Changes in rural areas, such as depopulation, land abandonment and the loss of biodiversity, may proceed very slowly yet are often irreversible. Policymakers can steer these developments in order to reduce their negative impacts but this requires knowing whether current policy instruments are effective, who is benefiting from them and in what measure, what driving forces will be most influential and how they will affect people, planet, profits and land-use. To be truly useful, this knowledge must transcend siloed thinking and be the corollary of a joint effort uniting different actors under a common cause. PoliRur will provide this knowledge by combining several key activities needed to design effective place-based, human-centric and forward-looking rural policies. These include actionable research that takes place within an inclusive learning environment where rural populations, researchers and policymakers come together to address common problems; an evaluation exercise that uses text mining to assess the perceived effectiveness of past or planned policy interventions; and a foresight study that tries to glean the development trajectory of agriculture and its allied sectors until 2040 using several scenarios in which the evolution of rural populations occupies a central place. As a result of these activities, PoliRur will leave decision makers at different levels of government better equipped to tackle existing and emerging rural challenges, rural populations more empowered and rural areas more resilient.

The main objective of EO4AGRI is to catalyze the evolution of the European capacity for improving operational agriculture monitoring from local to global levels based on information derived from Copernicus satellite observation data and through exploitation of associated geospatial and socio-economic information services. EO4AGRI assists the implementation of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) with special attention to the CAP2020 reform, to requirements of Paying Agencies, and for the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) processes. EO4AGRI works with farmers, farmer associations and agro-food industry on specifications of data-driven farming services with focus on increasing the utilization of EC investments into Copernicus Data and Information Services (DIAS). EO4AGRI addresses global food security challenges coordinated within the G20 Global Agricultural Monitoring initiative (GEOGLAM) capitalizing on Copernicus Open Data as input to the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEW-NET). EO4AGRI assesses information about land-use and agricultural service needs and offers to financial investors and insurances and the potential added value of fueling those services with Copernicus information. The EO4AGRI team consists of 11 organizations, complementary in their roles and expertise, covering a good part of the value-chain with a significant relevant networking capital as documented in numerous project affiliations and the formal support declarations collected for EO4AGRI. All partners show large records of activities either in Copernicus RTD, governmental functions, or downstream service operations. The Coordinator of EO4AGRI is a major industrial player with proven capacities to lead H2020 projects. The EO4AGRI project methodology is a combination of community building; service gap analysis; technology watch; strategic research agenda design and policy recommendations; dissemination (incl. organization of hackathons).

The SPARROW platform represents a pioneering solution for enhancing societal resilience and crisis management in the face of digital breakdowns. Employing a modular architecture encompassing data integration, simulation modeling, and a collaborative platform, SPARROW orchestrates large datasets and expert insights to create a dynamic digital twin of a city. This digital twin, visualized in 3D, becomes a robust testing ground for assessing vulnerabilities and preparing for diverse crisis scenarios. Through a participatory approach involving citizens, local authorities, and first responders, the platform fosters communication during breakdowns and bolsters preparedness against digital threats. SPARROW's innovative tools, including the Emergency Communication Mobile App (ECOMAPP), City Digital Twin (CITWIN), and the Dynamic Critical Asset Management Recommendation Engine (DYCAMARE), are co-designed with stakeholders to ensure user-friendly, effective, and ethically sound functionalities. The platform's impact extends across various sectors, from critical infrastructure managers optimizing maintenance to emergency responders utilizing a mobile 5G network (EMER-5G) for prioritized communication (ECOPRIM). In alignment with EU policies, SPARROW aims to enhance crisis communication, bridge gaps in digital breakdown preparedness, and contribute to a secure and resilient European way of life.

Agriculture is a, literally, vital industry. Not only important for nourishment, but also a key determiant of health, economic and political stability; employment; business and biological ecosystems; and society. Because of its importance, most attention focuses on productivity but it is essential to have a global view in order to address environment sustainability problems. EUXDAT proposes an e-Infrastructure, which addresses agriculture, land monitoring and energy efficiency for a sustainable development, as a way to support planning policies. In order to do so, we need to address the problems related to the current and future huge amount of heterogeneous data to be managed and processed. EUXDAT builds on existing mature components for solving them, by providing an advanced frontend, where users will develop applications on top of an infrastructure based on HPC and Cloud. The frontend provides monitoring information, visualization, different parallelized data analytic tools and enhanced data and processes catalogues, enabling Large Data Analytics-as-a-Service. EUXDAT will include a large set of data connectors (UAVs, Copernicus, field sensors, etc.), for scalable analytics. As for the brokering infrastructure, EUXDAT aims at optimizing data and resources usage. In addition to a mechanism for supporting data management linked to data quality evaluation, EUXDAT proposes a way to orchestrate tasks execution, identifying whether the best target is a HPC center or a Cloud provider. It will use monitoring and profiling information for taking decisions based on trade-offs related to cost, data constraints, efficiency and resources availability. During the project, EUXDAT will be in contact with scientific communities, in order to identify new trends and datasets, for guiding the evolution of the e-Infrastructure. The final result of the project will be and integrated e-Infrastructure which will encourage end users to create new applications for sustainable development.

Despite the wealth of climate data and services currently available, access is often limited to scientists and modeling experts. FOCAL will develop a platform (FOCAL Platform) that combines intelligent workflow management with high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructures, featuring data and metadata management linked to artificial intelligence (AI) development routines. This environment will enable the fast and efficient training and validation of innovative AI and statistical methods, enhancing the understanding of climate change impacts at a local scale. The project focuses on two pilots: urban planning and forestry, intending to develop a platform that enables efficient climate impact assessments on the local level while leveraging AI and HPC for analysing earth observation (EO) and earth system modelling data. Furthermore, FOCAL will generate new insights into key processes of the Earth system by integrating advanced EO data with existing and new data assimilation or modelling approaches. By harnessing a diverse range of EO datasets, FOCAL will improve climate predictions and provide a more comprehensive understanding of the interactions within the Earth system. This integration will allow for the identification of previously unrecognized patterns and feedback mechanisms, ultimately refining local climate models and enhancing their predictive capabilities. The platform will also facilitate Web/Cloud app development through a co-design process with urban planners and foresters, ensuring the resulting applications address their specific impact assessment challenges. Additionally, the FOCAL ecosystem will support developers, particularly small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), by providing services, modules, tools, and workflows that can be integrated into their own solutions. The project promotes a highly interdisciplinary approach, with a defined clustering and dissemination strategy to effectively apply its innovations across various fields. An Open Geospatial Consortium Domain Working Group (OGC-DWG) will be established to manage and maintain these clustering efforts. Ultimately, FOCAL aspires to enhance climate science and policy, improve societal resilience to climate change, and promote sustainable practices, all while ensuring transparency and openness in data management and model development.