Application of Copernicus products and value-added services for management of environment and forecasting agricultural production

The action will be principally focus on capacity building and raising awareness of the various stakeholders, responsible in Poland as National Action looking nationally for monitoring and management of the environment, on the scope of applications of the Earth Observation data and services developed in the frame of Copernicus products. The developed educational solutions will be tailored according to the end users requirements and their responsibility. Finally, all participants of the capacity building process will be aware of usefulness and potential of the EO data and services in solving their particular tasks.

There are five main users groups to whom the designed activities will be targeted. These groups represent the following areas of Copernicus data and products application: agriculture and forestry, environment and protected areas, marine environment, land use and change detection a well as atmosphere and climate change.

The following activities will be delivered by two partners with comprehensive knowledge in the required area of EO data application: Institute of Geodesy and Cartography and Faculty of Oceanography and Geography of the University of Gdansk.

The representatives of the following public bodies will be invited to participate in the designed activities:

In order to achieve objectives of the action a comprehensive survey will be conducted aimed at collection of the information from various stakeholders (governmental and self-governmental organizations, e.g. Ministry of Environment, agriculture authorities, agencies, statistical offices working on the agriculture/environment related data, local governments).

The first task of the action will be related to particular user group’s requirement survey. A number of lectures and practical workshops and exercises will be developed, together with the specific training materials in order to present a potential of the EO data and services and to collect feedback from participants during the structured discussion. The fields of possible applications of the Copernicus products will be concordantly identified. A dedicated website, within the IGiK’s website, will be developed in the in order to provide access to training materials presented during seminars as well as to provide most important updates on Copernicus Programme and open services available for users.  The dedicated websites are planned, as the existed websites are not adjusted to deliver EO based products, services and training materials for stakeholders from the environmental sector. In parallel, a training plan will be developed and agreed with the responsible institutions, advisory agencies and commercial companies working for environment and for the agriculture sector as well as Central Statistical Office and regional offices.

In the next step, a series of workshops and webinars will be executed for an agreed number of public sector employees. These will be conducted in Polish. The training materials will be developed in Polish and English, in order to easily use these materials by consortium partners and adjust them to their national needs. The knowledge gained, supported by the training materials will be used in the experimental on-job training sessions using EO data, services and technological chains developed in the frame of the Action.

An implementation strategy will be prepared for the interested institutions and organizations through adjustment of Copernicus products and services to the needs of particular stakeholders.

The educational programmes, dedicated lectures, workshops, exercises and materials available through the user-oriented websites will be practically implemented during a number of training courses and sessions. The websites and their contents will serve for post-project activities.