Climate-KIC and DG GROW partnership to accelerate use of Copernicus satellite data for upskilling next generation of climate leaders
In The News
21 Aug 2017
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.
The collaboration is an opportunity to combine the impactful education programmes of Climate-KIC, with the available data from Copernicus to develop Europe’s human capital and create innovative solutions for addressing the climate challenge.
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This will lay the foundation for a longer-term strategy for the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Knowledge Innovation Communities (KIC’s) to leverage opportunities in Copernicus data and services, such as the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Pilot activities will take place over the next 12 months, which will see the inclusion of Copernicus space data into Climate-KIC’s Climathon and Journey programmes.
Climate-KIC’s 24-hour climate innovation challenge, Climathon, will kick off the pilot activities in October this year. Climathon is a global programme which will take place simultaneously in major cities around the world on 27 October 2017. It brings together the challenges of the world’s cities with the people who have the passion and ability to solve them.
Through the collaboration, at least ten European cities will address their city challenges using Copernicus data applications. Climathon participants will use Earth Observation (EO) and Geographic Information System (GIS) space data for developing innovative solutions to their city’s challenge. Another 50 cities around the world will be given access to Copernicus data sets to be used for their specific challenges.
Further to this activity, a dedicated Journey – Climate-KIC’s flagship 5-week summer school – will be delivered in April 2018 going through 3 countries of Europe with a focus on Copernicus data to upskill the next generation of leaders in the space sector.
The targeted Journey will foster entrepreneurial thinking among students and increase awareness of EO and GIS innovation opportunities. Over the course of the summer school, students will develop the skills to translate their ideas into working solutions and be provided with a protected testing-ground for entrepreneurial development.
Through this collaboration with DG GROW, Climate-KIC’s education programmes will emphasise the importance of space data to better understand the challenges our planet and humanity face, and build the capacity and skills required to solve them.
“Climate-KIC’s new partnership with DG GROW heralds a new constellation of innovation opportunity for Europe. 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,” says Dr Kirsten Dunlop, Climate-KIC Chief Executive Officer.
“Copernicus is also targeting to find solutions for the development of downstream applications, entrepreneurship and skills. These are some of the key drivers of the overall measures identified within the Copernicus user uptake strategy. A set of actions under that strategy is planned for delivering sustainable solutions as: entrepreneurial education, educational and training materials dissemination, enabling tools for applications based on space data, digital environments, etc. Actions such as the creation of a Copernicus Academy Network is contributing ensuring the guided development of training and networking initiatives allowing the matching of university curricula and industry professional profiles, vocational and cross sectorial training, research knowledge transfer business (spin-offs), networks empowerments, etc.
In this respect, the cooperation with the Climate KIC is a mean to develop the strategy and support its concrete actions,” says Emanuele Barreca, Policy Officer – Space Policy, Copernicus and Defence Directorate, DG GROW.
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