The Horizon 2020 (H2020) project ECoLaSS (Evolution of Copernicus Land Services based on Sentinel data) was conducted from 2017–2019 and addressed the H2020 Work Programme 5.iii. Leadership in Enabling and Industrial technologies - Space, specifically the Topic EO-3-2016: Evolution of Copernicus services. ECoLaSS particularly addressed the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) evolution, developing and prototypically demonstrating selected innovative products and methods as candidates for future next-generation operational products of the pan-European and Global Land components.
For this purpose, ECoLaSS tested, demonstrated and assessed the operational readiness of several such candidate products over representative European and African demonstration sites. This comprised a benchmarking of the prototype products’ innovation potential and technical excellence, automation level, potential for roll-out to pan-European level and/or global scale, timeliness for operational implementation, political support, costs versus benefits, etc. Finally, ECoLaSS suggested some of these prototype products for implementation, providing full documentation and validation account, as well as full download functionality of all project results.
Technically, ECoLaSS made full use of high-volume processing of dense time series of High-Resolution (HR) Sentinel-2 optical and Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data from the early days of their availability. Rapidly evolving scientific and technical developments (such as cloud-based time series processing, machine learning, Copernicus Data and Information Infrastructures – DIAS) have been anticipated and tested as part of the envisaged future operational service environment. Relevant user requirements have been continuously assessed and analysed in a close stakeholder interaction and consultation process, targeting a future pan-European roll-out of the investigated new CLMS products, and assessing the potential transferability to global applications.
The project’s ambition has been to directly support the key CLMS stakeholders in taking informed decisions on related future service procurements as (part of) the next generation of Copernicus Land services from 2020 onwards. ECoLaSS had been explicitly designed as a flanking activity to complement the “standard” CLMS development and maintenance operations that are regularly undertaken by the Copernicus Entrusted Entities (i.e. EEA and JRC), through pursuing dedicated, systematic research & development endeavors targeting a longer-term, state-of-the-art portfolio evolution, which would otherwise have been tricky to systematically investigate and demonstrate through the available means of said entities. Through this, ECoLaSS is contributing to the emergence of enhanced and accelerated future European environmental monitoring capacities, in support of various European and international environmental protection and biodiversity conservation policies.
