Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Copernicus is providing Europe with large volumes of Earth Observation data as well as six Services: Atmosphere, Marine, Land, Security, Emergency and Climate Change. This opens up the possibility to develop a wide range of applications for businesses and policy-making, including ones that are transversal across several or all of the six services.
• Projects will enhance existing applications or develop new applications and products relying on Copernicus data and services, making impact on users, businesses and/or answering needs from public authorities, e.g. support policy making and implementation such as for the Green Deal or Destination Earth or the Horizon Europe missions.
• Projects will contribute to increasing the integration and uptake of Copernicus data, services and applications in the European economy, in particular the European data economy.

Applications will build on Copernicus data and the latest evolutions of the Copernicus services and may combine these with other sources of data or services, including those based on in situ/ground-based information and, where relevant, other space capacities like data collection, satcom, navigation, in particular the European satellite positioning/navigation/timing services and EGNSS technologies.

Targeted areas should be:

1) Copernicus applications downstream of the Copernicus Emergency service for better preparedness of local authorities, citizen, local industries and services to more frequent extreme events, geohazards, prediction insurances, preparing for a better resilience to climate change, for better local emergency management and short-term recovery.

2) Copernicus applications downstream of the Copernicus Security service or exploiting the combination of Sentinels with national contribution missions or new space services to develop national to local services supporting resilience to upcoming major pan-European crisis like pandemics and the social and economic consequences of it.

3) Copernicus applications downstream of the Marine service, with special focus on biodiversity conservation, maritime spatial planning, local and demersal fisheries, coastal to shore services, new sources of pollution from land, blue carbon farming as well as applications addressing the objectives of the EU mission on ‘Restore our oceans and waters’ lighthouses. The applications shall build on existing infrastructure (e.g. Copernicus DIAS) and services (e.g. Copernicus Marine Service) to create solutions which can be practically utilised by policy- and/or decision-makers, industry actors and/or controlling agents to support processes that reinforce sustainable use of resources, alleviating pressure on marine ecosystems.

4) Copernicus applications downstream of the Land service for better land use and/or natural resources planning (e.g. supply chain management for the raw materials sector) and for citizen awareness and reporting of environmental and biodiversity protection issues, using the new and improved land service products such as the ground motion service products, for industrial ecosystem development, land cover/use layers and inland water indicators.

5) Applications downstream of the Climate Change Service for including e.g. improved forecast and preparedness aimed to counteract extreme climate events and/or integrating Sentinel Data and other climate datasets in decision-support systems in the area of Agriculture, Energy (e.g. planning and assessment for renewable energy resources), Hydrology, Health, Disaster Risk Reduction, insurances (e.g. climate-risks related insurances) and/or the finance sector (e.g. green loans).

6) Applications downstream of the Atmosphere Monitoring Service that tailor, refine and combine the products for serving users particularly in the areas of air quality, health, biodiversity, wildfires monitoring and greenhouse gases.

A proposal should address only one area, which should be clearly indicated.

Projects are expected to engage with the entrusted entities in the frame of the Copernicus Core Services for the development and validation of relevant services using heterogeneous data sources.

In order to give confidence that expected outcomes will be delivered by the projects, proposals are requested to:

• Clearly identify the targeted businesses and/or needs from public authorities;
• Quantify the outcome of the projects on these, including on the targeted policies where relevant;
• Describe how they plan to use the existing Copernicus data and Services, Copernicus DIAS platforms and give feedback to these e.g. with recommendations yielding improved quality and integrated data management;
• Where relevant, demonstrate how they build on previously developed and existing applications;
• Present a clear exploitation plan describing the pathway for the use of the application(s) after the project completion as well as a business plan and/or a strategy of adoption by public authorities which includes financing perspectives, the challenge to overcome as well as address barriers/issues which might hinder their exploitation;
• Demonstrate how the application answers the needs of users, public authorities and private sector and associate these in the course of the projects, including for public authorities;
• Rely on state-of-the-art digital technologies (e.g. AI, Big Data, HPC) which have the capacity to exploit and process large volumes of data and make use of existing European data infrastructures (e.g. DIAS);
• If applicable, integrate other data sources, services and models, in particular, where relevant, in combination with EGNSS services and its differentiators;
• Address issues such as data quality, uncertainty and errors as well as standardisation aspects where relevant.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.