With the advent of the Copernicus program with its wealth of open data, the Earth Observation application and service development domain is increasingly adopting big data technologies. This adoption is first related to efficient data storage and processing infrastructures, but most importantly data analytics and application development framework. CANDELA project main objective is to allow the creation of value from Copernicus data through the provisioning of modelling and analytics tools given that the tasks of data collection, processing, storage and access will be provided by the Copernicus Data and Information Access Service (DIAS), which the team is fully familiar with. The implementation starts by putting in place a set of powerful tools that drastically lowers the cost of getting familiar with the data and creating new services. These modules adopt new developments in the domain of machine learning, data mining, data fusion and web semantics, combining the Copernicus data and information with other non-Earth Observation data sources to derive novel applications and services. CANDELA will demonstrate the breadth of project capabilities with a real-life small demonstrator by means of two reference scenarios: a “macro-economics and agriculture” scenario to show how remote sensing capacities to extract adequate information from images could be used to feed economical models; and a “forest health monitoring” (FHM) scenario which aim is to present how Earth Observation satellite data collection can be used for the monitoring of forest health conditions. CANDELA team is a well-balanced consortium, consisting of nine partners from five European countries, and with strong participation from the industry as encouraged by the Call, being half of the partners well positioned SME’s.

For a completely working Digital Single Market, effectively enabling the cross-border exercise by citizens and businesses of their Single Market rights, Member States must address several challenges on delivering better services. DE4A is a Member State-driven pilot, aligned with strategic eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020 and EIF Implementation Strategy and with full regulatory compliance (SDGR, GDPR, eIDAS, Services Directive…), establishing a culture of co-creation, transparency, accountability and trustworthiness. Its goal is facilitating migration towards European Digital Public Services co-delivered across borders, across sectors and with different participants, reinforcing trust in public institution, and unleashing multiple measurable positive impacts on efficiency gains and reduction of administrative burden and costs. Starting from needs and capacities of Member States, DE4A’s scalable, holistic, flexible approach focuses on high-quality fully online procedures accessible through the SDG by building on an extended interoperability Toolbox and on state-of-the-art. It enables an open and comprehensive environment and platform for collaboration and innovation, leveraging common eGov baseline patterns for secure, privacy-preserving and trustworthy realisation of essential Once-Only and Relevant-Only principles, and with re-use of existing and new building blocks and Digital Service Infrastructures at national and EU-wide levels. Innovative technologies like blockchain, machine learning, self-emerging ontologies and zero-knowledge proofs will be addressed for effective sharing of common services. Pilots involving secure access to key administrative procedures of real life and business events, shall highlight aspects of the technical ecosystem available for the SDG implementation, prove their technical viability and gauge the performance and degree in which non-functional requirements can be accommodated. DE4A includes 23 partners and has a duration of 40 months.