DIANA is aimed at co-designing and openly demonstrating a commercial service platform that will empower water managers and authorities to optimise the identification and inspection of non-authorised water abstractions for irrigation as well as improve their water management policies and practices, especially in extreme conditions such as drought. DIANA will leverage EO data provided by Copernicus and other data sources as well as state-of-the-art models for the identification of (illegally) irrigated areas and the estimation of abstracted water volumes in order to offer a value added suite of data products and services, that will be affordable and cost-effective. The value propositions of DIANA will be co-created and defined along with users and stakeholders so as to be shaped according to their needs and requirements. Three pilots will be deployed in order to put them to the test in real operational environments of Spain, Italy and Romania. All pilots will be integrated with the work flows of the users and their results will be co-evaluated and validated with them through a multi-layer methodology, fostering the acceptance of DIANA as a marketable solution. In order to ensure the demand-driven design of the DIANA service platform as well as set the stage for its market launch and uptake following the end of the project, a customer-driven business modelling process will be followed during the project, validating its business case and producing an effective business plan to serve as the roadmap for its post-project commercialization. Finally, DIANA is implemented by a transnational and well-balanced consortium, consisting of innovative SMEs and pioneering authorities, all of which possess the complementary expertise as well as the motivation and commitment required to ensure not only the creation of meaningful project outcomes but also their successful commercial exploitation and sustainability.

FATIMA addresses effective and efficient monitoring and management of agricultural resources to achieve optimum crop yield and quality in a sustainable environment. It covers both ends of the scale relevant for food production, viz., precision farming and the perspective of a sustainable agriculture in the context of integrated agri-environment management. It aims at developing innovative and new farm capacities that help the intensive farm sector optimize their external input (nutrients, water) management and use, with the vision of bridging sustainable crop production with fair economic competitiveness. Our comprehensive strategy covers five interconnected levels: a modular technology package (based on the integration of Earth observation and wireless sensor networks into a webGIS), a field work package (exploring options of improving soil and input management), a toolset for multi-actor participatory processes, an integrated multi-scale economic analysis framework, and an umbrella policy analysis set based on indicator-, accounting- and footprint approach. FATIMA addresses and works with user communities (farmers, managers, decision makers in the farm and agribusiness sector) at scales ranging from farm, over irrigation scheme or aquifer, to river-basins. It will provide them with maps of fertilizer and water requirements (to feed into precision farming machinery), crop water consumption and a range of further products for sustainable cropping management supported with innovative water-energy footprint frameworks. All information will be integrated in leading-edge participatory spatial online decision-support systems. The innovative FATIMA service concept considers the economic, environmental, technical, social, and political dimensions in an integrated way. FATIMA will be implemented and demonstrated in 8 pilot areas representative of key European intensive crop production systems in Spain, Italy, Greece, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Austria, France, Turkey.

SIEUSOIL will design, implement and test a shared China-EU Web Observatory platform that will provide Open Linked Data to monitor status and threats of soil and assist in decision making for sustainable support of agro-ecosystem functions, in view of the projected climate change. The Observatory platform will through customizable modules support the wise management of soil at field level and will provide showcase of good practices on soil management both for EU and China. The final target will be to support sustainable management of soil, increase land productivity sustainably, reduce crop yield variability across time and space, and support the policy formulation process. Innovative practices and tools will be tested in SIEUSOIL and their impact will be assessed for improved soil fertility and land suitability.

STARGATEs contribution beyond state-of-the-art in applied climatic data solutions is the implementation of analytics models to support local and regional policy formulation and implementation related to mitigation on microclimate changes. Currently, policy making organizations predominantly utilize own data, typically limited to their own jurisdiction/administrative area. However, once the policy development process expands the evidence base and data sources beyond the traditional approach, there is need for global data. The addition of national, European and even global reference data sets for comparative analysis — including meteorological, climatic analysis, satellite data sources to improve decision making processes. The studies at landscape scale are required to understand leading ecological processes. The focus will be on Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) and will extensively study the benefits of applying agri-environment-climate technical solutions to achieve sustainable agricultural development at landscape level. It means to support farm management modernization and at the same time get to know the underlying ecological factors that shape the farming landscape. STARGATE will leverage access to this data and also STARGATE climatic platform including developed models platforms to foster easy and affordable adoption by policy making bodies. The simples approach to decision support in policy development is effective visualization of data. Good visualization supports the policy developers’ in modelling sustainable policies and decisions. Unlike algorithmic simulation and modelling, visualization leaves the actual decision and assessment to a human user and thus provides an extra quality assurance before actual policy decisions are made. STARGATE provides innovative components for visualization of big data with a particular emphasis on geospatial visualization and advanced, dynamic charting.