Water is increasingly recognized as the most relevant resource of the 21th century, and UN Water recommends in sustainable water investments to prevent future conflicts. Significant social and economical impacts are associated with changes of water quality in inland waters. It is almost impossible to think, in the 21st Century, that water industries and governments would produce sustainable economic and ecological development plans on water without reasonable information on hand. Accordingly, an increasing demand from water industries, including aquaculture, water construction or dam operators, insurers, development banks and water agencies on actual or long-term historic water related information is observed. The eoFRESH service responds to the increasing demand with an independent multi-satellite based monitoring solution, as only traditional in-situ methodologies are capable neither to retrieve historic information, nor to provide actual harmonized information for a huge number of inland waters. eoFRESH combines the monitoring capabilities of an increasing number of historic, actual and future satellite missions, allowing nowadays up to daily global observations and going back in time for 30 years for millions of water bodies and rivers globally. eoFRESH starts with the provision of relevant globally harmonized water quality measures (e.g. turbidity and related suspended matter, phytoplankton concentration). The service is characterised by three key features: Independency with globally harmonized and valid and consistent measures, extremely cost-efficiency through fully automated production on free accessible satellite missions, extremely easy information uptake through access from web-services and applications. Within the Phase 1 feasibility study it is the core intention to summarize all the necessary information, including technical and economic aspects which are relevant to provide a sound roadmap to bring the eoFRESH service to the market.

Coastal zones are critical regions, accommodating a significant proportion of the global population and hosting diverse ecosystems that provide essential services. Coastal “Blue carbon” ecosystems, such as mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes, play a crucial role in carbon sequestration and storage, biodiversity and coastal protection. Despite their socio-economic and biological importance, they face numerous threats from human activities and climate change, necessitating their conservation and management. Mapping, modelling and monitoring coastal zones using Earth Observation (EO) data is essential for this task. It needs to consider the complex coastal dynamics, past and future change scenarios, and the interaction between Blue Carbon and the coastal zone dynamics. By integrating EO data, advanced modelling techniques, and detailed process-based morphodynamic models, COASTS aims to develop a downstream service for coastal observation, with a focus on Blue Carbon. This service, utilizing Copernicus Marine and other initiatives, will provide govern. stakeholders and coastal planning with relevant information for developing coastal management strategies, including the assessment of blue carbon habitats and their environmental services. Further, COASTS will develop innovative methods and comprehensive analyses to create new business models related to emergent blue carbon markets and will offer new international income sources for countries with blue carbon ecosystem presence. COASTS will initially focus on pilot sites in Germany, Jersey, and the Maldives where govern. customers have a demand and support the project. The learnings from these examples will form a blueprint for broader application in other regions in response to a growing global need. Supported by an interdisciplinary team and strong links with governmental institutions, the COASTS project presents an innovative, scaleable and sustainable approach to coastal conservation and blue carbon management.

4S will address a current data and solution gaps from coastal and offshore stakeholders, which are the ability to generate and access spatial and recent information on seabed, such as benthic habitat, morphology, depth and change and trends. Digital information on these are crucial to respond to EC maritime directive, environmental impact studies and engineering offshore activities. We will address this gap by developing an online, cloud based software, named 4S – Satellite Seafloor Survey Suite – which empowers the users to benefit from satellite capabilities and specific aquatic EO algorithms. 4S Suite will have APIs allowing to integrate it into hydrographic software and user’s workflows, as will developed and demonstrated. 4S will harness Copernicus data together with US satellite lidar data and – optionally – integrate client airborne (drone) imagery and on-site data. The underlying algorithms, which will reach highest TRL level during the project duration, will address aspects of physical modelling, machine learning and sensor fusion procedures and will introduce breakthroughs of the current state of the art. Both, algorithm innovations and the webapp, will be jointly designed and evaluated with the users, of which some are part of the project team. Other stakeholders, many of which have signed supporting letters, will participate in 7 use cases which cover four countries, the Caribbean and several selected sites globally. With this intense evaluation and co-design we will achieve a reliable evaluation of the process and global outreach to the offshore and coastal stakeholders. The development of a sustainable business based on 4S will be driven by the industry partners, which contribute with 52% of the workload. Based on the existing solution gap we expect a continuous and strong increase in the user uptake and thus economic sustainability, which will lead to the growth of the European blue economy and, as social benefit, directly respond to the UNSDG 14.

BASE-platform provides an innovative service for satellite derived bathymetric data for a broad range of users through a commercial service platform. Bathymetry is the measure of the water depth similar to underwater topography. BASE-platform has the ambition to establish a commercial service platform for bathymetric data, which is sharpened to user needs and provides most easy access. Its impact is expected to significantly influence the current market, its survey methodologies and the way bathymetric data can be accessed and used. Up-to date bathymetric data are essential for multiple purposes such as navigation, port and offshore construction, security, coastal zone management, fishery, cruising and tourism and required accordingly by various user groups. Conventional survey methods are either ship or airplane based and costly and time consuming. For these reasons, extended areas of shallow and deep water areas in Europe and worldwide are not mapped within an adequate accuracy or existing data are out of date. Earth Observation data, especially the Copernicus mission will play a key role to overcome this lack of data. BASE-platform focuses on Satellite Derived Bathymetry (SDB) as an innovative, rapid and cost effective approach to determine bathymetry from space. SDB in combination with hydrodynamic models to minimize tidal effects and crowd sourced bathymetric for validation purposes will provide those data. The BASE-platform service will be accessible through a commercial platform, which includes relevant components for a sustainable and client focused business. The services will be demonstrated, validated and improved in use cases. Relevant key players are involved for this purpose. The economic benefits of this new EO service will be analysed in a business analysis and model. Finally several dissemination actions will race awareness and increase the potential client group.