SMURBS participated in the ERA-PLANET Annual Meeting, held in Brussels on 09-10 October 2019, where the so far progress and major achievements of the four projects were presented.
In the throes of ERA-PLANET implementation, strategic decisions that will ensure the legacy of the program as well as the necessary transformation of its long term vision towards Digital Europe priority and the new Horizon Europe framework, were discussed.
Emphasis was placed on the necessary  synergies between the projects to support UN in SDG monitoring.
Along this line, SMURBS presented its EO-based, operational and freely available platform that monitors the population-weighted annual average concentration of fine particulate matter in more than 800 cities in Europe, tracking progress towards the SDG 11.6.2.
The platform operates at the city level, utilizing free, state-of-the-art EO data provided by the Copernicus Services and the Global Human Settlement Layer. Offering an elegant portal for city stakeholders to better perceive the policy implications and help in achieving the SDG Targets, it will be among the platforms selected by the European Commission to showcase the contribution of EuroGEO to GEO and GEOSS, in the forthcoming GEO Ministerial in Canberra, Australia.