EvoLand launches its second development phase after a successful mid-project meeting

It has been reported previously that first versions of the eleven candidate prototypes had been showcased to the core stakeholders at an event in June. However, multiple other outputs have been already put available for public use and/or consultations. The EvoLand consortium has discussed the project and its various components during eleven external events, notably the 1^st CLMS General Assembly, and the EuroGEO workshop 2023. In addition, a first scientific publication on the Weakly Supervised Learning method has been accepted, while others are expected to come in the second half of the project. The dedicated GitHub repository has witnessed 433 source code repository downloads, while particular methods such as Single Image Super-Resolution have received a lot of professional attention through a public blog post and online discussions and feedback.

The two days in Munich provided a great opportunity to showcase various best practices within the project. The use of platforms such as OpenEO is considered crucial to allow for a larger community to use the produced outputs. To enhance and stimulate the use of OpenEO, a dedicated workshop was held in Munich.

During the formal review meeting, the consortium delved deeper into the achievements of the first phase together with HaDEA and an external expert. While the formal revision of outputs produced is ongoing, the meeting confirmed that EvoLand is progressing as planned, having successfully met key milestones and appropriately targeting the challenges faced by land monitoring, while it helps maximise and valorise Copernicus data.

Detailed discussions were held around the methods and candidate prototypes. Experts and scientists from the EvoLand team enjoyed the thought-provoking discussions and noted a series of aspects useful for the implementation and refinement in the second phase of the project.

In the next phase, the project’s methodologies will be further advancing, and the candidate prototypes will undergo further refinement and validation.

‘’The EvoLand team is now focused on amplifying the knowledge gained through continuous stakeholder engagement, publications, and workshops. As the project progresses, these efforts will ensure that the methods and insights developed are fully exploited to maximise their impact’’ Dr Ruben Van De Kerchove, Project Coordinator explains.

One of the key outcomes from the intensive two-day meeting was the opportunity it provided to identify additional synergies across the various workstreams within the project. With significant progress in method development, the timing is ideal for the different prototypes to benefit from and rigorously test these innovative approaches. We anticipate even stronger collaborations in the second phase, particularly between teams working on methods and those focused on prototype development.

Concrete examples of information sharing through events, accessible communications and platforms like OpenEO and the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem set clear direction for the second phase where further work will be made available and more occasions of receiving feedback and fostering interactions will be crucial to meet the ambitious goals of the project to deliver suitable CLMS candidate prototypes.

Launched in January 2023, EvoLand is a three-year Horizon Europe project which develops and tests new and innovative methods, algorithms and eleven candidate Copernicus Land Monitoring Service prototypes. This is done by integrating novel EO and in-situ data with latest Machine Learning techniques to continuously monitor the status, dynamics and biomass of the land surface. The project focuses on five key thematic domains – agriculture, forest, water, urban and general land cover. Coordinated by VITO (Belgium), EvoLand brings together a unique consortium of 10 partners from 5 European countries: CESBIO (France), CLS (France), CNES (France), DLR (Germany), Evenflow (Belgium), GAF AG (Germany), IIASA (Austria), Joanneum Research (Austria) and Sinergise (Slovenia).