Designing innovative services for marine environment monitoring using earth-observation tools in the frame of the pre-commercial procurement project MARINE-EO

MARINE-EO is a Research and Development project using a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) mechanism with the scope to develop innovative beyond the state-of-the-art downstream applications which meet the demand of maritime authorities and stakeholders, leveraging on the existing services and other products from the Copernicus portfolio. More specifically, MARINE-EO aims to meet the procurers’ demands in the thematic areas of Marine monitoring and Maritime security. In this study we present the consultation three-step-procedure, which was designed and launched in order to define the services to be procured and developed within MARINE-EO project, with focus on the set of features addressing Marine monitoring (called SATOCEAN). These features deal with information on ocean parameters’ variability in time and space, best probable fishing areas, fish farm locations, water quality and sea ice extent for safe navigation and maritime operations. The EO-based services, mainly related to satellites and Copernicus Sentinel missions, aim to be established in the areas of Mediterranean, Atlantic and Arctic, by adapting Copernicus data and information on the marine environment. Upon the completion of this consultation procedure, three SATOCEAN feature services and use-case scenarios were finally proposed to be procured and developed: i) Marine environmental status in hot spots (in Gulfs and Marine Protected Areas), ii) Detection of fish farms threats (in aquaculture sites), and iii) Detection of vessels and icebergs in the Arctic Sea.MARINE-EO is a Research and Development project using a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) mechanism with the scope to develop innovative beyond the state-of-the-art downstream applications which meet the demand of maritime authorities and stakeholders, leveraging on the existing services and other products from the Copernicus portfolio. More specifically, MARINE-EO aims to meet the procurers’ demands in the thematic areas of Marine monitoring and Maritime security. In this study we present the consultation three-step-procedure, which was designed and launched in order to define the services to be procured and developed within MARINE-EO project, with focus on the set of features addressing Marine monitoring (called SATOCEAN). These features deal with information on ocean parameters’ variability in time and space, best probable fishing areas, fish farm locations, water quality and sea ice extent for safe navigation and maritime operations. The EO-based services, mainly related to satellites and Copernicus Se...