Copernicus4regions - How interregional best-practice and knowledge sharing contributes to space capacity building
Roya Ayazi1, Margarita Chrysaki1, Branka Cuca2
NEREUS – Network of Regions Using Space technologie1, Dept. of Architecture, Built environment and Construction engineering (DABC), Poltecnico di Milano2

The Copernicus4regions campaign comprises 99-user-stories on how SENTINEL-imagery is successfully used at local and regional level. It is a unique ongoing interregional cooperation at European scale towards the common goal of bringing the benefits of the system to the regional and local level while expanding to new user-communities. It is a joint initiative of the European Commission, the European Space Agency and the European Network NEREUS. Community building and sharing experiences, knowledge and best practices to make more and better use of Copernicus are core elements of the initiative. It is also a step to bridge regional users with the political level and raise awareness amongst European politicians for the societal value of the system.

It is a truly bottom-up approach that builds on story-telling and was realized by volunteers from different disciplines and sectors across Europe. The broad range of authoring backgrounds and organisations who contributed to the collection shows how SENTINEL imagery is now diffusing into society at all levels. The use-cases that are subject of the collection were received in response of a call in 2017, open to all Copernicus Contributing Countries. It invited contributions in 8 selected application domains with high relevance and closely linked to the competences of the local and regional level. In total, the stories cover 177 authoring entities, 72 regions of applications and 24 European countries. The affiliation of authors who come from 28 different European countries reflect a rich geographical and structural diversity of the expertise in developing and handling Copernicus-based solution. This might also hint to an increased spread of skills and capabilities across Europe.

In fact, local and regional authorities, who contributed considerably and were quoted in the majority of use-cases, are the focus of the campaign. The overall idea had been to make the deployment situation at the level of local and regional administrations more transparent and empower public authorities to learn from each other and partner up. Public authorities share manifold challenges for which the program provides solutions and new approaches. Despite the fact that there is a positive trend in the up-take, public authorities, the main users and customers of Copernicus services, still have to overcome a variety of obstacles to fully exploit the benefits and potentials of the Copernicus-ecosystem.

By analysing how and to what extent other regions have tackled common challenges, Copernicus4regions identified a number of positive use-cases that exemplify the benefits of the Programme are suited to serve as a positive model to other regions. These clear and in-depth portrayals of users’ stories are meant to motivate regional stakeholder to explore use opportunities and get involved.

In this vein the collection is meant to showcase on the one hand the process of transforming data into valuable information for public authorities with tangible benefits for regions and their citizens but also on the other hand to highlight innovative processes and sustainable mechanisms that lead a public administration to develop and use a space-based product and/or service. In this respect Copernicus4regions contributes to space capacity building in regions in many respects.

With local and regional authorities being the protagonists of the collection, public sector innovation is a key topic: To this end the practical reference to user experiences in public policy and territorial contexts demonstrates how the data can be used to modernise and innovate the public sector while providing more efficient public services, improving the quality of life and level of satisfaction for European citizens.

The vast majority of the papers received are cases describing mature fields of application for satellite Earth observations such as “Agriculture, Food, Forestry and Fisheries” (32) followed by Biodiversity and Environmental Protection (17). Most of the user stories refer to data from Sentinel-1 (mentioned in 44 user stories) and Sentinel-2 (74).

Bearing in mind, that strong political will and commitment of civil servants is an important factor to pave the ground for an integration of Copernicus’ services into the workflows of public administrations, the campaign specifically targets policy makers and public authorities as mentioned above. For this purpose, targeted outreach/promotional tools were developed to make the collection more attractive and comprehensive to these specific groups. Besides Copernicus4regions offered a forum to regional users and politicians to exchange and debate regional use cases and deployment situation. The campaign organized a number of events to bring tangible user-experiences from the local and regional level to the European Parliament and sensitize politicians and their staff for the program and its impact on society. These meetings were also important occasions for regional user representative to liaise with other relevant stakeholder and voice their views and needs towards the political and institutional communities. Given the restrictions by the pandemic the Copernicus4regions community continued its efforts and dialogue via targeted webinars that put the focus on bringing new stories to the stage around the Green Deal Agenda of the European Commission.

The publication “The Ever Growing Uses of Copernicus across Europe’s Regions” and additional outreach material that complements the collection are freely downloadable from the NEREUS website. The Copernicus4regions outreach material comprises a brochure, single info-sheets, search-engine with different parameters, teaser, videos and webinars.

The Copernicus4regions collection builds on former experiences such as the 2012 publication “The Growing Use of GMES across Europe’s Regions” (67 user cases) and SENTINEL4regions, “Improving Copernicus take-up among Local and Regional Authorities via dedicated thematic workshops” (2015/16). In order to capture the evolutions of the 99 stories since the release of the publication in 2018, the organizing team launched a consultation of authors in 2021 to gain information in how far the use-cases where integrated into workflows of public administration, if the solution was institutionalized and analyse its evolution, to assess any technological improvements, but most importantly to identify possible additional benefits to the public administrations sector and citizens, that have been observed and determined over the past few years (on-going activity). The idea is to analyse the evolution of the whole collection of Copernicus4Regions User Stories in a systematic way, monitoring the changes and novelties.

Acknowledgements: This activity was managed by the Network of European Regions Using Space Technologies (NEREUS) under a contract from the European Space Agency. The activity is funded by the European Union, in collaboration with NEREUS. Paging, printing and distribution of this publication is funded by the European Space Agency.

As noted in Sathyendranath et al.,[1] education and engagement of the general public has to be an important component of plans for building capacity to ensure enhanced resilience against natural calamities and extreme events. Citizen science and crowd sourcing have become reliable approaches for timely logistical planning and execution of rescue missions during natural calamities. Citizen scientists, supported with crowd-sourcing tools, were employed for conducting a well-mapping mission after the once-in-a-century floods which hit Kerala state of India in August 2018. The flood affected 5.4 million people, displaced 1.4 million and caused 433 fatalities. Crowd-sourcing was used during the floods for arranging relief camps and enabling victims to request for rescue, food, medical care, food and water supplies and essential sanitary items [2]. A major concern post disaster was assuring access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities to the public, to avoid disease outbreaks. The floods had disrupted access to public water supply to 6.7 million people, damaged 317,000 shallow wells and nearly 100,000 toilets [3]. Toilets and septic tanks were flooded and overflowed in many areas, enhancing risk of disease outbreaks. There were several cases of acute diarrheal disease (191,945 cases), malaria (518 cases) and chikungunya (34 cases) reported in Kerala in August 2018 [4]. A well-mapping mission was initiated during the floods, aimed at identifying usable wells in areas of selected flood-affected villages, for assessing quality of well water for drinking, and thus reduce the spread of water-associated diseases. Majority of the people in the study area were dependent on public water supply or open wells for their daily water needs and the floods had damaged the water supply systems severely. Therefore, it became necessary to identify the usable wells in the area to ensure the supply of safe drinking water.
The well-mapping mission was conducted by 30 citizen scientists, who visited 300 wells in four days and conducted the study using an online platform with an application downloaded to their mobile phones. Some 37% of the wells in the study area were visually contaminated with floating plants and high turbidity, which might have occurred when flood waters surged over the top of the open wells (Figure-1). Areas surrounding the wells were clean in nearly 70% of the cases (Figure-1), and this was considered by the residents as being most important to avoid the spread of diseases. More than 60% of the wells had septic tank in the proximity (i.e., within 7.5 m) of wells, which indicated high chance of faecal contamination during floods. Local administration and health department had undertaken extensive educational programmes disseminated through social media on the importance of consuming only safe water to avoid water-associated diseases, and all wells were chlorinated multiple times in a week. Since the efficiency of chlorination is largely dependent on the organic load in the well, we graded the wells based on the visual level of contamination and proximity of septic tanks. Those wells with visually clear water and septic tanks at >15 m away were graded as green and suggested for use after chlorination while those with turbid water and septic tanks in the proximity were placed in the red grade and advised to avoid using even for recreational purpose. The wells of different grades were geo-located on an interactive map. Such types of maps are useful for identifying wells of different categories in each area and for preparing a technical plan for their cleaning, frequency of chlorine application, and monitoring.
This work, carried out as part of the Indo-UK project REVIVAL, illustrates how satellite-based communication tools such as smart phones, in combination with citizen science, can provide useful and timely information in the wake of a natural disaster. The work is being extended within the ESA project WIDGEON, in which the use of crowd sourcing and citizen science is being explored, to generate dynamic sanitation maps, which can be updated quickly, in the event of a natural disaster.

References:
[1] Sathyendranath, S.; Abdulaziz, A.; Menon, N.; George, G.; Evers-King, H.; Kulk, G.; Colwell, R.; Jutla, A.; Platt, T., Building Capacity and Resilience Against Diseases Transmitted via Water Under Climate Perturbations and Extreme Weather Stress. In Space Capacity Building in the XXI Century, Ferretti, S., Ed. Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2020; pp 281-298.
[2] Guntha, R.; Rao, S. N.; Shivdas, A., Lessons learned from deploying crowdsourced technology for disaster relief during Kerala floods. Procedia Computer Science 2020, 171, 2410-2419.
[3] Parmar, T.; Manchikanti, S.; Arora, R. Building back better: Kerala addressing post-disaster recovery needs; UNICEF: 2020; p 12.
[4] Shankar, A.; Jagajeedas, D.; Radhakrishnan, M. P.; Paul, M.; Narendrakumar, L.; Suryaletha, K.; Akhila, V. S.; Nair, S. B.; Thomas, S., Elucidation of health risks using metataxonomic and antibiotic resistance profiles of microbes in flood affected waterbodies, Kerala 2018. Journal of Flood Risk Management 2021, 14 (1), e12673.

Europe has the second largest space budget globally and runs a world-class space system with its major pillars Copernicus and Galileo. Copernicus as the European Earth observation (EO) programme is one of the largest data provider in the world with terabytes of EO data generated every day. Both assets Copernicus and Galileo are expected to bring important strategic, social and economic benefits to Europe and the world. In order to ensure the programme exploiting its full benefits, an effective strategy is essential with strong user interaction of the many Copernicus data and information services. The recent and continuing developments in the European space sector stimulate ever-new use cases and applications. Data and services are in place - but their potential is by far not used to its possible extent yet. Evolving needs, taking different stages of a problem-based solution process into account, requires an integrated approach. Apart from the appropriate space technologies and products supplied by service providers, this entails distinctive problem awareness by responsible actors, a workforce with the right skills in place – domain-wise and technical - to address the problem, the dedication to understand and address problems in a joint effort to pull together in the same direction.

The Copernicus User Uptake Programme includes activities to involve proactively stakeholders in the uptake processes of EO-based services, in the adaptation of methods and tools, and in the whole technology and information infrastructure. In the current European Space strategy, the provision of information services and the use of data and policies to promote this is a key element. This applies to a wide range of socially relevant application areas such as environmental protection, transport safety, precision farming, fisheries control, monitoring of shipping routes and detection of oil spills, as well as urban and regional planning. New areas of application are also constantly emerging, including tourism, cultural heritage, supply management or humanitarian aid, to name but a few.

However, experience shows that an integrated approach of demand and supply as well as related skills development [1] is needed to ensure the continuity and sustainability of the evolving downstream sector. Within the Copernicus ecosystem, this involves at least three actor groups: (a) public authorities and bodies as the key beneficiaries of information products and services; (b) strong involvement of the commercial sector as the key providers; (c) a network of academic institutions and champion users, emanating - inter alia – from the Copernicus networks, the Copernicus Academy and the Copernicus Relays. In order to stimulate exchange and interaction between the different actor groups, so-called Copernicus knowledge and innovation hubs shall strengthen the user uptake and development of information services, facilitate an effective transfer of knowledge, encourage cooperation, explore synergies and increase targeted capacity building and training [2]. These hubs can be realised in both ways, as virtual or regional hubs (and blends of each). For the first, main focus is the development of technical elements to visualize and facilitate easy harvesting existing knowledge and experience, while for the latter physically implemented hubs focus on the interaction with local and regional stakeholders and the organization of region-specific implemented outreach and education events.

Within this framework, the University of Salzburg as one of the key player in the Copernicus Academy network organised a sequence of Copernicus-related summer schools, which were also gratefully sponsored by ESA. Entitled “Copernicus for Digital Earth” (2019), “Automated image analysis for the operational service challenge” (2020), and “Intelligent Earth Observation” (2021), those training formats were designed to reach out to different target groups and through this mix of different audiences to cross-fertilise user-driven applications. The summer schools convened participants from students to professionals in the public sector and representatives from companies. Thus, the requirements from authorities were matched with trend-setting R&D originating from academia and solutions tailored by industry.

The most recent international summer school “Intelligent Earth Observation” is a best practice example of integrated approach to close the skills gap between demand and supply in the EO*GI sector workforce, as promoted by the EO4GEO Skills Alliance and. It has pursued a consequent approach of addressing the challenges in a small-scale instantiation of the recently published Sector Skills Strategy . Real-world problems dealt as starting point on which to employ a problem-based application case and build teamwork based solutions. The instructional approach was built upon a combination of the EO4GEO project’s tools and outcomes (Body of Knowledge [3], Curriculum Design Tool, training materials) to establish a compelling training action structure; instructional input was primarily provided by the Skills Alliance partners. Supplemented with keynote inputs from expert guest speakers and embracing a problem based learning approach following the Copernicus downstream idea (i.e., from needs to services), the strongly collaborative summer school can be seen as a best practise example for upskilling and lifelong learning, considering emerging needs of the sector. Particularly oriented towards applications and case-based learning, and following the idea to develop solutions for current challenges, the summer school hosted participants from more than a dozen nationalities who sought for solution building in teams in a virtual environment. The different backgrounds in terms of prior education (bachelor to PhD) and profession (students, researchers, employees in the public and private sector) reflected a welcome mixture of prerequisites to mutually enrich and reinforce the work on application cases. The innovative conceptual design of the Summer School underpinned the strongly case-based learning experience in a three stages: In a first phase, the application areas atmosphere, land and emergency were introduced by means of business and research examples alongside a general introduction, followed by the selection of application cases for group work. The next phase took up EO*GI-concepts useful for group work topics, putting emphasis on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Finally, the third phase was dedicated to elaborate the selected application cases in teams, while consultation and feedback were offered (inquiry-based learning).

References
1. Hofer, B., et al., Complementing the European earth observation and geographic information body of knowledge with a business-oriented perspective. Transactions in GIS, 2020. 24: p. 587–601.
2. Riedler, B., et al., Copernicus knowledge and innovation hubs. International Archives of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, 2020. XLIII-B5-2020: p. 35 - 42.
3. Stelmaszczuk-Górska, M., et al., Body of knowledge for the Earth observation and geoinformation sector - a basis for innovative skills development. International Archives of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, 2020. XLIII-B5-2020: p. 15-22.

The world is losing 7 million hectares of forests every year, an area that is roughly the size of Portugal. Today, other than the threat of deforestation, we are also dealing with the risks associated with forest fire, pests, diseases, invasive species, drought and other extreme weather events which are putting another 100 million hectares at risk. As the majority of the world’s forests are located in the tropical region, countries within the tropics have set ambitious targets for protecting forests. Their role is seen as critical in reaching the climate goals put forward under the Paris Agreement.
In the last few years, we have seen economic difficulties creep up which have started to impede the efforts put forward by tropical nations, requiring policies and resources to be more effectively aligned. As a result we have seen a rise in public and private commitments to zero deforestation, leading to a more collaborative space in forest governance. Governments that are seeking to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by protecting and restoring forests are partnering with private institutions that are motivated to eliminate deforestation through their supply chain. In order for companies to design a sustainable and resilient supply chain, there is an increasing demand for data, especially high resolution satellite data that is affordable and accessible.
An example of such a public-private partnership is the NICFI satellite data program, which is a collaboration between KSAT, Planet and Airbus funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment. Planet and Airbus are providing data for this innovative program that gives free access to high resolution Planetscope monitoring and archival mosaics across the tropical forest region (45 M sq km) for all users as well as historical SPOT5, 6 and 7 scenes over specific areas for selected users. Users have signed up to this program from an amalgamation of backgrounds ranging from governments to NGOs to Journalists, and the Program has partnered with various tools such Global Forest Watch and Google Earth Engine (GEE) to allow for a wider reach of the dataset.

Successful planning and execution of capacity building activities require thorough understanding of the current situation, including detailed awareness of the underlying gaps and opportunities.

Earth Observation (EO) is increasingly used across the globe to support capacity building, in relation to its capability to assist in addressing key economic and societal challenges. To maximise the impact and to increase the efficiency (including resource management) of such activities, decision makers and other actors along the value chain (e.g., research institutes, companies, user communities, investors), require reliable data on the state and progress of different aspects of EO activities in their local EO ecosystem. Assessing Earth observation capacities in such a broad framework is certainly a complex and ambitious task– a diverse variety of factors contribute to the outcome of classifying a country as more or less advanced in the domain. Nonetheless, this complexity does not necessarily justify the fact that currently, reproduceable and comprehensive guidelines as to assessing the maturity of the EO ecosystems at country level do not exist.

The solution we propose in order to fill this gap is the EO maturity indicators (EOMI) methodology. It has been developed and initially implemented under the H2020 GEO-GRADLE project (now a GEO initiative), and has been reviewed and upscaled to its current version for the purposes of the ongoing H2020 e-shape project. The main goal of the EOMI methodology is to create a detailed overview of the country’s EO ecosystem, and thus allow for gap analyses and for identifying strengths. Moreover, a periodic evaluation of a country could particularly aid the assessment of the development of its EO capabilities over time.

In practice, the implementation of the Methodology relies on gathering, assessing, and validating data, in order to attribute one of five maturity levels (0-4) to each of the 49 indicators, distributed in five pillars (Stakeholder ecosystem, Infrastructure, Uptake, Partnerships, Innovation). Vital in this configuration is the role of the “country partner” – usually an institution or private company, and always a player well positioned in the local EO ecosystems to have access to data and validating experts (from fields such as academia, government, industry). The country partner has the leading role in the implementation, supported by the EOMI team – in charge of helping and coordinating the smooth implementation across countries, by providing any support, clarifications, and help – e.g. by offering initial explanations, help identifying national experts to assist the implementation, and continuously reviewing and validating the gathered data. In its full version – the one evaluating 49 indicators across five pillars, the implementation of the EOMI Methodology from beginning to end shall take up to several months. The final outcomes of the implementations are the so called “Maturity cards” allowing for a simplified yet a powerful visualisation of the discoveries of the implementation on country level – by showing the final levels by indicator, as well as grouped by groups and by pillars – allowing to get an initial idea of the gaps and strengths at a glance. Moreover, country partners are encouraged and supported by the EOMI team to publish a more detailed publications of the findings.

The great advantage of the EOMI methodology is its intrinsic modularity and adaptability; each implementing country could in principle choose to only assess some of the proposed pillars or even individual indicators. Moreover, it is possible to adapt the pre-defined indicators and levels to the specificities of the country profile.

Before e-shape, 12 countries have been assessed using the EOMI methodology: 11 in the North Africa, Middle East, Balkan region (under GEO-CREDLE) and \ 1 (independent implementation) in the Philippines. To these countries we add the assessment of EO maturity for 8 European countries under e-shape: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Finland, Greece, Italy, Portugal. All these implementations have represented a great opportunity to underline the countries’ strengths and expose their weaknesses. The findings, as well as the details of the methodology, are publicly available, and we highly encourage further uptake.

This paper/presentation will discuss in more detail the needs, the results, and the practicalities of the EOMI methodology, thus showcasing its use and usefulness for assessing EO Maturity at country level, for among others, being able to develop and implement appropriate capacity building activities. In doing so, EOMI can drive investment in future capacities in recognition of identified gaps and opportunities.

This paper deals with the engagement of stakeholders in the context of the new space economy. Therefore it is useful to first introduce the three macro groups of stakeholders usually considered in this context according to the Space Economy Observatory, 2020 (1):
• Upstream stakeholders are "space Industry companies and institutions engaged in research, development, construction and management of enabling space infrastructures and technologies".
• Downstream stakeholders are "companies offering digital innovation solutions and services (e.g., IT provider, system integrator, consulting firm) and specialised research centres that deal with research, development and implementation of the most advanced digital technologies leveraging space technologies and data”.
• End-users are "companies and institutions in demand, interested in new applications and services deriving from the combined use of space and digital technologies.

In a traditional space economy, upstream stakeholders build a satellite constellation commissioned and paid upfront by the client, usually an agency. Thus, the scope, the customers and the envisaged values of a satellite infrastructure are clearly identified since the beginning of the project/programme.
In a new space economy, the liberalisation of the market and the ever-easier access to satellite data have changed the value proposition, particularly for downstream stakeholders and end-users. As an example, the free access to infrastructures such as GNSS has stimulated the emergence of new products, services, businesses and industries. Without the satellite navigation data, downstream such as Google Maps and end-users such as UBER and Deliveroo, it would not exist and, above all, would not be the worldwide giants we all know and have revolutionised mobility. These stakeholders, who extract considerable value, or are even enabled, from satellite data pay negligible amounts for their use, eroding potential revenues for upstream stakeholders. Upstream stakeholders losing potential revenues is the first problem to be addressed.

Furthermore, upstream, downstream, and end-user stakeholders can collect more precise data from many sources. Although data per se are worthless, they should become useful information to stakeholders and thus respond to their needs. On the one hand, upstream stakeholders building satellite infrastructures and sensors, and producing the data, cannot envisage all the usages of their data as they are not end-users experts. On the other end, end-users stakeholders (more and more companies from other sectors such as energy, agriculture, insurance, healthcare) are not aware of the kind of data that satellites might generate and the benefits for their business, as they are not satellite experts. This lack of awareness between upstream and end-users stakeholders and the missed opportunities of exchange value is the second problem to be addressed.

Finally, the complexity and deep uncertainties affecting the medium-long term development of this business may limit the potential of generating value for the society. The main factors to be considered are e.g.
• the heterogeneity of the applications complicates the identification of downstream and end-users stakeholders, their needs and engagement strategies;
• private and public stakeholders may extract value from satellite data; they engage stakeholders in very different ways and with different purposes;
• different stakeholders can access data in different countries;
• the same satellite data can be valuable for different industries and different purposes.
The need to handle this complexity and uncertainty factors is, therefore, the third problem to be addressed.
How can these three problems be addressed? First, to foster the capacity building within the new space economy, we developed a stakeholders engagement framework that helps upstream, downstream and end-users stakeholders to identify strategies to engage. It is intended to be a sensemaking and easy tool to identify the stakeholders and to choose the most suitable engagement approach according to the situation (Figure1).

Given the three categories above of stakeholders, there are three possible links: upstream-downstream, downstream-end-users, end-users-upstream. For each link, a 2x2 matrix represents the domain of stakeholders' engagement in a space project; therefore, there are four main cells in each matrix (Figure 1). Each includes the possible engagement strategies between the two categories of stakeholders. Engagement between the stakeholders may change during the project lifecycle. Introducing the temporal dimension allows us to grasp the dynamics of engagement among stakeholders, according to their characteristics, their relationship in different phases of the project, identifying which engagement strategies to adopt and why they are effective according to the occurrence. Therefore, we decide to investigate the change of the engagement between the same stakeholders in different project phases: "before the beginning of the project", "at the beginning of the project", and "at the end of the project".
The example presented in Figure 2 shows the engagement dynamics among downstream and end-users stakeholders. Each colour corresponds to the engagement between a pair of stakeholders. They are i) Red, engagement between stakeholders A and B; ii) Green, engagement between stakeholders A and C; iii) Blue, engagement between stakeholders B and C. Furthermore, the engagement in three different phases of the project is represented with different symbols. They are i) circle, before the beginning of the project; ii) rhombus, at the beginning of the project; iii) triangle, at the end of the project. The engagement between the pairs of stakeholders in the different phases of the stakeholder project is mapped in the framework, favouring a dynamic vision of engagement (Figure 2).

Let's pretend that the project consists in the development of a remote sensing project to monitor the water leaks of aqueducts; the stakeholders involved are:
• Stakeholder A (end-user): a big private company operating in the Energy sector. Interested in exploring the adoption of remote sensing satellite technologies to monitor the water leaks of their aqueducts. Although the company has understood the potential of satellite technology, they do not know possible suppliers that can provide a solution to their problem, and they cannot engage them. Therefore, they decide to participate in networking events run by experts, designed to bring stakeholders far from the space industry closer to it.
• Stakeholder B (downstream service provider): start-up providing an innovative satellite remote sensing service to monitor the water leaks. The company is not known and still need to establish its reputation. Therefore, they decide to participate in networking events run by experts designed to bring stakeholders far from the space industry closer to it.
• Stakeholder C (downstream data provider): big private company operating in the IT sector. The company acquires, storage, processes the raw satellite data and makes them available and usable on payment to innovative service providers.
The possible engagements are:
• Engagement between stakeholders A (end-user) and B (downstream service provider).
1) Before the beginning of the project, they don't know each other and cannot start engaging. They participate in a networking event run by experts, designed to bring stakeholders together. Here the company representatives get to know each other (Red circle).
2) A, intrigued by the services offered by B, understands that they could be the right service provider to monitor the water leaks of its aqueducts. A starts exchanging emails, phone calls and organise face-to-face meetings with B. This engagement lead to a pilot project using the technologies of B to monitor the water leaks of the aqueducts of A (Red rhombus).
3) During the project, A and B exchange information, knowledge and resources. At the end of the project, B delivers to A a software to monitor water leaks. The project is a success, and the stakeholders' relationship is consolidated; A asks B for an extension of their service (Red triangle).
• Engagement between stakeholders A (end-user) and C (downstream data provider).
1,2,3) In all project phases, they don't know and engage each other. A doesn't have the interest and the capabilities to engage C because they cannot manage raw data. C doesn't consider A as a possible client or partner (Green circle, rhombus and triangle).
• Engagement between stakeholders B (downstream service provider) and C (downstream data provider).
1) Before the beginning of the project, B knows and buy data from C. C provides catalogue data to B without any personalisation, therefore there is no engagement (Blue circle).
2) At the beginning of the project, given the novelty of the application, B engages C to provide a tailor-made set of satellite data. They collaborate together, B shares information about the end user, C invests its resources and technologies to develop a dataset (Blue rhombus).
3) At the end of the project, C includes the new dataset in its product portfolio, which B can access by paying a fee as for the data products requested before the project (Blue triangle).

The engagement between the stakeholders has been influenced by different approaches (e.g., active participation in networking events) with different outcomes. We are building a set of stakeholder engagement approaches for each quadrant of the matrix, assessing which context they are effective (or not) and why. We will also provide a set of guidelines to adopt them. We are looking for stakeholders interested in developing this tool. We are keen to keep participants informed, and we are open to further collaborations.

(1) Permanent research project within the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano