Europe has rich and diverse cultural heritage resources, which include urban and rural landscapes, comprising standing monuments and archaeological remains. Nowadays Europe’s Cultural Heritage (CH) is at risk, endangered by environmental processes and anthropogenic pressures. Physical and chemical destruction and degradation of structures and artefacts amplify the natural deterioration and reduce the ability of the soil to preserve CH. In addition to physical damages, the intensive human activities and the effects of climate changes are responsible of the increase of soil erosion affecting structure stability and producing significant negative consequences on the conservation of the archaeological artefacts. In this scenario, authorities in charge to CH preservation have a strong requirement for systematic, effective, usable and affordable tools and services to monitor the degradation process to enable preventive maintenance and to reduce the cost of the restoration. The broad spectra of Satellite Earth Observations (EO) provide the ideal platform to undertake a wide range of effective, cost-efficient and up-to-date programmable analysis, as a support to traditional tools. RESEARCH addresses the design and development of a multi-task platform, combining advanced remote sensing technologies with GIS application for mapping and long term monitoring of archaeological CH in order to identify changes due to climate changes and anthropic pressures. The EO processing chain will address the major risks affecting CH including the degradation due to soil erosion, land movement and vegetation as well as risks due to anthropic pressure. RESEARCH will coordinate the existing expertise and research efforts of seven beneficiaries into a synergetic plan of collaborations and exchanges of personnel to offer a comprehensive transfer of knowledge and training environment for the researchers in the specific area.

Europe’s Cultural Heritage (CH) is at risk, endangered by environmental processes enhanced by climate changes and anthropogenic pressure. Specifically the slow (landslides, subsidence) and seismic (earthquake) movements of the ground have a strong impact on the structural stability of the CH. To have an idea of the dimension of the phenomena, the damage on the CH asset declared by the Italian Ministry of CH, caused by the recent earthquakes in Centre Italy, has been assessed in 2 Billion Eur. In this scenario, authorities in charge to CH preservation have a strong requirement for systematic, effective, usable and affordable tools and services to forecast and monitor the degradation process to enable preventive maintenance and to reduce the cost of the restoration. STABLE addresses the design and development of a Thematic Platform, combining structural stability models, damage assessment simulation tools, advanced remote sensing, in-situ monitoring technologies, geotechnics and cadastral data sets with WebGIS application for mapping and long term monitoring of CH. This will enable effective monitoring and management of the CH to prevent, or at least reduce, catastrophic damages. STABLE will coordinate the existing expertise and research efforts of the participant beneficiaries into a synergetic plan of collaborations and exchanges of personnel to offer a comprehensive transfer of knowledge and training environment for the researchers in the specific area. The development of Platform will constitute for scientist the way to share and improve CH safeguard methods, and to professionals to apply the most advanced technologies in the related fields.

In 2020 Europe went through a very significant economic and social crisis, namely the response to the disease of Coronavirus. Over 200 million European citizens were obliged to observe restrictive measures, in some cases lock down measures, in order for governments and local authorities of the Member States of the European Union to address and limit the problem of the spread of the virus. Through this situation a number of problems emerged, one of which relates to the management of building utilities under such conditions. Specifically, in a very few days most of the activity of the European Economy shifted from the office environment to homes, leading to several problems in relation to with the completeness and integrity of utilities such as power outages, water shortage and insufficient internet connection. The initiative entitled Development of Utilities Management Platform for the case of Quarantine and Lockdown - eUMaP aims to implement all those activities that will lead to the development of an open platform through which local authorities will be able to plan and manage the demand and supply of building utilities in case of quarantine or lock down. The platform will be developed through a Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) program. eUMaP platform will be based on the rational of earth observation, and the recording of the required network information in open BIM platforms of five European capital cities (Rome, Berlin, Athens, Vilnius, Nicosia). The platform will be piloted in study areas with the aim of optimizing it and delivering it as an open platform upon completion of the program.

Landscape is a key element of individual and social well-being. Although its protection, management and planning is acknowledged by the European Landscape Convention of the Council of Europe since 2000, not much has been done for this treaty's comprehensive implementation. TOPIO aims to give people an active role in decision-making on landscape by means of Citizen Science, Geoinformatics (Earth Observation and GIS), Artificial Intelligence and Public Participation to promote the area's sustainable development. - TOPIO will position the landscape as a key concept in addressing broader challenges such as the Faro Convention Plan, Aarhus Convention, UN sustainable development goals, the EU Green deal etc. - it will provide innovative, international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral training for the researchers of TOPIO partners, based on training activities and mobility actions, in a range of different disciplines - achieve advanced innovation and capacity building through developing a research and training network that will focus its activities on developing, effectively integrating, and increasing utilization of existing and emerging Landscape monitoring techniques. - reinforce the socio-cultural and environmental dimensions of the landscape and its role in defining operative and integrative frameworks supporting sustainable development at local and regional levels. Through the application of Landscape Character Assessment methodologies in seven European countries - exchange information on landscape policies and peoples experience concerning protection, management and planning, public participation and implementation at different scales and levels TOPIO will integrate and synthesize project findings suitable for awareness raising, readily communicable to a wide audience, and relevant for policy negotiations. Furthermore, the project will maintain a dialogue with relevant stakeholders and will provide recommendations for policy makers.

Space technology connected with Artificial Intelligence and machine learning techniques is one of the most rapidly developing field of science and also play a key role to control disaster by space like Covid-19 outbreak. While space technologies have been successfully applied to a small number of macroeconomy and heath care related matters over the last decade, there is neither a significant utilization of space elements nor a systematic analysis of needs for space assets in this sector yet. There are a significant number of indirect parameters observable from space that can be correlated to the impact on the economy of natural, health (including epidemic) and man-made disasters. Classical environment parameters (geographical, climatological and hydrogeological) and man induced impact on the environment (pollution, heat) can be combined with economic parameters of human activities impacted by the epidemic including transportation, industry, and commerce. Specific human activities can be directly correlated with the progression of the diseases i.e. increase of heat delivered by crematorium in the affected areas as well as in the dwelling areas due to lock-down restrictions. All these “observed parameters” need to be correlated to macro parameters related to the progress of the epidemic and its impact of the of the infection to the economy at different scales. At medium- and long-term time scale, this methodology enables the near real-time monitoring of macroeconomic parameters during the recovery phase following the end of the emergency outbreak. The project EYE intends to propose a prototype service based on Copernicus data, automatic image processing supported by artificial intelligence integrated with modelling and statistic and geospatial data into an IT platform able to provide econometric and epidemiologic nowcasting and forecasting data.