SMURBS/ERA-PLANET Newsletter
  ISSUE #3, April 2019

Editorial

SMURBS, launched in September 2017, under the ERA-NET-Cofund Grant agreement No: 689443, traverses now its 20th month of life. We had a busy and demanding wintertime period, completing several tasks and commencing many others.
With great enthusiasm, we have now entered the implementation phase of utilizing our smart urban solutions in the pilot cities of our network, and we are very glad to start presenting to several fora our intra-urban air quality assessment, pre-, during and post-flood management, and VHRL for urban change detection. These are just a few among the 34 solutions in total, aiming at increasing urban resilience against air pollution, disasters and city growth. Our portfolio is driven by 21 key messages identified from numerous user needs and by  52 prioritized gaps, synthesized from the views of different stakeholders (e.g. city planners, local authorities, companies, Academy) though several means of engagement (i.e. survey, workshops, interviews).
Our project partners have dedicated a lot of effort in developing tools and services and have spent a great deal of time presenting their work in several national, European and international conferences and events, thus spreading the word for SMURBS to the scientific and other communities.
During the past months, we also had the opportunity to contact other European projects, organizations and initiatives and create very important collaborations, pursuing synergies and sustainability options. We are happy to share the interviews, which are included in our eBook published by SciTech Europa, from the Head of External Relations at Group on Earth Observations (GEO), Steven Ramage and the Lead of SDGs at NASA, Dr. Argie Kavvada, who explained the expectations from projects like SMURBS to promote GEO priorities and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Look out for more details on our networking activities that will be reported in upcoming newsletter issues!
Stay tuned and visit our website for more news and results.
 

Best regards,
SMURBS/ ERA-PLANET Communication Team 
In a nutshell
News
SMURBS@
Upcoming Events
Progress Dashboard
In a nutshell
SMURBS 1st thematic video 
Our 1st thematic video is now out! The SMURBS project sets the stage for integrating the still fragmented Earth Observation platforms and utilizing their data to produce decision making tools for individuals and local governments, through a network of smart cities. SMURBS’ coordination group and theme leaders explain and present their approaches to enhance environmental and societal resilience to urban pollution, natural and manmade disasters, and uncontrolled city growth, from each themes point of view. The video also discusses the overall goals of the project, as well as first achievements in terms of networking and collection of user needs.  Watch our video to find out everything about SMURBS project!

SMURBS E-book 
The 8-page e-book is now published at SciTech Europa Magazine! Check out our 1st year outcomes and get informed for the whole approach by reading the Project Coordinator’s interview!
Pdf available here.
© Pan European Networks 2019
News

DiscovAir through an innovative solution planned within

SMURBS
DiscovAir has been adopted by SMURBS as part of its portfolio, and will now walk together towards a new “smart city” application that will be demonstrated for the city of Athens, exploiting synergies with more EO platforms. DiscovAir is a mobile application and online service portal, developed by the National Observatory of Athens (NOA), in partnership with the Academy of Athens and Evenflow Sprl. DiscovAir provides assessments of the current and future conditions of UV index, air quality, temperature and pollen levels, at any location of interest in Greece and Cyprus, leveraging the regional data from CAMS.

GEOEssential and SMURBS pool their resources

targeting Urban Essential Variables

H2020 project ConnectinGEO presented and pushed forward the state-of-the-art on Essential Variables (EVs) and one of the ERA-PLANET Transnational Call Projects, GEOEssential/ERA-PLANET, picks up on this work and aspires to demonstrate the feasibility of EVs across GEO SBAs via demonstration workflows using EVs served by the GEO infrastructure to derive policy relevant indicators. Concerning EVs, SMURBS is conceptually situated where ConnectinGEO left off and where GEOEssential continues from, and will therefore bring in and contribute to the urban component in the discussion of GEOEssential, with whom it shares partners and linkages through ERA-PLANET.

Smart technologies meet nature-based solutions
Innovation Action project Connecting Nature  and SMURBS project, two large European Commission H2020 programmes, join forces to bridge nature-based solutions (NBS) with the concept of smart cities (SC), and with a common goal - to scale up urban resilience through support of informed policy making, innovation and best governance practices. The capital of Armenia, Yerevan, will serve as the bonding city between the two projects. Yerevan, where a number of NBS are already in place and more are scheduled, will join the SMURBS network of pilot smart cities and followers to exchange best practices (and potentially replicate) on the use of smart technologies for the monitoring of vital information to build urban resilience, with an emphasis on the domains of air quality and urban growth.

SMURBS Annual Meeting PM1, 9-10 October 2018,

Athens, Greece
SMURBS partners met in sunny Athens on 9-10 October 2018 for their annual meeting in order to record the progress made during its 1st year of implementation and take critical decisions for the design of next steps. This was considered a Milestone Meeting, where expectations were met due to solid decisions reached through fruitful discussions.
During the meeting, the coordinators covered a number of necessary administrative issues and unfolded the major achievements of the 1st year, as well as the scope, methodology and expectations moving forward from this milestone meeting. At the core of the meeting discussions, partners decided on precursors of their solutions per each SMURBS theme, matched them with existing needs and gaps and explored further synergies. This process gave birth to many new ideas as well!!! The second day was devoted to the presentation and discussion of the city dossiers and the match-up with the solutions.

SMURBS meets students during “SCIENZAINSIEME”


events, 26-28 September 2018, ISPRA, Italy
SCIENZAINSIEME” is the first Italian scientific dissemination initiative where the main Italian research institutions – ASI, CINECA, CNR, ENEA, INAF, INFN, INGV, ISPRA, Sapienza University of Rome and Tuscia University of Viterbo - work together with the aim of promoting communication that combines scientific rigor and knowledge sharing. During the week “SCIENZAINSIEME” people got in touch with the world of researchers through visits to laboratories, experiments, debates, scientific cafés, CitizenScience initiatives and learned about the history of researchers and their discoveries to better understand successes and difficulties. During the event called “L’ambiente fa scuola” (Environment at school) ISPRA Researchers illustrated SMURBS project to visiting students. An information sheet describing SMURBS project in Italian language was produced, and SMURBS bookmarks were distributed.
SMURBS @
 DiscovAir Workshop, 19 March 2019, Athens,

Greece

SMURBS was hosted by DiscovAir and the Academy of Athens on 19 March 2019 at a workshop dedicated to environmental information services from  Copernicus ECMWF CAMS. DiscovAir application- adopted by SMURBS as part of its portfolio –provides assessments of the current and future conditions of UV index, air quality, temperature and pollen levels, at any location of interest in Greece and Cyprus, leveraging the regional data from CAMS.

VLab  workshop, 26 – 28 February 2019, Florence, Italy
SMURBS, pursuing its imperatives of battling EO fragmentation and supporting the SDG (UN Sustainable Development Goals) framework and in the spirit of cooperation among the four projects of the ERA-PLANET Transnational Call, accepted the invitation to the VLab (Virtual Laboratory) workshop by the GEOEssential project. VLab is a tool for publishing and running scientific models for knowledge generation. It has been designed and implemented in the context of national, European and international projects and initiatives. From the positive experience in the H2020 ECOPOTENTIAL project, the VLAB has been proposed as one of the major building blocks for the ERA-PLANET Knowledge Platform and as a component of its data and model sharing infrastructure.

SMURBS meets UTEP, 16 January 2019, DLR, Wessling, Germany
The strategic goal of the SMURBS’ Liaison is to deliver the critical elements and create key opportunities to be exploited during SMURBS, for achieving a decisive impact of the project on the urban domain. This is constantly pursued by proactively liaising with high-level stakeholders from the EC like ESA. Quite a few of SMURBS partners are or have been a partof mutually beneficial relationships with ESA (e.g. ROSA, Hellenic ESA Mirror Site). This relationship constitutes a fertile ground upon which liaison activities will be carried out with SMURBS. One of the key objectives in this approach is to obtain as much knowledge as possible from the ESA-supported initiatives that have been launched or are currently running in the same geographical area of SMURBS. The UTEP (Urban Thematic Exploitation Platform, latest publication here) is such an initiative and is of particular importance to SMURBS as there exists great overlap of goals and means. Liaison activities have already started in this direction covering aspects, such as, avoidance in the duplication of effort, maximizing on existing investments, interoperability of infrastructure, etc. A first concrete result from this interaction came in the form of a meeting between the two parties. i.e. SMURBS and UTEP, to explore cooperation opportunities.
The meeting took place at DLR, Wessling, Germany on 16 January 2019.

E2MC: Citizens’ contribution to EO-based tools and


services, 11 December 2018, Bled Slovenia
SMURBS was honored to be invited to a successful workshop on the use of social media and crowdsourcing to improve satellite mapping in disaster management, organized by the Evolution of Emergency Copernicus services -E2mC project, with which SMURBS project is exchanging knowledge and experience on citizens’ input and user needs for disaster response. SMURBS partners gained useful insights on this topic, while at the same time disseminating its main first year outcomes to a distinguished social media and crowd sourcing exploitation community. Furthermore SMURBS shared with E2mC its extensive report based on a thorough user need analysis, concluding with 21 key messages for uptake when building smart urban solutions for air quality, disaster and urban growth stresses. The 2 projects receive funding by European Commission H2020. 

The ESA Earth Observation "Ф-WEEK", 14 November 2018, Frascati, Italy
On the 14th of November 2018, the representatives of Space Research Institute NAS Ukraine and SSA Ukraine participated in  "THE ESA EARTH OBSERVATION Ф-WEEK" in Frascati, Italy, presenting a new methodology for satellite-based land cover maps filtration, implemented within SMURBS project.

2nd Korean- Germany Environmental Workshop,
13-14 November 2018, Stuttgart, Germany
SMURBS participated, through our HZG partner, in the 2nd Korean- Germany Environmental Workshop, from 13 to 14 November 2018, held in Stuttgart, Germany. The workshop engaged on urban air pollution control, through the lens of human health, since air pollution currently represents one of the most serious issues in most cities worldwide.

Copernicus for Future Cities Workshop,

9 November 2018, Brussels
SMURBS participated in the Workshop for Future Cities, organized by Copernicus in Brussels on November 9th, 2018. The coordinator of SMURBS presented the overall concept of the project and the project’s progress, highlighting several interactions with Copernicus products and services, already being implemented or scheduled!

SmartStatistics4SmartCities Conference, 5 - 6


October 2018, Kalamata, Greece
SMURBS delivered a key-note presentation in the SmartStatistics4SmartCities Conference, which was held in Kalamata, one of SMURBS’ follower cities, during 5-6 October 2018! The conference was co-organised by Eurostat, the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), and the Municipality of Kalamata,  among others.
Our main contribution was to introduce the participants to the effective use of EO to monitor specific SDG indicators, and initiate the discussion between national key-EO players (through the Greek GEO Office) with the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT).

Ecocity Forum, Circular Economy in Smart Cities,


3-5 October, Thessaloniki, Greece
SMURBS participated, through its Project Coordinator, in the Ecocity Forum 2018. Dr. E. Gerasopoulos joined the Plenary Session III, "Technical Innovation and Economy Transition from Products to Services", as a Keynote speaker presenting how Earth Observations carry the smart city concept further. The whole idea is implemented within SMURBS project, which will: unfold the full range of technologically available methods for the next generation of urban monitoring capacities, adjusted to modern needs of AQ management; address natural and anthropogenic disasters affecting cities, covering all phases of their management cycle; identify and define urban development indicators by utilizing Copernicus satellites; and delineate health reciprocal relations to facilitate the potential weighing of mitigation options. To this end, SMURBS employs multiple EO platforms (i.e. satellites, in-situ, modeling, UAVs, smart sensors, citizen observatories) for city scale applications and solutions. Links exist between the SMURBS
Sport and Public Space- International Conference,

20-23 September 2018, Ljubljana, Slovenia
SMURBS partners (IJS) presented the idea of SMURBS, related projects and planned activities in Ljubljana as part of the conference contribution entitled “Towards an active citizenship in a modern urban environment”  at  “Sport and Public Space International Conference“.
GEO-UA 2018 and special session for SMURBS hosted by SRI NASU-SSAU, 18-19 September 2018, Kyiv, Ukraine
The special session devoted to ERA-PLANET project in general and SMURBS project in particular was organized by SRI in September 2018, and hosted by SRI NASU-SSAU at the National Academy of Sciences premises. Activities on creation of a smart city in Kyiv were presented and discussed.
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