Agriculture is a key sector within the European Union (EU) with 177.0 billion EUR revenue in 2020 which contributes to 1.7% of the EU-27’s GDP (Eurostat, 2021). Moreover, food security within the EU and across the globe is becoming a major issue especially from the perspective of climate change and population growth. Frequent droughts combined with natural disasters and unsustainable exploitation of natural resources (e.g. water, soil or biodiversity) lead to agricultural losses and consequently to food shortage. To mitigate these effects a new approach towards management of agriculture is needed.

Remote Sensing techniques are well known tools for green areas monitoring. Beside the common use of Earth Observation in natural areas such as forests, agricultural, grasslands or wetlands landscapes, it can also support many aspects of urban areas. Green surfaces like parks or grasslands are crucial for increasing population life quality. CREODIAS platform offers wide range of satellite data, which are the key input for digitising green spaces. Thanks to uptodate imager and CREODIAS processing environment, it’s possible to generate such products as land cover classification, vegetation indices, crop types or simply inventory maps of park or forests.

It is observed in recent decades that the Earth's atmosphere accumulates more and more heat as a result of anthropological greenhouse gases emissions. The number of global climate anomalies is increasing rapidly.  We also see a decrease in the frequency of long- term drizzle precipitation and reduced time of fog periods. As a consequence, we have observed a decrease in the air humidity for a broad range of time. Moreover, anthropological changes in land use cause an increase of surface runoff which leads to rapid flooding in urban areas.

Climate change is considered to be the greatest environmental threat of the 21st century. While the urban climate changes affect the largest number of people, the urban heat island phenomenon and heatwaves are the most dangerous weather extremes. They not only damage the health of residents but also increase the energy consumption. Smart management of urban space using EO data available on CREODIAS platform, such as open and commercial satellite imagery as well as Copernicus products library,  makes it possible to reduce the harmful effects of this phenomenon and contribute to improving the quality of life.

There are different levels of processing of satellite data available on CREODIAS. All the data is ready to use for further analysis but to make it faster and easier for the user, CloudFerro offers Product Generation as a Service (PGaaS) or Processing as a Service (PaaS) for the Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery. PaaS is a special service for demanding users who need a large scale, fast and professional data delivery.

Modern agriculture benefits from the most innovative techniques like 5G, internet of things (IoT), robotics, precise navigation or unmanned air vehicles. Satellite data complements this list with its endless possibilities. CREODIAS platform, with its huge cloud computing power and enormous data repository, makes it possible to gather all modern techniques in one place for better management of food production.

Cloud computing services with an EO data repository like CREODIAS is a perfect place for developing and implementing any environmental applications, models or tools that you can think of. It is only up to the user how our resources will be utilised. Depending on the needs, the system is scalable and meets precise requirements. SOLUM and Forest Digital Earth Precursor are two examples of solutions CloudFerro have recently been working on. The both show how CREODIAS can be applied according to the needs and expectations of our society and public administration.

The most meaningful applications of satellite data are those related to crisis management and response. Earth Observation data can play a crucial role in saving lives and properties, providing valuable source of information in numerous types of emergency. Such events as floods, fires, earthquakes, landslides, droughts etc. can be foreseen, managed and thus their effects can be mitigated.

Nowadays, remotely acquired imagery plays an important role in building and assuring peace. The majority of techniques and products have a wide range of applications which can be used in assuring global security. Copernicus Security Service aims at enhancing crisis prevention, preparedness and response in three key areas: maritime surveillance, border surveillance and support to EU external action. A wide range of CREODIAS resources can also be applied in the security domain. Feeling safe and secure is a basic human need, thus there is a great need in creating and discovering new applications in this field using satellite data.