NAME OF THE PROJECT: Enhancing Copernicus Security services – EU governmental crisis management hub for forced population displacement

SHORT NAME: THEIA

PROGRAM: HORIZON EUROPE Copernicus for Security/

CL4-2024-SPACE-01-36

STARTED AT: 01/12/2024

SUMMARY:

Addressing critical challenges such as population displacement due to conflicts, exacerbated by factors like climate change, extreme weather events, food shortages, and poverty, remains paramount. The implementation of THEIA, integrating data fusion, processing, and analysis, particularly leveraging Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) and Machine Learning, is poised to enhance the efficacy of existing services significantly. Through the amalgamation of multi-temporal data and diverse datasets, THEIA empowers better decision-making and adapts to evolving policy and user needs. This technological advancement, bolstered by GeoAI, augments detection capabilities and ensures timely access to crucial information, bridging the gap between capabilities and stringent security demands.

By integrating non-space data and end-user intelligence, THEIA’s supply chains add value not only at the operational level but also at regional and local levels, facilitating improved coordination. Furthermore, THEIA catalyzes fostering EU-independent capabilities and technologies, thereby bolstering the European space ecosystem’s consolidation and ensuring the sustainable coexistence of legacy and New-Space solutions. Its services are tailored to a diverse range of end-users, including EU entities (e.g. Frontex), Member State Ministries of Defence, Intelligence Agencies, Police Forces, NATO, and potentially non-EU national and supranational organizations, such as the United Nations. THEIA’s development is structured to leverage the complementary strengths of the EU Satellite Centre (SatCen) and the EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA), enhancing the situational awareness capabilities of the EU and its Member States. Rather than duplicating the existing Copernicus Security Service (CSS) capacities of EU Member States, THEIA is designed to complement them.

A total of 12 partners from 9 countries are participating in the project, including companies, research organisations, and end-users.

GEOSYSTEMS Hellas (GSH) is the Project Coordinator, responsible for managing both phases of the project. This includes overseeing project management activities, coordinating toward objectives, ensuring quality assurance and risk management, and developing the data management plan.

In addition, GSH is responsible for key technical tasks, such as conducting a gap analysis to maximize the practical utility of the CSS, designing the conceptual architecture of the project’s platform to enhance CSS operations, processing and georeferencing satellite images, and integrating project’s platform.

GSH is also in charge of preparatory activities for technology validation. Finally, the company will lead the development of initial exploitation plans, along with activities related to business models and the preparation of final exploitation plans.

This project will receive funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme – Space for Research/ Copernicus for Security under Grant Agreement: 101190051.

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