Copernicus, the European Space program ensures free data availability and the organisational and financial framework to provide standardized information products in its service domains atmosphere, marine, land monitoring, climate change, emergency management and human security. A key to success to the market uptake process is knowledge exchange among all actors from the various sectors involved, notably research and educational institutions, industry, and the public sector. As a successful instrument to foster and stimulate this exchange, maximize the impact and additionally boost related capacity building and training activities, the Copernicus Academy has been anchored in the European Space Strategy. The present paper highlights some key activities to leverage the potential of this dynamically growing network of experts from universities and research institutions, public and private organizations, companies, stakeholders, and increase the benefit to its members. The vision of establishing both physical implementations of regional Copernicus hubs and virtual Copernicus hubs, built on key elements of the European Innovation strategy, is discussed. Regional hubs, attached e.g. to centres of excellence, are essential to meet local needs for exchange and
training to boost the user uptake. The increasing importance of virtual hubs is becoming evident as a critical means to maximise synergies among actors in the rapidly advancing technological areas. Proposed technical elements demonstrate innovative solutions to visualize and facilitate easy harvesting of the Copernicus Academy member´s expertise for different stakeholder and the public, and show cast possibilities of active involvement and exchange within the network. …read the full publication

CopHub.AC Citizen App – The Window to Copernicus Knowledge & Innovation

Markus Kerschbaumer, Peter Zeil, Kerstin Kulessa, Peter Baumann, Diana Vaiciute, Martynas Bucas, Valerio Tramutoli, Monica Miguel-Lago, Giorgio Saio, Christoph Schröder

The Copernicus application and web service will provide information about the Copernicus Academy to interested people. ‘All you need to know’ about the Copernicus Ecosystem will be available on ‘your’ device anytime. The user will be able to see who the network partners are and what they can provide (gateway, knowledge landscape). The focus of the CopHub.AC Citizen App is to spread information about Copernicus and the Copernicus Academy. Beyond this rather “dry” information, some playful and interactive ways are needed to gain the interest of the users. To this end, an interactive web map will show the broad public which information is freely available and therefore creates interest for the Copernicus services. …read the abstract

Research Capacity for Uptake and Evolution of Copernicus

Barbara Riedler, Stefan Lang, Peter Zeil, Nefeli Politi-Stergiou, Monica Miguel-Lago, Christoph Schröder, Valerio Tramutoli

The earth observation programme Copernicus provides freely available satellite and in-situ data and derived information products in its various service domains atmosphere, marine, and land monitoring, as well as climate change, emergency management and human security. The use of such data and services facilitates innovative solutions for challenges faced by the society. For such innovation to be realized, inventions from research need to be validated as robust and relevant through the adoption by user communities. The network of the Copernicus Academy with 150 members from research institutions is an invaluable pool of experts and application know-how from different domains and nations – in- and outside of Europe. …read the abstract

Efficient Transport Planning and Port Operation/Management in the Eastern Mediterranean through Geoinformatics

Marios Tzouvaras, Diofantos G. Hadjimitsis, Marinos Papadopoulos

Nowadays, countries on a macroscale and cities/neighbourhoods in a microscale, face many challenges associated with high population density and the protection of the environment. Transportation planning is one challenge that is directly linked to congestion-oriented problems such as traffic delays, greater fuel consumption, air pollution, investments in new infrastructure and is somewhat connected directly with our everyday life. One of the fundamental aspects that is always studied at the early stages of transportation planning is land use/land change. This affects transportation in general but more specifically in terms of transport planning, it affects greatly the stages of “trip generation” and “trip distribution”, i.e. the number of trips that is generated at and attracted by a specific area under study. …read the abstract