PRESS RELEASE — €4.1M CENTURION H2020 PROJECT LAUNCHED
COPERNICUS DATACUBE AND AI SERVICES FOR SOCIETY, INDUSTRY AND NEW MARKET GENERATION
PROJECT CENTURION — H2020
A 36-month EU funded project driven by 10 partners from 7 EU countries, aiming to unleash Copernicus data use for larger Earth Observation (EO) and non-EO markets, by combining and advancing ground-breaking European innovations in spatio-temporal datacubes and AI, has been launched.
Funded by the EU, the CENTURION project officially started in May 2021. The project addresses major challenges in Earth Observation, and COPERNICUS big data management, and will deliver significant impact across the European Economy, Environment and Social Wellbeing.
Funded by the Horizon 2020 program, under Grant Agreement nº 101004311, CENTURION benefits from an overall budget of about 4.1M€ (see Fig. 1) to be expended over 36 months.
European competitiveness is strongly supported with a 67.5% and 7.5% of total budget for innovative SMEs and large industries, respectively. The consortium covers 7 countries (Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Switzerland) and includes 2 RTOs, 2 universities, 1 large enterprises and 5 SMEs. Coordinated by INLECOM, the consortium will also leverage the knowledge and support of the Advisory Board members from Germany (Airbus Defence and Space), and Norway (Kongsberg Satellite Services).
CENTURION in brief
The European Challenge — Integration, processing and analysis of Copernicus data
Copernicus is producing increasingly large data volumes that require specific Big Data technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods to analyse it and manage it. The adoption of Big Data technologies in the space industry represents a significant opportunity to innovate.
In addition, solving the big data management challenges of the integration, processing and analysis of Copernicus data with other distributed data sources from other industrial domains other than Space will open up new market avenues and strengthen European leadership in earth observation applications and technologies.
CENTURION is a European-funded project focused on addressing all these challenges.
How CENTURION will solve it
CENTURION aims to unleash Copernicus data use for larger EO and non-EO markets, by combining and advancing ground-breaking European innovations in spatio-temporal datacubes and AI.
This will improve analysis and management capabilities and deliver timely valuable services to enable effortless use of Earth observations Data (EOD), fostering a service ecosystem of freely combinable open and paid offerings by industry, agencies, research, and universities.
To achieve these aims, CENTURION activities include development and assessment of novel software and technologies according to end users requirements, validation in use cases, dissemination, standardization, and exploitation. CENTURION will validate the project objectives in a specific, tailored set of 5 use cases. These use cases are only exemplary, they will likewise be applicable (and will be marketed actively) to many further domains, including (but not limited to) agriculture, environment, forestry, maritime and marine applications, in-land water management, disaster mitigation, even security & defence, as well as bespoke free and commercial services. The project will create a unique community, a new “Earth Observation Helix” to maximise clustering and dissemination to all the relevant stakeholders (researchers, industries, investors, municipalities, policy makers, NGOs, Society).
An interdisciplinary, vibrant, industry led consortium, formed by 10 partners, with recognized expertise, experience, skills, resources, infrastructure and position in the fields of Copernicus satellite data pre-processing, processing, fusion and analysis, supervised and unsupervised machine learning Artificial Intelligence, Agriculture, Forestry, Intellectual Property Rights, Standardisation, Ecosystem development, Cloud Platforms and Large scale ICT Service delivery, is prepared to achieve these goals. Finally, CENTURION will contribute to the objectives of the Europe’s part of the Group on Earth Observations (EuroGEO) and a worldwide network working to build a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).
Contact
Inlecom Group BV — Anna George:
marketing@inlecomsystems.com
OPT/NET BV — Mohan Rao:
marketing@opt-net.eu
Crowdhelix Ltd — Dr. Estefanía Ledesma Santiso:
Estefania.ledesma@crowdhelix.com
For more information, please visit:
www.copernicus-project.eu
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004311. This publication reflects only the author’s views and the European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.
