| The GIO Land project answers to European Environment Agency’s call for tender “GMES Initial Operations 2011-2013 Land Monitoring Services: High Resolution land-cover characteristics of 5 main land cover types” (EEA/SES/11/004). Started in 1998, the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) will provide on a sustainable basis, operational services related to environment and security, aimed at supporting European Policies and international commitments and at stimulating market development. The implementation of GMES has started in 2008 with three Fast-Track Services: Land, Marine and Emergency Response, and with two additional pilot services: Atmosphere and Security. |
The framework contract aims at providing high resolution land cover characteristics data complementary to the Corine land cover map 2012 that will be produced in parallel by the European environmental observation and information network (Eionet) and the EEA from the same satellite data. The 5 high resolution layers deal with artificial surfaces, forest areas, agriculture areas, wetlands, water bodies for the reference year 2012.
The consortium lead by Planetek Italia and formed with the partners Geoville and Planetek Hellas has started the activity for the production of 2 of the 5 High Resolution pan-European layers (Imperviousness and Forest).
This project is placed for “Lot 4: Imperviousness and forest in Southern Europe, partim West and Central Mediterranean region (1.202.046 km2)”. This lot includes the following countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Kosovo under the UN Security Council Resolution 1244/99, Montenegro, Malta, Portugal (including the Azores and Madeira), Spain (including Baleares and Canaries).
The High Resolution Layers (HR Layers) of 5 main land cover types and Corine Land Cover (CLC) are part of the Pan European GMES Land Monitoring Core Service Component and will provide comparable measures across Europe.
The proposed methodological approach is built on the long experience already consolidated by the consortium during previous GMES projects such as FTSP on Land Monitoring – Soil Sealing 2006, Geoland2 – Imperviousness Update 2009, where much effort was spent to develop and refine the production workflow in order to fit it to the varying characterization of the different ecoregions in Europe.
Further information at the following links:
GIO Land monitoring services contracts awarded
GMES website
CLC2006 project description website
Project description
An article about GMES and Geoland2