Spectra Lab Projects

The EU aims to transforming 150 European regions into sustainable and climate resilient regions by 2030. VALORADA contributes to address this challenge by co-developing tested FAIR customizable data-manipulation tools to access available climate datasets and to enable the sharing, community validation and use of locally socioeconomic, demographic and Earth-Observation data.

MRV4SOC aims at designing a comprehensive, robust, and cost-effective Tier 3 approach, accounting for changes in as many C pools as possible, to estimate GHG and full C budgets, coupling C and N cycles, quantify Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) accumulation, and assess the results of traditional management practices and C farming.

To pave the way for a future of soil health, it is of utmost importance to raise awareness about soil biodiversity (SOB) and its pivotal role in providing ecosystem services (ES) to society. This endeavour entails a comprehensive study of SOB’s status across major land uses and regions throughout Europe. Regrettably, SOB often remains overshadowed in monitoring efforts when compared to higher plants and vertebrates. This is where SOB4ES comes in. The EU-funded project will significantly contribute to the “A Soil Deal for Europe” mission, with a specific focus on enhancing soil structure and devising SOB-friendly management practices.

An integrated toolbox for improved verification and prevention of adulterations and non-compliances in organic and geographical indications food supply chain. THEROS aims to implement an integrated toolbox being capable to modernise the process of verifying organic and geographical indications food products and preventing adulterations and non-compliances, through the use of various technological innovations and data sources and while demonstrating enhanced security, transparency, and interoperability in the quality labelled food supply chain. 

The SOILL Framework Partnership supports, coordinates, expands, and promotes the network of EU funded Soil Health Living Labs and Lighthouses (SHLL/LHs) under the mission “A Soil Deal for Europe”, with a wide range of support actions that include dedicated capacity building, knowledge exchange, promotion, and regular monitoring activities. SOILL-Startup is the first of the three phases of the project, collaborating with the first waves of Soil Health Living Labs and, Lighthouses, and key stakeholders at European and international level.

An underexploited source of data is generated by sensors used in agriculture, as they capture crucial information on the crops and the surrounding agri-environmental conditions. Tapping into this source and upscaling them the integration with other data could result in enhanced capacities for regional agri-environmental monitoring, ScaleAgData aims at contributing to the overall competitiveness and sustainability performance of the European agricultural sector.

The objective of AI4SoilHealth is to co-design, create and maintain an open access European-wide digital infrastructure, compiled using state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods combined with new and deep soil health understanding and measures. The AI-based data infrastructure functions as a Digital Twin to the real-World biophysical system, forming a Soil Digital Twin. This can be used for assessing and continuously monitoring Soil Health metrics by land use and/or management parcel, supporting the Commission’s objective of transitioning towards healthy soils by 2030.

H2020 project EIFFEL is a game changer in the domain of climate change adaptation and mitigation by harvesting the benefits of the GEOSS data. The project will offer to the Earth Observation community the ground-breaking capacity of exploiting existing GEOSS datasets and will also build upon prior knowledge, with minimal new data collection activities. Added-value services interoperable with GEOSS will be designed, using cognitive search and metadata augmentation tools based on Artificial Intelligence, including Natural Language Processing. These tools will leverage advanced cognitive features to extract meaningful information from and enrich GEOSS metadata.

Project e-shape is a unique initiative that brings together decades of public investment in Earth Observation and in cloud capabilities into services for the decision-makers, the citizens, the industry and the researchers. It allows Europe to position itself as global force in Earth observation through leveraging Copernicus, making use of existing European capacities and improving user uptake of the data from GEO assets.

The EU-funded DIONE project offers a unique fusion of innovative technologies that improves the workflow of agricultural monitoring. DIONE project is developing a direct payment controlling toolbox for paying agencies to abide by the modernised CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) regulations, involving novel techniques that will improve the capabilities of satellite technology while integrating various data sources (drones, soil sensors and mobile applications). At the same time a system developed on a regional or national scale will evaluate the monitored parameters to form evidence-based conclusions regarding eventual environmental impacts on an entire region.

Funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Union, Soils4Africa will put in place by 2024 an Open-data Soil Information System (SIS). The SIS will enable farmers, agri-businesses, scientists, and policymakers in their efforts towards sustainable intensification of agriculture and boosting food security; by improving the quality and availability of African soil data.

This Initiative is a continuation and extension of the work of the GEO-CRADLE Community Activity, which provided EO capacity building in the North Africa, Middle East, and Balkans (NAMEBA) region, now with potential to expand to the Black Sea. The Initiative will capitalise, sustain and scale up the results mainly achieved during the implementation of the 3-year H2020 GEO-CRADLE project, as well as key outcomes of other relevant EU flagship projects and initiatives (e.g. NextGEOSS, ERAPLANET, EuroGEOSS), in support of the three GEOSS priorities, namely CC, DRR and SDGs.

The WORLDSOILS project aims to develop, in close cooperation with authoritative end users, a pre-operational Soil Monitoring System to provide yearly estimations of Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) at global scale, exploiting space-based EO data leveraging large soil data archives and modelling techniques to improve the spatial resolution and accuracy of SOC maps.

The BACCHUS project aims to incorporate technologies into agricultural production in order to benefit productivity but also improve the working conditions of farmers and laborers. Intelligent systems are becoming the go-to solution to push towards precision agriculture, while a large number of farmer operations are already transitioning to full autonomy.

The overall objective of the AGRO_LESS project is the adoption of a strategic reference framework in a cross-border region for the support of the rural population in the application of reduced input agriculture driven through the practices of the agricultural activities (fertilization, irrigation and crop protection) leading to reduced impact of agro-products on the environment and maximizing the product quality of agricultural goods. This strategic plan will provide an insight knowledge into the farming operations, in terms of physical, technical, economical, and financial capabilities.

AquaNEX addresses the challenges of WFD application and water resources management in the CB area. Albania needs to apply the WFD to enable water resources protection and sustainable management, and also support its accession to EU. Greece needs to update water quality monitoring networks to better serve the WFD and enhance resources management efficiency in the CB region.