Digital Innovation Hub1

The main concept behind the ECoE is to be a fully functional Digital Innovation Hub and a Research Excellence Centre for EO in the EMMENA region, creating an ecosystem where the state-of-the-art sensing equipment, cutting- edge research, targeted education services and entrepreneurship come together. It is based on the paradigm of Open Innovation 2.0 (OI2.0), which is based on the Quadruple Helix Model, where government, industry, academia and society work together to drive change by taking full advantage of the cross-fertilisation of ideas.

ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence (ECoE) as a Regional Digital Innovation Hub for EO in EMMENA:

The ECoE as a Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) adopts a two-axis model. In line with the ECoE Vision, the horizontal axis consists of three Thematic Clusters for sustained excellence in research of the ECoE, namely: Environment and Climate, Resilient Societies and Big Earth Data Management.

In particular, the following application domains will be addressed within each Thematic Clusters:

Environment and Climate

• Climate Change Monitoring, by establishing an active remote sensing supersite in Cyprus monitoring climate, including aerosols, clouds, dust and pollution in the EMMENA region using the relevant expertise from TROPOS. (Calibration/validation supersite – GBS)

Resilient Society

• Disaster Risk Reduction, by transferring relevant expertise from NOA’s BEYOND Centre of Excellence for EO-based monitoring of natural disasters.
• Access to Energy, by combining EO data, with physical modelling and machine learning to focus on energy nowcasting, projections, and short-term forecasting, using the relevant expertise from NOA. (EMMENA Solar Energy Observatory)
• Water resource management, resulting from climate change variables, including droughts, water shortages, water quality, freshwater aquifers and land desertification, using the relevant expertise from DLR.

Big Earth Data Analytics

Data management and analytics, for researching explorative algorithms to improve information retrieval from petabytes of remotely sensed data, using the relevant expertise from NOA and DLR (Big Earth Data Analytics)

The ECoE engages with the complete ecosystem of stakeholders in a Multi-Actor approach, linking with players segmented according to their geographic location (from central Europe, to South-Eastern Europe, to EMMENA region), their position in the EO value chain (from EO data providers, to science laboratories and research institutes, to SMEs and large industries) and their mandate (from Public Sector, to sectorial coordination organisations, to economic development banks, etc).

The ECoE will exploit the networks that the EXCELSIOR partners are members of to facilitate capacity building, knowledge transfer, research partnerships, etc. Specifically,

• The Infrastructure Area will be responsible for the seamless use of the existing and future ECoE infrastructure, their proper operations and the unobstructed access to EO data by the ECoE staff and stakeholders.
• The Research Area will be responsible for the development of science and research which later on will lead into the development of ECoE services.
• The Education Area will sustain the development and operation of ECoE as a Regional Digital Innovation Hub. The specific activities of the Education area include the MSc & PhDs hosting programme, a Skills Development Centre and a Professional Training Programme.
• The Entrepreneurship Area will be responsible for ensuring the sustainability of the ECoE 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 ECoE and the Strategic Partners.