NextGEOSS data hub and platform for Norway

Earth observation remains an important factor in addressing societal challenges such as climate change, biodiversity, food security, clean oceans and much more. It is also pivotal in our increasingly digital world with the creation of digital twins, use of artificial intelligence and the ever growing Internet of Things. Norway is a long country with remote areas and vast oceans including in rough polar regions. Space-based data is therefore of great help but cannot be exploited fully without ground truth information. Both access to and ability to transform this data to information, knowledge, applications and services are considered a high priority for administrators and politicians alike. There is a multitude of platforms, programs, solutions and projects that support this, and the NextGEOSS data hub and platform is one such example. NextGEOSS was developed by users, so that it should be easier to both discover, access and to develop solutions that demanded so-called interoperability between this great volume and variations of data (Big Data). NextGEOSS data hub and platform was developed jointly by several European partners including 3 Norwegians (NERSC, NILU, BLB). As Norway would greatly benefit from increased exploitation of the NextGEOSS resources, NextGEOSS data hub and platform Norway aimed to expand the number of organisations and experts that can use these powerful resources. Norwegian partners were gathered in online workshops and engaged in smaller dialogue groups and invited to community events around the Group on Earth observations, where Norway is a member. As Norway is also engaged in the joint ESA/EC Copernicus program, a substantial European support to GEO, synergies between NextGEOSS, GEO and Copernicus could and was established whilst trying to benefit from the funding provided to Norwegians through the EU funding instruments. This was done in pilots development that would helps solve some of the challenges Norwegian industry, administrations and scientists had. Serving as one of the nodes of coordination for these 3 main communities around Earth observation in Norway, a website was set up (www.nextgeoss.no). The main result is an expanded Earth observation community solving challenges together inside and outside Norway. Synergies are created and continues to be developed between active members of the community, capacity development through education of the next generation experts, and positioning Norway as a polar and marine nation.

NextGEOSS Norway created awareness and expanded the number of Norwegian actors from science, administration and industry involved in Earth observation projects and other activities. NextGEOSS Norway led to better knowledge about Copernicus data and how to discover and access them NextGEOSS Norway facilitated the inclusion of more Norwegian partners in H2020 projects (funded) and Horizon Europe proposals. Several project ideas, pilots with use cases from Norway including the Arctic with Norwegian partners representing multiple disciplines (ocean, ICT, agriculture,) that combines satellite data and in-situ have been created and are ready for further development in the frame of national, regional and global communities.

NextGEOSS data hub and platform provides state of the art discoverability and access to Earth observation and offers a suite of platform services such as user feedback mechanism, Norge er avhengig av utstrakt bruk av jordobservasjoner både til forvaltning og næringsliv. Enkelte norske institusjoner bidrar til og utnytter GEO og GEOSS allerede, men det er et stort potensiale til å ta i bruk både Europeiske og globale jordobservasjoner i anvendelser i Norge. Anvendelsene spenner fra forskning via forvaltningsoppgaver til næringsutvikling. For å dra nytte av at BLB er partner, arbeidspakke leder, task leder samt bidrar til en av 10 interne piloter "Cold Regions" i H2020 prosjektet NextGEOSS, vil BLB sammen med sentrale aktører som dels er med i NextGEOSS (NERSC, NILU, SINTEF), dels aktive i GEO's arbeidsprogram (met.no, SINTEF) etablere et nettverk bestående av representanter for hele verdikjeden fra dataprodusent til sluttbruker i Norge. Dette nettverket vil i) bidra til økt utnyttelse av globale data gjennom GEO og GEOSS i tillegg til Copernicus og ii) posisjonere hele nettverket for økt utnyttelse av H2020, ESA og andre finansieringsverktøy gjennom å bidra til økt forståelse av og konkretisering av egne behov og kunnskap om hvilke muligheter som til en hver tid finnes hva angår tilgang til jordobservasjoner.