18/02/2025
On 15 January 2025, in Lamia (GR), the University of Thessaly hosted the kick-off meeting of TERRA Project, one of our international, collaborative, Research and Innovation projects, awarded under the Horizon Europe Programme.
TERRA project falls in the field of spatiotemporal data management and analysis, employing modern, AI-Powered, processes and pipelines, targeting the development of an integrated, harmonized and coherent product provision system to improve global scale hydrological monitoring and forecasting.
TERRA project builds on the observation that, despite the traction Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) is gaining from policy makers, scientists and public bodies for managing, assessing and preventing climate-related emergencies such as floods and droughts, the potential of Copernicus data and services, especially for emergency and climate applications, has not been fully considered by industrial and policy-making stakeholders. The belief that innovation stemming from Copernicus services and data could set the basis for future collaborations, accelerate R&I progress, and increase the EU’s excellence in cutting-edge technologies, is a motivating factor behind TERRA project.
Under those assumptions, TERRA envisions the creation of several services and product chains that fuse Copernicus services with state-of-the-art technologies to provide solutions for coastline detection, coastline erosion prediction, flood risk assessment and mitigation, water pollution assessment and coastline modelling. It targets the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission and Group on Earth Observation objectives and provides the necessary framework to promote its outcomes through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).
TERRA consortium consists of notable partners from across Europe: University of Thessaly (GR) [leading the project], MEEO s.r.l. (IT), INCITES Consulting s.r.l. (LU), Blue Dot Solutions (PL), BI2S Ltd (CY), University of Glasgow (UK), Izquierdo/Piatrik GBR (DE), International Space University (FR) and CITE (GR).
CITE leads TERRA integration activities under the supervision of its CTO, Giorgos Papanikos , gluing together the elements of the solution and providing the enabling technologies for challenges to be addressed. It also supports Project Management and Coordination, via the Technical Manager role held by George Kakaletris . Finally, CITE strongly contributes in building TERRA’s software constituents with the support of its experienced research and development workforce.
The project will run in the period 1/2025-12/2027.
TERRA project receives funding from the European Commission under Horizon Europe Programme Grant Agreement 101189962.