Sweden

Sweden would like to express its thanks to the GEO Secretariat and the Government of South Africa for arranging the GEO Week 2023 in Cape Town.

The Earth Talks through its triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss. Earth observations data that are easy to access and understand can support the global agendas and help the decision-making processes.

Europe will continue to be a major contributor to GEO through its Earth Observations program Copernicus and the new Destination Earth initiative, which aims to develop a very high precision digital model of the Earth to monitor and simulate natural and human activity.

The European Copernicus Programme has now moved into the 2.0 phase (2021-2027). Sweden and SMHI is heavily involved in CAMS (Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service), C3S (Copernicus Climate Change Service), CEMS (Copernicus Emergency Management Service), CMEMS (Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service) and we will also contribute to the Destination Earth (DestinE) Extremes Digital Twin.

The National Collaboration Programme is a new module of Copernicus, which will enhance the uptake of products at national level, by co-designing joint activities. In addition, some of the Copernicus services will also develop new knowledge hubs, as specific thematic hubs on Health (CAMS), Coastal zone (CMEMS), Artic (CMEMS) and Energy (C3S).

The Swedish Space Agency is together with Luleå Technical University, Research Institutes of Sweden and AI Sweden developing the Swedish Space Data Lab, to promote innovation, method development and the use of AI with Earth Observation data.

The platform that is the Collaborative Ground Segment for Copernicus in Sweden is further developed to Digital Earth Sweden, to further enhance the Swedish capacity of processing and analyzing earth observation data. Digital Earth Sweden is a national innovation hub for Swedish authorities using earth observation data, and for the development of AI-based analysis of the data. The purpose of the lab is to enable increased use of data from space for the development of society for the benefit of the globe. The goal is to get data, technology, and methodology in place to enable systematic development of space-based data, services and applications.

Space data is used in a wide range of fields. It is indispensable for, among other things, weather forecasts and monitoring the climate, but it is also extremely important for forestry, agriculture and other fields in which up-to-date information about vegetation and the land surface is needed.

Leveraging Earth Observation big data and AI, KTH Royal Institute of Technology has developed innovative methods for urban mapping and urbanization monitoring to support resilient and sustainable urban development, and for early detection and near real-time monitoring of wildfires to support effective emergency response and decision support.

The novel unsupervised domain adaptation method developed by KTH can produce high-quality built-up maps and be deployed in any city around the world. Using EO-derived urban data, KTH also developed two Google Earth Engine applications that have been included in the GEO-UN Habitat’s EO4SDG11 Toolkit. The City Definition Generator for SDG11 APP can automatically generate spatial definition of a city extent that is essential for a number of SDG11 indicators. The SDG Indicator 11.3.1 Calculation App can automatically calculate SDG 11.3.1 “Land Use Efficiency” primary and secondary indicators for any city in the world. The SDG11.3.1 Land Use Efficiency app won the 2022 GEO SDG award (Academia) for KTH. KTH also contributed to the UN Habitat’s SDG 11 Synthesis Report to the 2023 UN High Level Political Forum on “Rescuing SDG 11 for a Resilient Urban Planet”.

The EO&AI-powered approaches developed by KTH have been tested for early detection and near real-time monitoring of wildfires in numerous sites around the world. The more reliable insights on wildfires not only can enhance emergency response but also improve the estimation of environmental impact of wildfires including biomass loss and CO/CO2 emission. The impactful research has led KTH to be nominated for the Google Geo for Good 2023 Impact Award.

In 2023, the Swedish Board of Agricultural launched an automatic system that follows up activities for all agricultural land in Sweden using Copernicus Sentinel data and geotagged photos.

The purpose of the follow-up is to ensure that we pay support to those farmers who manage their land in the correct way. An important part of this is to give farmers a chance to correct their applications of aid to agree with reality, to avoid deductions from the support. In the long run, the follow-up also leads to fewer on the spot controls which will reduce the administrative burden of the agency.

Following up agricultural land with satellite images is a requirement that the European Commission places on all member states. The system is intended to be continuously developed over the coming years.