Copernicus | Climate KIC

Our planet and its environment

Copernicus is looking at our planet and its environment for the ultimate benefit of all European citizens. It supports society by providing authoritative information about the past, present and future climate in Europe and the rest of the world. The information provided by Copernicus supports the development of adaptation and mitigation policies of the European Union by providing consistent and authoritative information about climate change.

The Programme is coordinated and managed by the European Commission. It is implemented in partnership with the Member States, the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), EU Agencies and Mercator Océan.

The collaboration between Copernicus and Climate KIC is an opportunity to combine the impactful climate change systemic approach of Climate-KIC, with the freely and openly available data from Copernicus and the stakeholders of Copernicus Academy.

Working with Copernicus to address climate change

Climate KIC is a knowledge and innovation community established and funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) in 2010. Our purpose is to tackle climate change through innovation. We are Europe’s largest public-private partnership with this purpose – a growing pan-European community of diverse organisations united by a commitment to direct the power of creativity and human ingenuity at the climate change challenge. We bring together large and small companies, scientific institutions and universities, city authorities and other public bodies, start-ups, and students. With over 350 formal organisational partners from across 25 countries, we work on innovation to mitigate climate change and to adapt to its unavoidable impacts.

Preventing catastrophic climate change and achieving the ‘well below 2°C’ Paris Agreement target requires a speed of decarbonisation at least six times faster than anything the global community has achieved so far. Together with the European Union’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW), Climate-KIC is enabling Copernicus satellite data application by entrepreneurs, universities, cities and regions to innovate for the climate.

Copernicus provides a large amount of reliable and up-to-date information on the status of our planet.

The programme uses accurate and timely data from satellites and other sources to provide key information services to improve the way the environment is managed, help mitigate the effects of climate change, enable the creation of new applications and services for citizens and business, and safeguard everyday lives. The collaboration with Climate KIC is an opportunity to combine the impactful programmes of KICs and the power of its community (partners, members, alumni, allies, start-ups, students and other stakeholders), with the available data from Copernicus to develop Europe’s human capital and create innovative solutions for addressing the climate challenge.

“Our new partnership with DG GROW heralds a new constellation of innovation opportunity for Europe” says Dr Kirsten Dunlop, Chief Executive Officer, Climate-KIC. “Climate-KIC will promote downstream applications of Copernicus data, developing the knowledge, skills and human capital needed to unlock the potential value of Copernicus data. We look forward to a long-term partnership that will make a significant contribution to addressing climate change and at the same time drive positive economic outcomes.”

Activities

Our alliances and programmes with Copernicus

Copernicus Academy

Climate-KIC is an active member of the Copernicus Academy alliance. The Copernicus Academy connects European universities, research institutions, business schools, both private and non-profit organisations, in the Participating Countries of the Programme and beyond. The goal of the network is to develop lectures, training sessions, traineeships as well as educational and training material to empower the next generation of researchers, scientists, and entrepreneurs with suitable skill sets to use Copernicus data and information services to their full potential.

InnoSpace

Climate-KIC, through this project envisioned to lay foundations for InnoSpace: a European-led global climate innovation network to mainstream space data applications. InnoSpace brought together, inspired and empowered a dynamic community of innovators and entrepreneurs to create new opportunities across the Space value chain. This objective was achieved through two main activities:

Copernicus Climathons: During the Copernicus Climathons, 11 European cities hosted Climathons focused on the exploitation of Copernicus and other sentinel data to Identify and propose potential solutions to local climate change challenges.
Copernicus InnoSpace Journey: The Copernicus InnoSpace Journey has been built along with the well-established EIT Journey. The programme brought together 40 students from different backgrounds to work together for 5 weeks in 3 different European locations. The students successfully presented 8 entrepreneurial solutions to climate change based on the use of Copernicus data.

EO4GEO

Climate-KIC is a member of the Steering Committee of EO4GEO, an Eramus+ Sector Skills Alliance gathering 26 partners from 212 countries from academia, private and public sector active in the education/training and space/geospatial sectors.

EO4GEO aims to help bridging the skills gap between supply and demand of education and training in the space/geospatial sector by reinforcing the existing ecosystem and fostering the uptake and integration of space/geospatial data and services in end-user applications. EO4GEO will work in an multi- and interdisciplinary way and apply innovative solutions for education and training actions including case based and collaborative learning scenarios, learning-while-doing in a living lab environment, on-the-job training, the co-creation of knowledge and the development of skills and competencies.

CopHub AC

The vision of the Horizon 2020 project CopHub.AC is to establish a long-term Copernicus hub to consolidate and sustain the Copernicus Academy as a knowledge and innovation platform. To fulfill this several nodes will be created – like a new form of research briefs, knowledge landscape, outreach and sustainability. It will focus and link ongoing R&D activities in Copernicus-relevant academic fields and sustain the innovation process from academia to business on a high scientific and technical level. We have a clear commitment to a full thematic and geographic coverage for a Europe-wide boost in demand-driven uptake of space technology and geospatial information.

Our Space Our Future

The vision of Our Space Our Future is a society that enables and empowers all students, regardless of gender, ethnicity, disability or socio-economic background, to consider a career related to space science as a relevant, attainable and exciting aspiration for their future. The space industry in Europe is strong and growing, offering innovative services and providing huge benefits across science, the economy, government and society. Education is a key enabler of change and for this reason Climate-KIC is pleased to have joined as one of the active consortium partners of the project.

Europe's eyes on Earth