The Sentinel Users Preparation (SUP) is an initiative within the FutureEO programme of the ESA Earth Observation Programmes (EOP) Directorate. Overall, the SUP initiative will invest in a dedicated set of connected developments to ensure that European entities are optimally placed to exploit the opportunities due to the future Copernicus Sentinel Expansion and Next Generation missions. All activities respond to the needs and recommendations identified through events carried out with the relevant stakeholder communities.
This procurement, titled Applications Preparedness with stakeholder and end-users participation is the first of a series of actions to strengthen expertise in diverse application domains to prepare future downstream services addressing high-priority societal challenges, and to enable rapid uptake by end-users and stakeholders of the derived information products. The objective is to develop and test methodologies to exploit Copernicus Sentinel Expansion class datasets in existing application domains in order to consolidate the added value of the Copernicus Sentinel Expansion within these applications and to build the relevant experience and expertise within both supply-side and demand-side stakeholders.
In this process, the high-level tasks that the contractor shall implement are:
- Consolidate and provide a representative dataset (e.g., in terms of revisit time, resolution, and spectrally/technique) of the Copernicus Sentinel Expansion missions selected by the contractor, suitable to the selected application, over the specific areas of interest, through: proxy-data from non-ESA missions (national, international partners, commercial), simulated / synthetic data from models, and in-situ/validation/campaign data. For this task, the contractor shall leverage on (when possible) and complement (as necessary) existing ground infrastructure, existing datasets and planned campaign data, and involve the stakeholders/end-users (as suitable and necessary).
- Develop and validate the innovative multi-mission methodologies, demonstrating the value of the Copernicus Sentinel Expansion multi-mission approach and the synergy with the existing Copernicus Sentinel missions.
- Ensure the proactive involvement of stakeholders and end-users in the development and validation phases, and highlight expected future benefits of the developed solution.
- Identify potential future RD actions.
The high-priority topics that can be selected by the contractor are:
- food systems and agriculture
- ecosystem and biodiversity monitoring
- soil management
- inland water management
- coastal management
- GHG and air quality
- forest management
- urban resilience
- critical infrastructure management
- mining and extractives
- Arctic operations
- natural hazard management.
This competitive tender will lead to multiple contracts, with a maximum value of 800 KEuros per contract and with an implementation over a 2-year period.
Learn more about this Invitation To Tender on the esa-star Publication page.