Water Insight (WI) specialises in high quality spatial information products for monitoring surface water quality applying the synergistic use of Earth Observation (EO) and optical in situ measurements. Based on a close interaction with users, WI wants to add a new user-tailored service branch to their portfolio: forecasting of cyanobacteria blooms. Due to climate change and anthropogenic activity, massive blooms of cyanobacteria become an increasing problem for lakes world-wide. Cyanobacteria may be toxic for animals and humans, change the water quality and ecosystems. The consequences are visible in social, economic and industrial levels. While WI's technology has been proven to be very suitable for monitoring the development of cyanobacteria blooms, water managers also require quick and precise forecasts of the blooms development to take timely measures or mitigating actions. Existing process-based forecasting models are complex, need a too long processing time and more input data than is operationally available. WI has an extensive dataset of EO and in situ data on affected lakes. A data-driven statistical model could be developed based on these data, and significantly reduce the processing time for a forecast. To develop such a model, a highly-skilled searcher (PhD) is required, with specialised knowledge of EO data, proven skills in statistical modelling, cyanobacterial ecology and water quality. It is difficult for WI to recruit such a specialist as there is a lack of university graduates, particularly on the PhD level, in this field in the Netherlands. INNO-CYANO will be beneficial for all: WI will get the chance to hire a specialist to develop our innovative ideas, the candidate will get the chance to get an insight in the practice of a commercial company and to develop in the field of business innovation, and the ‘INNO-CYANO’ model will serve water managers with a precise forecast of the blooms and therefore improve the management of cyanobacteria blooms.

Water is vital for the existence of life on Earth. Lake and reservoirs contain something like 85% of all freshwater on Earth and as such any deterioration in the health of these systems can have profound effects on human society as well as the wider environment. Lakes are very dynamic environments and their health depends on many complex interactions between physical, chemical and biological processes. Lakes are also very sensitive systems and they respond rapidly to changes in our climate and also to the way we manage our lands. It's really important that we are able to measure the condition of lakes around the world and understand how they are changing as a result of human activities. However, this is no easy task. There are over 300 million lakes on Earth and they are scattered across the landscape and often in very remote and inaccessible locations. We simply do not have the financial or human resources to be able to monitor the health of all these lakes. In fact, we currently only monitor something like less than 0.00003% of all lakes and reservoirs on Earth. This a real challenge for lake scientists at the moment. One way of potentially meeting this challenge is to use satellites orbiting the Earth to make measurements of lake water quality. Satellites allow us to observe large areas on the Earth at any one time and they can provide these observations on a very frequent basis. This makes them ideal for assessing changes in lakes. However, the use of satellite observations for lake monitoring is technically challenging and we have only recently started to develop these techniques in a serious manner. In the next few years, the European Space Agency will be launching a series of new satellites called the Copernicus Sentinels. These satellites are being specifically designed for monitoring our environment, including the health of lakes and other inland waters. To get the very best of these new satellite sensors, there is an urgent need to bring together worldwide experts to work on the development of tools for extracting information on the status of lakes from the raw satellite observations. The purpose of this project is to bring together Europe's leading scientific teams with interests in the use of satellite sensors for lake monitoring and to get them working together on common challenges. In particular, the teams will be tasked with working out how better to relate satellite observations to measurements made on the ground. These are very technical considerations but are vitally important if we are to use satellite observations in the correct way. This project will exploit a rare opportunity to make use of some world-class research facilities and instruments in other countries. This will greatly benefit scientists in the UK and ensure they remain in a position to lead future developments in the field and contribute to the social and economic well-being of our wider society. Ultimately, we anticipate that in the very near future satellite technology will allow scientists to answer fundamental questions about how lakes are responding to changes in our climate and understand the implications of these changes for the wider environment and human society.

Coastal zones are very productive areas, offering many valuable habitats and ecosystems services and attracting human settlements and activities. The intensive concentration of population and excessive exploitation of natural resources puts high pressure on coastal ecosystems leading to biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, pollution as well as conflicts between potential uses and space competition. Several European directives aim at sustainable management of coastal waters, retaining or restoring a high ecological status and safeguarding ecosystem services. Increasing pressure and stricter regulations increase the need for efficient monitoring solutions. Where traditional in situ sampling is insufficient to characterise the highly dynamic coastal environments, Earth Observation (EO) provides a synoptic view and frequent coverage. With the launch of the Copernicus Sentinel satellites, operational water quality services become a business opportunity. CoastObs will develop a service platform for coastal water monitoring with validated products derived from EO. In dialogue with users from various sectors, CoastObs will develop innovative EO-based products: monitoring of seagrass and macro-algae, phytoplankton size classes, primary production, and harmful algae as well as higher level products such as indicators and integration with predictive models. CoastObs will establish sustainable supply chains that can be directly integrated into the users’ systems. The CoastObs consortium has the knowledge and ambition to develop services that are commercially viable, grow in capacity and thus create new jobs. The business case is to define user groups with common requirements, so tailored products can be developed at highly reduced costs per user. Setup of efficient data structures (array database) for smart (re)processing of data is part of this ambition. The commitment of 13 users to CoastObs demonstrates the need for such user-friendly and affordable coastal water services