Facilitating the uptake of EO-derived information in sustainable development projects in Eastern European countries

EO4EP – Earth Observation for Eastern Partnership is an ESA initiative which aims to achieve a steep increase in the uptake of satellite-based environmental information in the development programs implemented by the World Bank and the European Investment Bank in the Eastern European Region, in particular in order to support the technical collaboration and knowledge exchange among Eastern Partnership countries. The objective is to enhance the provision of the specialized remote sensing information services, analytic tools and geospatial information systems and to leverage new data sources such as Sentinel satellites to support planning, implementation, and monitoring of development projects as well as to provide remote sensing capacity building in three thematic areas: Agriculture, Land Management, and Water Resources Management. The project also aims to develop a portfolio of demonstration services which involve crop cultivation mapping and monitoring, assessment of water availability for crops, benchmarking against long-term data, delineation of areas currently undergoing water stress, predicting yields, providing information on land use as well as flood monitoring.