The Entrepreneurship Area will be responsible for ensuring the sustainability of the ERATOSTHENES CoE and stimulating national and regional growth, through the exploitation of the IPR, licensing of innovation, and market uptake of new EO-based products, services and solutions generated by the ERATOSTHENES CoE and the members of the Consortium. ERATOSTHENES CoE adopts a Multi-Actor approach, where stakeholders participate in the co-design, co-creation, commercialisation and promotion of novel remote sensing products, services.
The ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence Knowledge Hub will also be created, with the aim to facilitate ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence cross-departmental and external access to state-of-the-art IP.
In a wider perspective, the added-value of the Knowledge Hub instrument and its expected impacts can be summarized as follows:
A key element of success for the ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence research groups is to meet the “excellence” and “capacity building” criteria. It is essential that research groups will represent the very best expertise in the thematic area in question (“excellence”) and have full research support by the EXCELSIOR partners to enter in each thematic field, in order to develop skills and participate in local, EMMENA, European and international cooperation (“capacity building”). In this context, the hub will allow researchers to join forces, to collaborate and to share expertise, results and data, infrastructures and develop research capacity. The network of researcher groups, once selected, is entitled to develop a joint research plan and to carry out joint integrating and multilateral activities between partners, collaborators and stakeholders. An initial task for the Knowledge Hub members can be to integrate a programme of activities, such as educational, training, research and integrating activities.
The ERATOSTHENES CoE Living Labs Program is a long-term plan for a combination of research infrastructure compilation and network for collaboration between academia and stakeholders as well as interested entities, leading to implementation of scientific principles in sectors other than academia, for the combined benefit of the society and the economy.
The ongoing development of the ERATOSTHENES CoE Living Labs program follows the European Network of Living Labs (ENOLL) guidelines for every case of thematic area Living Lab, providing the five essential elements of a Living Lab: (1) active user involvement, (2) real-life setting, (3) multi-stakeholder participation, (4) multi-method approach, and (5) co-creation among the main actors of a Quadruple Helix Model, namely citizens, government, industry, and academia. Following the emerging trends of responsible innovation, the newly established living labs have embraced the quintuple helix model as an evolution from the previous quadruple helix model. This updated framework introduces a fifth component, the sustainable environment, which utilizes remote sensing technologies.
The two Living Labs are proposed in the thematic areas of Atmosphere and Agriculture, further described in this report. Initially, the program intended to expand by establishing separate Living Labs for additional thematic areas (e.g., Water Resources Management, Solar Energy). However, after a thorough analysis, it was decided to merge these thematic areas with the existing labs rather than creating distinct living labs for each. This strategic decision fosters synergies and enables a more integrated approach to tackle the interconnections and shared challenges among the different thematic areas within the living labs program.
During the EXCELSIOR project, ERATOSTHENES CoE aims to develop a Living Labs Program in coordination with strategic partners. The ERATOSTHENES CoE Living Labs main objective is to enable ERATOSTHENES CoE staff and third parties the hands-on reuse of data generated by the ERATOSTHENES CoE, as well as measurements and tools, to experiment, test and maintain new value chains utilizing remote sensing technologies for forming a sustainable environment. Also, the Living Labs program will attempt to maximize the Open Innovation potential of the new Centre of Excellence. Furthermore, following a thorough analysis aimed at determining and updating the mission and vision of the established Living Labs, it has been identified that these labs will play a significant role in assisting ERATOSTHENES CoE in achieving its goal of becoming a world-class Digital Innovation Hub for Earth Observation, space technology, and Geospatial Information and serving as the reference Centre in the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East, and North Africa (EMMENA). This strategic alignment ensures that the Living Labs program contributes effectively to ERATOSTHENES CoE’s overarching objectives and enhances its position as a leading entity in the specified domains.
The ERATOSTHENES CoE Living Labs programme will be an open innovation eco-system for big EO data innovation in the EMMENA region, where DIH academics, students, researchers, industry members, policy makers and end-users can come together to generate and validate ideas for achieving a sustainable environment in EMMENA region utilizing EO services. The programme will involve close interaction with end-users of potential products/services in a user co-design, co-creation multi-actor approach (MAA). This programme will attempt to be an intermediate space in the DIH between academia, local/national Government, private companies and ERATOSTHENES CoE’s Research Competence Centres, to test and study new solutions for real-life problems with swift prototyping or validation.
Moreover, the newly established Living Labs will support the ERATOSTHENES CoE’s target of co-designing/co-developing/co-monitoring upstream and downstream activities related to environmental and sustainable development solutions. Therefore, ERATOSTHENES CoE Living Labs will play a pivotal role in promoting knowledge exchange, stakeholder collaboration, and evidence-based decision-making in the field of environmental sustainability. By integrating co-created upstream and downstream activities, both Living Labs will help bridge the gap between research and implementation, enabling the development and adoption of sustainable practices and solutions in diverse domains and ultimately leading to more integrated and sustainable agricultural value environmental chains. This enhancement will lead to the development of real-life testing environments that are more robust, user-centric, impactful, effective, and aligned with stakeholders’ specific needs and preferences, thereby aligning with the primary objective of ERATOSTHENES CoE Living Labs to become Lighthouses of innovation and transferring knowledge in the EMMENA region and therefore, operate as real-life demonstration environments.
The ERATOSTHENES CoE Asset Sharing Policy is a report regarding the identification of available resources and assets for co-exploitation with third parties and the definition of policies and licensing scenarios. Asset sharing helps to identify the types and opportunities arising from asset sharing, the types of asset sharing and how to establish asset sharing policies. Asset sharing is based on the Business Model, which focuses on value facilitation, value delivery and value capture.
Asset sharing is vital to drive scientific innovation and maximise opportunities for ambitious projects, including advice and support to users. The ERATOSTHENES CoE will possess state-of-the-art equipment such as DASH (Earth Observation Satellite Data Acquisition Station Hosting) and GBS (Ground-based Remote Sensing Station), which they can share with the research community and industry. Such collaboration will result in cost savings, based on the use of asset sharing.
The types of asset sharing that the ERATOSTHENES CoE will provide includes:
Asset sharing will provide the opportunity to cooperate with strategic partners, associated partners and third parties within a set of agreed-upon parameters. All asset sharing will include the ERATOSTHENES CoE’s resources, including scientific and technical personnel, use of infrastructure and data sharing.
The asset sharing policy should include both ERATOSTHENES CoE acting as the entity sharing its own asset with a partner as well as ERATOSTHENES CoE acting as a recipient of an asset shared by a partner.
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