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Coordinated by  
Framework Partnership Agreement on Copernicus User Uptake (FPCUP)Framework Partnership Agreement on Copernicus User Uptake (FPCUP)

"User uptake" action towards the National System for the Protection of the Environment

Point of contact
Maria Vittoria  Castellani
Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale
Via Vitaliano Brancati, 48
144 Roma
URL: www.isprambiente.gov.it/en

Implementing Partner: ISPRA
Implementing Country: Italy Primary Topic: Atmosphere, Climate Change, Copernicus Data, Emergency, Land, Marine Primary Target Users: Public Sector Primary Target Region: Europe Europe: Italy Type of Action: National and multi-national information/training events
Action No.: 2020-1-13
Duration: Last Update:



 The general aims of the action are to broaden and increase the knowledge and effective use of Copernicus Programme within the National System for Environmental Protection (SNPA). These aims are pursued through the Copernicus National User Forum (CNUF) and its SNPA Working Table (WT).

Indeed, two of the primaries aims of the Copernicus National User Forum, which is participated by all the Copernicus National User Community representatives, are:

  • define the national users’ needs and requirements, particularly regarding all Core Services offered at the European levels as well as the Downstream Services that can be originated from them at the national level
  • participate in the European User Uptake (UU) actions and to promote and support national ones.

Moreover, within the CNUF, each User Community is assisted and supported through its own National User Forum Working Tables that, in general, aims at bringing together non-technical end-user, especially institutional ones, and the geospatial industry and research to build a win-win situation.

However, in the case of the SNPA, the Working Table is mainly internal and referred to the SNPA User Community, at least at this moment of the development of Copernicus Program at the national level.

In fact, the SNPA, with around 10,000 employees, two-thirds of them having a technical or a scientific profile, is one of the largest potential Copernicus National User Communities.

The SNPA is made up of ISPRA, 19 Regional and 2 Provincial Environmental Protection Agencies, all established by law. ISPRA chairs the SNPA, which is an example of consolidated federal system and, combining the direct knowledge of the territory and its issues with the national environmental policies, is the institutional and technical-scientific reference point for the whole Country as far as the environmental monitoring, surveillance and protection are concerned.

Copernicus is already used within the SNPA, particularly end extensively in some strategic sectors like the soil use and consumption, the marine environment and maritime management, the monitoring and modelling of the air quality and the climate change. However, such an use is still neither homogeneously nor deeply present inside the SNPA as it could and should be in order to commonly face some of its major tasks and responsibilities, which are quite often strictly connected to the European Environmental Compliance Assurance policies and aims as well.

Therefore, the general aim previously highlighted is also targeted to prepare the SNPA Community to face the possibility, as it is in the case of the new European Common Agriculture Policy and Regulations, of a formal obligation to use the EO methods, tools and products, particularly made available through the Copernicus Program, to cope with a future and more cogent and focused European regulation, especially, if they are about the European Environmental Compliance Assurance.

 

Output and Results:

  • 1 SNPA Working Table Task Force, permanently set up, whose members, representing each EPA, in addition to participating in the coordinated UU action carried out at national level, adequately trained on Copernicus, are responsible for and participate in promoting and implementing the UU activities at each EPA and for taking care of their future development as well
  • 3 two-days collective meetings of the SNPA Working Table Task Force at ISPRA’s headquarter in Rome (Preparatory activity)
  • 21 two-days dedicated meetings at each SNPA Agency’s headquarter (First set of activities)
  • 3 one-day meetings at ISPRA’s headquarter in Rome (Second set of activities)
  • Increasing and broadening the number of SNPA scientific, technical and operational personnel that make use of Copernicus products and services within their usual routine and institutional tasks.
  • Identifying the applicative and operational needs and requirements and the shortcomings of the available Copernicus products and services to face some SNPA institutional tasks
  • Availability of the informative and training materials, as well as the news relative to the events and other activities, through a dedicated Website section