Conference Agenda

Aiming to enhance the uptake of Earth Observation (EO) in EU official statistics and identifying ways to reduce/rationalise the reporting burden of EU Member States through increased use of EO, the Knowledge Centre on Earth Observation (KCEO) conducted a comprehensive survey across 12 European Commission Directorates-General (DGs): the ensuing assessment explored opportunities for streamlining EU-policy reporting obligations and further integrate EO in EU statistics.

Reporting programmes within some policy areas present significant opportunities for consolidated data production across policies, following the principle: “measure once, report many times”. A more extensive integration of EO information in reporting represents a paradigm shift, leading to substantial reduction of reporting obligation.

In relation to EU official statistics, the analysis of survey’s submissions revealed that there is already some integration of EO-derived information in some policy areas (e.g., environmental monitoring, renewable energy). Transition to increasingly EO-based policy reporting will translate as well into more integration of similar products into Member States mandatory reporting to EUROSTAT.

Such transition will enable EUROSTAT to access unprecedented volumes of spatially explicit, temporally consistent, authoritative information, delivering multiple strategic benefits: (1) independent validation of survey-based statistics, (2) geographical (gaps-less) harmonisation in data collection across EU, (3) increased frequency of statistical updates, (4) development of indicators addressing emerging policy priorities including Sustainable Development Goal indicators, climate change adaptation, and urban development monitoring.

Further integration of EO information in monitoring, reporting and EU-wide statistics will require a few key strategic actions: (1) development of multi-scale EO data indicators serving local to EU-wide policy needs, beginning with priority domains where EO integration is most mature (e.g., land cover), (2) ensuring the semantic interoperability of policy-specific indicator requirements across policy frameworks, (3) investment in validation methodologies ensuring EO-derived statistics meet official statistics quality standards, and (4) capacity building across DGs and Member State agencies, to maximize utilization of enhanced geospatial capabilities.

The Warsaw Memorandum signed in 2021 by the National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) set out to explore the benefits of Earth Observation (EO) data for producing statistics. Since 2023, EUROSTAT has been carrying out several activities to implement the Memorandum‘s follow-up action plan. A Task Force on Earth observation involving NSIs has been carrying out regular meetings and is now implementing diverse work packages aiming at designing guidelines and streamlining the process of using EO data withing the European Statistics System. EUROSTAT manages grants that cover funding for innovation statistical projects focussing on EO. EUROSTAT’s alignment with DG DEFIS and the use of the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (CDSE) is a highlight of cooperation efforts within the European Commission and has enabled a rich source of IT infrastructure for the EO operations. Research in concrete applications and methodologies was carried out in the areas of agricultural, energy, land use and air quality statistics.

Recent European policy developments place increasing reliance on Earth Observation (EO) for the assessment and monitoring of biodiversity, nature and ecosystems. Legislative initiatives such as the Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) and Soil Monitoring Law (SML) both specify measurable targets that require consistent, repeatable, and statistically robust indicators. Other policy files also require similar monitoring support.

There is therefore a growing expectation that EO-derived products will deliver operationally stable metrics that can support the regulatory process. This presentation aims to provide an overview of how EO is referenced across policy files, how monitoring expectations are being formulated, and what this implies for practices in the EO domain.

As environmental legislation evolves, policymakers are placing greater emphasis on spatially explicit and repeatable information. For biodiversity and ecosystems, Earth Observation is increasingly explored as a cost-effective approach to habitat mapping, vegetation condition assessment, structural ecosystem indicators, among others. These applications place significant demands on timeseries consistency, statistical design, uncertainty estimation, traceability, and model validation. As reliance on EO grows, the requirement for high-quality in situ reference data becomes equally important, both for algorithm development and for independent validation. Hybrid monitoring approaches, taking both into account, are therefore central to delivering results that can be used confidently in future integration of Earth Observation products in national reporting and policy evaluation.

The main topics of the presentation:

• Overview of the main EU policy files that propose EO for ecosystem management, biodiversity, restoration and soil monitoring;
• Provide examples of environmental monitoring for which EO is considered suitable and reflect on the role of in situ data;
• Explore the increased demands for policy support and what it means for data producers and users;
• The need for a systematic approach to ensure such demands are met with consistent, high quality earth observation data across political domains.