety of industries and areas of public interest stand to profit from the advances of the European Copernicus Programme.
The ESA BIC initiative aims to inspire and work with entrepreneurs to turn space-connected business ideas into commercial start-ups companies. Since 2003, 700 start-ups have been fostered throughout Europe with thousands of new high tech jobs created thanks to the applications of space systems, the valorization of ESA intellectual properties and the space technologies transfers - and more than 180 new start-ups are taken in yearly at the ESA BICs.
AI is a tool to help solve our grand societal challenges. AI will support Earth observation in big data analytics, help in cracking complex earth system models and in shaping new sensing technologies, such as onboard data compression and information retrieval. For the European citizen, AI will be the centrepiece in the EU industry’s transformation to be green, global and competitive. AI will be able to support downstream applications in industry that solve real world challenges and that can influence decision making.