Copernicus Service Evolution:
perspectives from the Copernicus
Atmosphere Monitoring and Climate
Change Services
Copernicus Climate
Change Service
Copernicus Atmosphere
Monitoring Service
EU FP
GMES, Atmosphere Core Service, Implementation Group, Final Report, April 2009
Many years
tier-3 R&D
Innovation, longer-term service evolution
About 2 years
SERVICE
tier-2 R&D
Tendering by Entrusted Entity
Less than a year
Short term issues and evolution of
the “production” systems
tier-1 R&D
Day-to-day
Delivery and troubleshooting
operations
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Copernicus Climate
Change Service
Copernicus Atmosphere
Monitoring Service
Why is it complex to get “tier-3” research delivering “service evolution”?
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“Risky” research
Out-of-the-box thinking
Paradigm shift
World-leading
Competition
• Pursuing a vision
• Needs assessment
• Gap analysis
• Knowledge and
technology transfer
• Industrial share
• Geographical spread
• Infrastructure synergies
• Minimize overall cost
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Copernicus Climate
Change Service
Copernicus Atmosphere
Monitoring Service
How should priorities set out of Copernicus operational service context
be implemented? Should the Commission be more prescriptive in
specifications? Should procurement be used rather than grants?
• 1st calls were not especially successful in selecting essential “service evolution”
research (vs “guidelines”). Funding is not enough funding to rely on a “random
walk” process.
• Competitive grants are not the issue and H2020 approach is sound.
• A key problem: the “Impact” criterion should really be assessed in terms of what
the research will bring to service evolution, not in terms of own impact. Reviewer’s
limited knowledge of the state-of-play is a factor (EE cannot be directly involved
because of own contributions).
• Suggestion of a two-stage process: (1) competition ; (2) addition of EE/Current
Providers contributions (evaluation by Service’s independent Advisory Board) and
set-up of overall management. The current solution (project reviewer role) is
somewhat an afterthought: how to reshuffle activities significantly if GA is signed?
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Copernicus Climate
Change Service
Copernicus Atmosphere
Monitoring Service
How can industry be better prepared for participating in Copernicus
evolution through these H2020 calls?
• While industry is leading on some topics (e.g. instrumental design, IT
systems…), the “natural” share of industry (through the build up of consortia)
is low on certain types of research activities.
• A possibility could be to indicate preferences for industrial participation in the
calls , but how to keep a level playing field for all potential actors (in future
procurement of service components development or operations)?
• Issue “technology transfer” type calls? But then the limited service evolution
resources are not spent on service evolution, while resources are very limited.
• Industry could be involved more in diagnosing the status of the Services, their
planned evolution, and be involved together with the EEs in formulating gap
identification and way forward (“guidelines”). The leadership of evolving
services should remain at the EEs and users (via user forum).
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Copernicus Climate
Change Service
Copernicus Atmosphere
Monitoring Service
How should the maturity of results for operational transition be proven
in H2020 projects?
• IPR issue: if project partners (private or public) develop a useful service
component as part of a H2020 grant, it could lead to a monopolistic situation.
It is critical that the research remains at a ”tier-3” level and deliver “potential
for upgrading/evoluting the services”, not service components directly.
• Maturity should be assessed in the sense of delivering a sound basis for a
“tier-2” competitive tendering, where application to the service’s context can
be tested and be brought to the level of possible implementation.
• The bottom line question is: how could the H2020 projects closer match the
requirements of the ”guidelines”? A possibility is to make these guidelines
more precise and selective, so that there is more control on the direct
relevance of the outputs/use cases regarding service evolution.
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Copernicus Climate
Change Service
Copernicus Atmosphere
Monitoring Service
How can international cooperation aid the evolution of Copernicus?
• It is a natural context for Copernicus. International research feeds Copernicus
service evolution just as well as EU-funded research does, except that there is
no control on the research topics addressed elsewhere (which is why
prioritisation is important in the Copernicus context).
• The scope of the Copernicus calls needs to be rooted in the international
research agenda (e.g. WCRP grand challenges, decadal predictions…).
• On observations also, the international dimension is also essential (large
coordinated networks and infrastructures...). Discussions and e.g. OSSEs of
future evolutions of the Global Observing System cannot be made in isolation.
• Benchmarking and intercomparing against best international similar products
and services is a must for Copernicus to contribute effectively to Protocols and
Treaties monitoring.
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