The project Coordinating and integRating state-of-the-art Earth Observation Activities in the regions of North Africa, Middle East and Balkans and Developing Links with GEO related initiatives towards GEOSS (GEO-CRADLE) was funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 program for a duration of two and a half years, from 2016 to 2018.
The project aspired to establish a coordinated and sustainable multi-regional network to make Earth observation (EO) data available for the Balkan, North Africa and Middle East regions. For this purpose and thanks to the synergy of the various partners involved, a series of tools have been developed to address regional needs even beyond the duration of the project; this will be possible also through the implementation of GEOSS and Copernicus projects within the region of interest.
The main four objectives of the Geo-Cradle project consisted in: i) supporting the effective integration of Earth Observation capabilities in the project regions; ii) facilitating the involvement of all major actors in the EO field in such regions; iii) promoting the adoption of services and EO data in response to regional needs; iv) enhancing the the implementation of the GEOSS project in the region.
The ultimate goal was to create a useful tool for decision makers in the region addressing four key topics: climate change, food and water resources, energy and raw materials availability. Within the project, CIMA Research Foundation focused specifically on providing a version of the myDewetra platform for the management and control of food and water resources in Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Turkey, FYROM, Cyprus, Israel, Tunisia, making the open data available for the regions and released directly by the participants in the project.
Geo-Cradle expects to be able to catalyse the promotion of Copernicus data and services within the region, exploiting the integration of North Africa, the Middle East and EO capabilities already existing in the Balkans in the Global GEOSS Earth observation system.