Space and Security_NEW

Security of citizens and societies can be threatened by several issues at local scale, and in the recent years also at global scale, as climate change-derived effects. Earth Observation is a key tool to support practitioners and authorities to make the right decisions. However, there is a continuous challenge to ensure that geospatial products and services incorporate the most updated information considering all the variety of data sources.

SPACE-SECURITY aims to maintain a forum to find synergies and develop solutions to improve the safety and security of citizens and societies by exploiting EO data, collateral data and associated technologies. The Community Activity works towards raising awareness and adoption of open data, citizen science, in-situ data and advanced technologies in the Space and Security domain. In addition, SPACE-SECURITY contributes to the implementation of relevant projects in the framework of R&I initiatives and builds synergies with relevant GEO and any other significant activities.

SPACE-SECURITY partners are engaged with GEO priorities, and in particular in supporting the achievements of the SDGs defined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations with EO-derived products related to security issues. Currently, specific focus on SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 15 (Life on Land) is put through the Horizon Europe project SDGs-EYES (https://sdgs-eyes.eu/).

SPACE-SECURITY has a distributed operational model that empowers each partner to work in line with their specific mission and, at the same time, maximizes the sharing of relevant knowledge and results.

To ensure that each participating organization can work accordingly to their mandates, each partner maintains a continuous dialogue with its stakeholders, and identify those needs that can be put in common, and that are suitable to be responded with the support of the GEO community. Periodically, partners share the identified emerging user’s needs and brainstorm on solutions that can benefit from the exploitation of EO data.

Within SPACE-SECURITY, needs are discussed and initiatives to be put in place are prioritized, accordingly to their urgency, impact and to the available resources at the given period of interest. Thus, SPACE-SECURITY builds on partners resources, which contribute in-kind to jointly develop EO applications that can respond real user’s needs.

To facilitate the identification of the best solutions, SPACE-SECURITY partners meet at least once per year in a virtual meeting in which partners present the current capabilities and results that could be synergistically exploited within the community.

When relevant, contact is also established with local actors to ensure that the initiatives undertaken fulfill the real interests of the final users of information.