CyanoAlert will be a global service for the environmental authorities and commercial sector, concerned by health risks and quality of water resources. The proposed project will deliver a fully automated application for assessing toxin producing cyanobacteria blooms in water resources globally, using ground-breaking Copernicus Earth Observation technology. The service foresees a dual dissemination system that provides user-specific information for monitoring and reporting purposes to customers, and a free and open information service for the public based on mobile telecommunication. South African and European SMEs will partner with users in the environmental authority and commercial sector, in order to establish a sustainable supply chain, based on a sound business model, to bring this innovative service to market.

The main objective of the proposal is to bring the many facets and faces of people working in ocean science & research to the general public of Europe by organising a series of interconnected EU Blue Researchers Nights (BlueNIGHTs) to demonstrate that the ocean can be a source of inspiration, an object of interest/study, and a field of investigation for people with very different backgrounds, hobbies and passions, including science, history, technology, sociology, pedagogy, economics, art, design, etc. By doing so, this collective project will: - Bring people to key objectives, principles and priorities of the European Green Deal that relate to the ocean: delivering a healthy and resilient ocean that can support sustainable Blue Growth and respond to Societal Priorities of Europe. - Contribute to make European citizens Ocean Literate in line with the objectives and priorities of EU4Ocean Coalition, an initiative supported by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE). The project will build on the following principles: - Collective and truly European - mobilising organisations from each EU RSAs to prepare activities and events for presenting their own research/scientific activities. - Interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary/transdisciplinary - the partner organisations from different EU MS will represent a diversity of disciplinary fields and research skills/experiences that are focusing on the ocean, and on the complex connections between human activities and ocean ecosystems. - Immersive, inclusive and interconnected - by combining: (a) an interactive and practical experiences on the spot (in each of the partners location) building on doing, touching, gaming, trying, exploring; (b) an interactive virtual experience, by way of an innovative virtual reality technology, that will allow the public to explore both the ocean and researchers activities by simulating real life working conditons.

Whilst citizen participation in environmental policy making is still in its infancy, there are signs of a growing level of interest. The majority of citizens, though, both as individuals and as groups often feel disengaged from influencing environmental policies. They also remain unaware of publicly available information, such as the GEOSS or Copernicus initiatives. The SCENT project will alleviate this barrier. It will enable citizens to become the ‘eyes’ of the policy makers by monitoring land-cover/use changes in their everyday activities. This is done through a constellation of smart collaborative technologies delivered by the SCENT toolbox in TRLs 6-8: i) low-cost and portable data collection tools, ii) an innovative crowd-sourcing platform, iii) serious gaming applications for a large-scale image collection and semantic annotation, iv) a powerful machine-learning based intelligence engine for image and text classification, v) an authoring tool for an easy customization by policy makers, vi) numerical models for mapping land-cover changes to quantifiable impact on flood risks and vii) a harmonization platform, consolidating data and adding it to GEOSS and national repositories as OGC-based observations. SCENT will be evaluated in two large scale demonstrations in Kifisos Attica and Danube Delta. Our consortium covers the complete stakeholder chain: industries in machine learning (IBM), SMEs in crowd-sourcing (U-Hopper), gaming (Xteam) and awareness raising (Carr), leading research institutes with expertise in hydrodynamic modelling (UNESCO-IHE), data harmonization and authoring tools (ICCS) and environmental monitoring (DDNI), NGOs at the pilot sites (HRTA, SOR) and policy makers/public bodies (Region of Attica). The SCENT initiative will go beyond the current project and form a European-wide citizen movement, created and fostered by the SCENT stakeholders, that will ensure its sustainability and its complementarity with existing citizen partnerships.

Biodiversity is under severe pressure due to a myriad of problems, including but not limited to habitat fragmentation, overexploitation, climate change, pollution, invasive species and hunting. Changes in land and sea use can lead to conflict situations with production animals and/or human communities (human-wildlife conflict). The exploitation of natural resources brings with it illegal activities: poaching of species of flora and fauna that have a high value on the (black) market, trading of rare and exotic animals and plants and setting fire to forestry and nature areas to force land-use designation changes to agriculture or commercial uses. To ensure that ecosystems are healthy, resilient to climate change and rich in biodiversity to keep delivering the essential range of services, we need better understanding of why and where biodiversity is declining and what the key triggers are. We propose a model-driven and continuous form of ecosystem monitoring. By assessing not only numbers of species and state, but also the modelled ecological and anthropogenic processes within an ecosystem, we are able to find cause-effect relations and improve our monitoring models based on retrofits and simulations to understand changes even better. The models (Digital Twins), are thus a means for learning and the creation of context to translate environmental observations into facts and actionable information (intelligence) for site managers and policy makers. As almost all pressures on biodiversity are man-induced, we combine the domains of ecology and forensic science. This novel approach gives us access to robust scientific methods to detect and recognise (traces of) human (illegal) activities that negatively affect the environment. We will make use of remote sensing & data science (e.g AI, semantics). To ensure that theory, models and practice reinforce each other, we use an iterative approach, including many demonstrations and field-tests to gain feedback and maximize impact.

SoS2LearnDBS aims to drive community-led restoration of oceans, seas, and waters, by applying a comprehensive, multi-pillar approach to the Danube River basin and Black Sea region. By enhancing water literacy and community engagement through cooperative learning and capacity-building programs, the project will empower local stakeholders to implement innovative solutions across multiple areas, including technological, nature-based, social, cultural, regulatory, financial, and governance approaches. Strategic planning and adaptive management will support the creation of transition agendas that align with regional and EU environmental restoration goals. Two forms of cascade funding (FSTP) and technical assistance will be provided to communities of actors, emphasizing practical skills, resource access, and social innovation to ensure sustainable and scalable restoration efforts. Initiatives benefiting from this funding must make a clear contribution to the Mission Ocean objectives and targets of protecting and restoring marine and freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity, preventing and eliminating pollution, and/or advancing a carbon-neutral, circular blue economy. The project will implement a robust monitoring and evaluation framework to track progress and incorporate continuous feedback to optimize outcomes. Communication, dissemination, and exploitation activities will leverage digital platforms, gamification, and interactive tools to engage a wide range of stakeholders and maximize the project’s reach and impact. SoS2LearnDBS will align with existing EU initiatives, including the Mission Ocean Implementation Platform and other Lighthouse projects, contributing to the broader objective of restoring Europe’s marine and freshwater ecosystems by 2030. The consortium’s geographical span and expertise uniquely position it to support the transition to the deployment and upscaling phase of Mission Ocean, fostering impactful and lasting change.