Tailored downstream applications/products–from Copernicus to coastal and inland water monitoring

Overarching objective of the action is to promote the use of Copernicus data for advancing the monitoring of coastal and inland waters. The proposal will focus on advancing the use of high- and medium-resolution multisensor data (Sentinel-2A and -2B MSI, Sentinel-3A and -3B OLCI, and Landsat-8 & Landsat-9 OLI). EU’s directives, like Water Framework Directive (WFD) set requirements for the participating countries to monitor coastal and lakes areas with high frequency and coverage. 

We aim to enhance the knowledge exchange about the implementation of EO products into the reporting chain for fulfilling the status assessment requirements of Water Framework Directive between Finland and Estonia. Especially, we focus on strengthening the links between the needs and requirements of users and stakeholders and the possibilities offered by the EO community and enhance of collaboration between different user groups in two countries: public / governmental institutions, research institutes / infrastructures, local environmental authorities, citizens. From Estonia, governmental institute Estonian Environment Agency and the research institute Centre for Limnology, Estonian University of Life Sciences has shown interest to become an end-user to this action. Sykes current EO water quality service users include at least: Ministry of Environment and Centres for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment, Finnish Environment Institute (e.g. WFD reporting). During the action, new potential end-users will be contacted by smaller dialogue events and dedicated training events and publicly available online educational material (English, Finnish and Estonian) will be prepared and linked to FPCUP-homepage. These events can be arranged cost-effectively via web-seminars.   

We will organize national and multi-national information-/training-events where the existing and potential new Copernicus based water quality products for the coastal and lake areas will be presented. Based on the user interaction and specifications, the most feasible downstream products will be further developed. We will also explore the possibilities to utilize cloud-based services (e.g. Sentinel-Hub) to create and share new near real time (NRT) Earth Observation products for the users. We will demonstrate new downstream products and applications to support coastal and inland water monitoring. Based on the initial discussions with potential end-users of the action, we aim to develop further these high-resolution products:   

Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) will be responsible for action management, software development, dissemination and, user and stakeholder interaction, training and feedback. 

Tartu Observatory/University of Tartu (TO) will complement with software development, dissemination and, user and stakeholder interaction, training and feedback.