To objective of the BEACON project is to develop a commercial service package that will enable insurance companies to exploit the untapped market potential of Agricultural Insurance, taking advantage of innovations in Earth Observation, weather intelligence and ICT / blockchain technology. BEACON will enable insurance companies to alleviate the effect of weather uncertainty when estimating risk for Agricultural Insurance products, reduce the number of on-site visits for claim verification, reduce operational and administrative costs for monitoring of insured indexes and contract handling, and design more accurate and personalized contracts. Through an early warning service they will be able to inform their customers (farmers) for potential crop risks related with weather conditions, and advise them to take all the necessary actions to mitigate the impact of weather in their crops. EO data derived by Copernicus Sentinel missions as well as by missions contributing to Copernicus will be used to develop the data products that will act as a complementary source to the information used by insurance companies to design their products and assess natural disasters. Weather intelligence based on data assimilation, numerical weather prediction and ensemble seasonal forecasting will be used to verify the occurrence of a catastrophic weather event and to predict future perils. ICT / blockchain technology will be used for the smart contract service, to provide insurance companies with an automated method for paying out damages to insured parties. The BEACON services will be deployed in the operational environment of more than 10 companies in the insurance sector, openly demonstrating and validating its value proposition and acceptance as a marketable commercial solution. A business model will be developed and validated using the Lean Start-up methodology, and a global roll-out of BEACON will be designed.

A circular bio-based economy is a key element of a European low carbon economy and is projected to increasingly contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions, decreased dependence on fossil resources and drive economic growth over the next decades. It can help meet the European Green Deal's goals, including its plan to reduce EU greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. It also contributes to other EU initiatives, including the Circular Economy Action Plan, the Biodiversity Strategy, Zero Pollution action plan and the Farm to Fork Strategy . EU biorefineries producing bio-based products are expected to be an important part of the circular bio-based economy. Moreover, deployment of biorefineries that utilise EU biomass will increase safe supply of raw materials, decrease emissions, and create jobs and business opportunities, especially in rural areas. Approximately 300 chemical and material driven biorefineries at commercial or demonstration scale are located in the EU . PROMOFER project will address the valorisation of two kinds of feedstock (lignocellulosic biomass and food industry waste) through the improvement of the fermentation processes and downstream purification. It will be produced 3 SSbD, circular bio-based products 1, 2) polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) to be used in geotextile nets applications (agriculture sector) and coated paper packaging applications (packaging sectors); 3) 2,3-Butanediol (2,3-BDO) to produce bio-based PU for the technical textile applications in the fashion industry sector. The integration of these waste streams as biorefinery feedstocks will allow reducing the volumes of landfilled waste, improving competitiveness, resource efficiency and opening new opportunities for the bioplastics production with added advantages of environmental performances and social acceptance.

ENVISION aims to fulfil the need for continuous and systematic monitoring of agricultural land, shifting the focus from fragmented monitoring limited to specific fields and dates to territory-wide and all-year-round monitoring. It will make use of heterogeneous types of available data (EO-based, in situ, open data, and historical on-field check data) and state-of-the-art technologies and methodologies (automatic pixel/texture/object oriented change detection and classification methods, machine learning, data fusion, multi-source and multi-temporal data management) for providing a fully-automated and scalable toolbox of services, built in close interaction with its future customers. ENVISION will fully exploit the wealth of data made available through GEOSS and Copernicus and its synergetic use with other data to develop data products such as: Cultivated crop type maps; Soil Organic Carbon; Vegetation status; Crop growth (distinction of organic – conventional farming); Grassland mowing/ploughing; Soil erosion. The ENVISION toolbox will be comprised of: a monitoring service of sustainable agricultural practices, tools that PAs & CBs can provide to farmers for adhering to environmentally friendly agricultural practices, an Add-on Development Tool. The project will be tested and validated in a pre-operational environment by potential future customers of its products and services. ENVISION will have three categories of business cases (Monitoring of: multiple environmental and climate requirements of CAP, soil condition, organic farming requirements) and will also be tested by a group of Lighthouse Customers. A market analysis, business model experimentation techniques and appropriate decision-making tools will determine the commercially viable business models for the services and products of ENVISION, and define alternative business models, understand their implications and identify those that will create the greatest value.

The MINEYE (Earth Observation techniques for MINe lifE cYclE monitoring using ML-based data fusion approaches) consortium consists of 13 partners from nine European countries and aims to strengthen EU autonomy in primary and secondary raw materials, at the same time as reducing environmental impact. This is done by development of innovative cost-effective, time-efficient and competitive Earth Observation (EO) based methodologies and technologies for the entire mining value chain. MINEYE will integrate EO data with other data sources such as EuroGeoSource, ProMine, EGDI and will collect new EO, remote sensing, geophysical and in-situ data. MINEYE aims at developing novel data fusion and processing algorithms for EO technologies for the mineral exploration, operational, closure and post-closure stages. MINEYE unlocks the potential of EO data, including Copernicus, commercial satellites, upcoming hyperspectral missions, airborne as well as in situ data. This is achieved by creating generic innovative machine learning algorithms tailored to solve specific needs within the mining value chain. MINEYE’s overall objective and ambition is to increase the access to critical and strategic minerals and metals in Europe with full consideration of environmental and social aspects, by providing the mining industry with proven and validated solutions for uptake of EO data and technology. MINEYE's final product is a web-interface, IPOP (Interfacing, Programming and Optimisation Platform) for providing data and result. IPOP has three outputs each covering a specific part of the mining value chain: (1) methods for Mineral Prospectivity Mapping (2) EO plugin for LiquidEarth software for 3D modelling, (3) evaluation and maps of re-mining potential and tailings characterization. In addition, ground stability assessment and environmental monitoring are included to support the development of a socially responsible mining. IPOP further serves as a multi-criteria decision-making tool.

Public administrations responsible for the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) need to monitor farmers’ compliance to standards. Monitoring is performed by in-field visits and through remote sensing. Due to the high complexity and diversity of the obligations that need to be monitored, both methods have limitations, and entail a high cost for public administrations. RECAP proposes a methodology for improving the efficiency and transparency of the compliance monitoring procedure through a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform which will make use of large volumes of publicly available data provided by satellite remote sensing, and user-generated data provided by farmers through mobile devices (geo-referenced and time-stamped photos). The RECAP platform will extract useful features from Earth Observation open data, correlate them with user-generated and geo-information data available to public organisations, and model this information for enabling the identification of potential breaches of compliance by public authorities and inspectors. RECAP will offer farmers a tool supporting them to comply with regulations imposed by the CAP, providing personalised information for simplifying the interpretation of complex regulations, and early alerts on potential breaches. RECAP will allow agricultural consultants and developers to create add-ons to the main application that extend its functionality and exploit the data collected through an Application Programming Interface (API), and a Software Development Kit (SDK). Consultants will be able to access data available in the platform, subject to security and privacy policies, and to develop their own services within the platform using design tools, libraries, and communication with the database under an open approach. The RECAP services will be tested and validated in an operational environment in 5 countries with the participation of public authorities, farmers, and agricultural consultants.