The rules and objectives of the OMC were described in the OMC document published on the website of PROTECT. The OMC comprised several activities, including a request for information through an EU Survey questionnaire and 4 webinars took place on 15 and 16 November related to the 4 challenges: FLOODS, FIRE, WATER and SUSTAINABLE INFRASTRUCTURE.

During the OMC webinars, public buyers presented their needs and providers had the opportunity to ask questions. The OMC report with the results of these activities is available on the website of PROTECT.

The outcome of the OMC is relevant for an informed decision of the Public Buyers Group (PBG) who will prepare a proposal for the Horizon Europe Pre-Commercial Procurement call due on 28 February 2024. If you are a public buyer interested in joining the PBG please register here: Get involved – PROTECT (protect-pcp.eu)

The Pain Point Workshops of PROTECT took place online on 28 and 29 March 2023. The online workshops consisted of 5 Working Groups (WG) bringing together at around 15 participants (including procurers and experts) per WG session in 5 application domains: (1) Marine and Coastal environment, (2) Sustainable Urban Communities, (3) Civil Security and Protection, (4) Energy and Utilities, and (5) Agriculture, Forestry and other Land Use.

The purpose of the WG was to identify common problems and procurement challenges for the future procurement of Climate Services based on Earth Observation (EO) data/services.

As a result of the WG sessions, 5 challenges were identified. The outcome consists of a description of the problem and functional requirements, a use case stating the ‘as is’ present situation and the ‘wish’ optimal future situation that could be achieved with innovative solutions. In addition, a value pilot and keywords were preliminary defined. The identified 5 challenges expressed as functional requirements are:

Marine and Coastal environment

• Rapid and reliable mapping of flooded areas for planning, preventing, predicting and post event intervention and cooperation.

Sustainable Urban Communities

• Thermal monitoring and predicting waste fire to avoid spontaneous ignition in waste storages and air pollution, using automated notification of risk of fire based on the modelling of certain conditions (like the level of humidity, air temperature, height of the pile of waste, etc.).

Civil Security and Protection

• Identifying illegal dumping of waste in water and sending automated alerts to law enforcement agencies to prevent the flow of waste causing cross-border damages, and producing standardized reports that can serve as proof of responsibility in (criminal) judicial proceedings.

Energy and Utilities

• Predicting the demand for sweet water from different users aimed at connecting the supply and demand of water for diverse uses (such as farming) in the water value chain to tackle periods of drought.

Agriculture, Forestry and other Land Use

• Detecting climate vulnerability in the face of challenges like salinity affecting reproductivity of vegetation, through automated analysis that supports the decision of experts in preparing resilience plans.

Let us know if you would like to participate in the next sessions to explore more in-depth these challenges and the procurement of related Climate Services based on EO.  Please send a message to: a.jaramillo@Corvers.com

Credits: ESA – Earth observation data access portal

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5gL4Mdi4aM

]]> https://www.protect-pcp.eu/protect-pain-point-workshops/ Thu, 16 Feb 2023 13:32:08 +0000 http://www.protect-pcp.eu/?p=512

Based on the results of the EU survey “Innovation Procurement of Climate Change services & National Legal Framework” two sets of workshops will take place in March and October 2023.

These two sets of online workshops have been preceded by a general plenary session regarding the challenges in each application domain during the high-level conference in Barcelona. During this session, moderated by CORVERS CEO (Stephan Corvers), the discussions focussed on sustainable and urban communities, in particular on the importance of waste management, which is extremely expensive and usually consists in burying waste, burning waste or transporting waste. Climate services (CS) based on Earth observation (EO) could contribute to provide solutions for these pressing issues which can potentially affect other domains such as Marine and coastal environment and Civil Security and Protection.

On the 28^th and 29^th of March 2023, the first set of pain point workshops will take place online. During the 90 minutes sessions (one per application domain), value methodologies will be used to prioritise and fine-tune needs based on the climate challenges identified thanks to the EU survey in the five application domains. The results will be used to define keywords on functions and performance with the purpose of conducting a SOTA analysis and give an overview of the needs and subsequent procurement challenges that could be addressed through one or several Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) or Public procurement of innovative solutions (PPI).

Pain Point Workshops Schedule

The second set of five workshops (one per application domain) will take place in October 2023 with procurers to work on explicit and latent needs identified during the preliminary work of PROTECT and agree on 4 procurement challenges not only at national but also at EU level. These workshops will involve procurers from the community and additional ones that could have similar needs but have not yet formulated them. Identified procurement challenges – not just the final selected 4 – will constitute the basis for the elaboration of an orientation paper for policy drivers at regional, national and EU level to address more general and extended challenges and to design procurement strategies and/or financial instruments. The orientation paper will prioritise recommendations for the procurement challenges with a higher climate and procurement impact and will indicate whether a PCP or a PPI is the best procurement approach to address the procurement challenges at stake.

On September 29th, the PROTECT project held its first project presentation webinar to introduce the project’s objectives, methods, and outcomes to the public.

If you missed the webinar, don’t worry! The recording of the webinar is now available on our social media channels. You can watch the recorded webinar at your convenience.

Link: https://youtu.be/gc33CRPqlZk

PROTECT is a project funded by the European Commission in the framework of the HORIZON EUROPE programme under Grant Agreement Number 101060592. PROTECT supports urgent action for climate adaptation, mitigation and resilience. It enables public authorities to use state-of-the-art public procurement approaches in order to identify solutions – climate services based on Earth Observation – that best fit the specific and systemic needs of the public demand. The focus is on five application domains, namely: Energy & Utilities, Sustainable Urban Communities, Agriculture, Forestry and other Land use, Marine and Coastal Environments and Civil Security and Protection.

For its 2022 edition, the SCEWC hosted more than 40 000 participants, 700 cities, 140 countries, and 800 exhibitors around 8 tracks: enabling, technologies, energy & environment, mobility, governance, living & inclusion, economy, infrastructures & buildings and safety & security.

The PROTECT team attended the three days of the SCEWC with the goal to build the project visibility and promote the project beyond its dedicated event. The PROTECT team was able to connect directly with 55 representatives from 20 innovative cities and regions and 35 companies falling into the scope of the project, who expressed strong interest in the project and its activities. All stakeholders met were invited to attend the PROTECT conference held on the morning of the 17^th of November.

The PROTECT conference notably gathered representatives from cities and regions from all over Europe, including Helsinki, Bratislava , Haarlem, Grenoble and Flanders region and many more. In an intimate setting, participants were invited to discuss how can Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) and Earth Observation (EO) can help them tackle climate change adaptation and implement mitigation measures and shape the next generation climate change services.

PROTECT Project Director Marc Pattinson from G.A.C. Group in his introduction to the event highlighted the importance of helping cities to both define their needs and to cooperate with each other. Defining challenges and finding solutions can be shared and implemented intelligently thanks to PCP.

The first part of the event was aimed at setting the scene and raising awareness about the key thematic areas and the key activities of the PROTECT project. PROTECT partners  Thanh-Tâm Lê (EIT Climate KIC), Alice Guibert (Aerospace Valley) and Stefano Bagli (Gecosistema) shared their vision and insights into climate change adaptation and mitigation policies and actions, EO data and climate services potential. The different phases of a Pre-Commercial Procurement process and the benefits that can be secured  were  presented by Stephan Corvers (Corvers procurement services). The plenary session ended with a presentation of concrete examples of climate services policies and initiatives from  the city of Haarlem (the Netherlands) and the city of Rimini (Italy).

Following the plenary session, participants were invited to take part in an open discussion regarding the challenges faced by sustainable urban communities. Participants share several concrete examples of how EO can support cities. Bratislava city spoke about the issues regarding the dumping of illegal waste, including dangerous substances such as flammables that can cause fires. Some waste may include hazardous chemicals and spread contaminated substances after heavy rainfall. Helsinki City mentioned that in order to have a more circular approach, they incinerate their waste and reuse the heat created. And nowadays, they are transitioning to more sustainable systems by recycling plastic and separating the waste collection. In a similar situation in the region of Flanders, the heating systems are derived from the incineration of waste. Currently, they have ongoing projects related to sharing heat and working on organising low-cost heating solutions for residents.

How can Earth Observation help Cities deliver their climate adaptation policies and support green transition agenda?

EO data and tools are high-potential and valuable decision-making tools for supporting national, local and regional governments in the planning and tracking of their public policies’ implementation and monitoring of their progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

While some cities aim to be carbon neutral by 2030, one of the main difficulties EO data can help address is the transition to sustainable processes. Indeed, there are several possible applications for EO. For instance, policy makers from Helsinki cited the case of winter maintenance which  is  costly and time-consuming. EO might be helpful in this situation by providing a solution that would reduce pollution and reducing the possibility of snow removal damage.

Similarly, EO may be used to monitor illegal dumping, such as burning waste, and could help identify the illegal dumping in real time without requiring an inspector to go on the spot. EO could also be used as a warning system to anticipate problems and inform decision-makers about suspicious and potentially contaminated illegal dumping. A similar approach could be adopted before implementing significant water, heat, and road infrastructure projects, to consider how to monitor and evaluate the actions taken. EO might assist with establishing strategies, policies, and measurements for the impacts of this project on the city.

These are many other use cases can provide the basis for developing shared policy and procurement solutions. Next year within the EC’s draft Horizon Europe funding programme a number of PCP type initiatives will be supported, such as the call (HORIZON-CL6-2024-GOVERNANCE-01-5: Customisation/pre-operationalisation of prototypes end-user services in the area Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation)

Useful links:                                          

• https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101060592
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/eu-protect/
• https://twitter.com/EU_PROTECT

Organised as part of the Smart City Expo World Congress Barcelona, the PROTECT project side-event will be the opportunity for public buyers from European cities and regions to shape next generation climate services through innovative procurement approaches.

You can find a detailed agenda here.

The PROTECT workshop is free of charge and you can pre-register here. Participation requires an access pass to the Smart City Expo World Congress Barcelona.

PROTECT supports urgent action for climate adaptation, mitigation and resilience. It enables public authorities to use state-of-the-art public procurement approaches in order to identify solutions – climate services based on Earth Observation – that best fit the specific and systemic needs of the public demand. The focus is on five application domains, namely: Utilities, Green communities, Circular and Bioeconomy, Land use and Marine environment and Civil Security and Protection.

EU cities and regions must advance their climate change adaptation and mitigation policies and actions and innovation procurement can be a strategic lever in this regard. 

But how to prepare for a pre-commercial procurement?

Join us on September 29 for the first PROTECT online webinar, learn from the experience of peers, share and express your challenges interests, and receive PROTECT’s free technical assistance in preparing for a collaborative pre-commercial procurement!

The European Commission-funded project PROTECT supports urgent action for climate change adaptation and mitigation through an innovation procurement approach. It aims to connect and prepare public buyers of local and regional public authorities to undertake a PCP procedure enabling the development and uptake of climate services – solutions and technologies based on Environmental/Earth Observation (EO) data – that meet the specific and systemic needs of the public demand. PROTECT addresses procurement challenges and needs in five sectoral domains: Energy and utilities, Sustainable urban communities, Agriculture, forestry and other land use, Marine and coastal environments, and Civil security and protection. These domains display a strong demand, applicability, and impact potential for EO-based climate services. This webinar will raise awareness about PROTECT’s objectives, key activities and expected benefits for relevant stakeholder groups.

It will also invite public authorities from all European regions to collaborate on the preparation of a joint Pre-Commercial Procurement.

The event is free of charge but registration by September 27th is mandatory. 

Registration link: https://bit.ly/3BmqPHM