Capacity building in Earth Observation hyperspectral remote sensing: the Horizon Europe EXPERT project between ASI, DLR and ROSA space agencies

Kurzfassung

Hyperspectral (HS) remote sensing is a well-established Earth Observation (EO) field, which has matured over the last 40 years. Since 2018, a boost in HS has been brought by newer sensors and missions such as DLR’s DESIS and EnMAP and ASI’s PRISMA. The applications that can be developed based on HS satellite data are manifold. However, these developments may mostly remain unrealized opportunities for those countries where there is no yet a consolidated and distributed community with HS satellite remote sensing technical and hands-on expertise. For example, this scenario can be found at the moment in Romania and, more widely, across Eastern Europe countries. To stimulate an acceleration in this EO domain at national level, one of the most effective strategies is to identify a national champion (or a group of them) that can act as a technological innovator hub that may start creating a competence basis and promote further dissemination across the reference community through training initiatives. It is with this scope that the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA), as the national space body in charge of coordinating the national space research and application programs, promoting Romania's development in the space field, is coordinating the Horizon Europe "Reaching Excellence in Hyperspectral Remote Sensing" (EXPERT) project (https://expert-project.rosa.ro/), in partnership with ASI and DLR. EXPERT encompasses capacity building through training delivered by ASI and DLR to ROSA staff. Trained skills are then practiced in joint research use-cases focusing on the main applications that ROSA has identified as priorities, i.e. cultural heritage, mining and agriculture. EXPERT provides an opportunity to test the synergy between HS missions and share state of the art HS remote sensing image processing techniques between space agencies. The longer-term objective is to help ROSA and its surrounding national ecosystem in preparing for HS-based R&D and downstream applications, also towards data exploitation of future missions such as CHIME. The EXPERT project has received funding from the European Union's HORIZON EUROPE "Widening participation and spreading excellence" programme under Grant Agreement No. 101160059.