With a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural population of about two million people, the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina occupies the northernmost part of Serbia. Novi Sad, its administrative centre, is the second largest city in the country.

While Novi Sad is heading towards recognition as a regional leader in the IT industry, Vojvodina’s economy mainly relies on agriculture and agribusiness.

The challenge

The Vojvodina Province is particularly affected by the phenomenon of stubble burning, a common practice in cultivated fields in Serbia, which threatens the health and safety of the territory.

In 2019, around 19.000 open fires were recorded in Serbia. 14 people died because of them and 40 were injured. The fires burned low vegetation, but also damaged forests, meadows, orchards, cereals, and vineyards.

To discourage farmers from burning the remains of their crops, the province’s public authorities need precise and reliable information on the location of this practice.

The satellite solution

With the support of the BıoSense Instıtute, UNDP Serbia created a web GIS portal to detect open fıres usıng data from Sentınel-2 satellites.

By comparing two consecutive images, one before the fire occurrence and the other after the fire, an algorithm detects the areas where fires happened and the potentially burned areas. These spots are visualised on an interactive web map that is made openly and freely available to the public: the Portal for Mapping Harvest Residues (www.dim.rs/#/dashboard).

The map was funded by UNDP Serbia through the “Challenge call for innovative solutions to reduce air pollution in Serbia and improve air quality”.

The results

The portal is used by the UNDP, research institutes and local administrations to raise the awareness of people, farmers in the first place, about the threats posed by stubble burning. Moreover, the portal allows the government to detect stubble burning and to undertake evidence-based actions against this practice.

In the Vojvodina Province, the methodology used to develop the portal was tested during three months (from September to November 2020), spotting over 9.000 parcels that were subject to crop residue burning.

On dim.rs, fires are classified according to the dates on which they occurred and cadastral information. The webGIS portal also contains statistics on fire occurrence history that is available for download, and information for citizens on how to report illegal burnings.

Users can know which areas are the most affected by crop residue burning and in which periods of the year. Altogether, this information enables local administrations (such as police forces, firefighters and forest authorities, among others) to be better prepared to the occurrence of stubble burning, to target awareness raising campaigns, to better plan in-situ inspections, and to sustain law enforcement.

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Ekodenge is a Turkish SME with a team of sustainability experts, providing consultancy, engineering, architecture, and software solution services.

Created in 1996, Ekodenge is headquartered in Ankara, at the Hacettepe Technopark research and business centre. The company can count on a multi-disciplinary team of 40 people, including architects, chemical, environmental and mechanical engineers.

The challenge

Climate change is exposing historical and cultural sites to threats such as floods, wildfires and heatwaves, among others. Data on land cover is critical to understand these hazards, as well as to monitor changes around cultural heritage sites.

Even though spatial information becomes more and more abundant thanks to global Earth Observation (EO) systems, spatial data collected by different entities for different regions of the world still lack standardisation and harmonisation.

Since 2019 Ekodenge is part of the Consortium implementing the Horizon 2020 SHELTER project (Sustainable Historic Environments holistic reconstruction through Technological Enhancement and community-based Resilience). The project involves 23 partners from 10 countries.

SHELTER includes five test beds, representing the main climatic and environmental challenges in Europe and different heritage’s typologies.

Ekodenge is responsible for creating a risk assessment tool visualised on a Geographic Information System (GIS), containing information on land use, that can used to foresee resilience and threats to the heritage and to plan recovery measures. To do this, Ekodenge needs accurate information on land cover in the sites targeted by the project.

The satellite solution

To build the platform for disaster risk management in the areas targeted by the project, Ekodenge uses data on land cover and climate and historical data from the Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites of the Copernicus programme.

The historical data allow them to retrace soil movements, changes in landcover, and weather events, such as heatwaves and floods, that damaged the cultural heritage sites in the past. These data are integrated in the datadriven platform for disasters risk management produced within the project.

The Copernicus data is particularly useful for this kind of assessments, since the data are freely available across Europe and accessible in the same format. This means that the data acquired through Copernicus allow Ekodenge to calibrate all different and site-specific data to be used into the same platform. Moreover, the information contained in the platform for each site can be easily compared and updated.

The results

Thanks to Copernicus data, Ekodenge can acquire data on land cover for the five different areas targeted in the open labs in a harmonised and standardised format.

The platform not only includes information relevant for safeguarding cultural heritage, but also for protecting natural heritage and human settlements from natural disasters and climate change at the regional level.

The GIS platform developed by the partners of the SHELTER project will contribute to building a model to improve the resilience of cultural heritage sites through better decision-making processes and policies applicable at local and regional levels.

All data will be made available on an IT platform after the project ends in 2023. Based on the information regrouped in the platform, the project partners will propose measures to increase the resilience of cultural heritage sites and make recommendations on “building back better” techniques.

The platform is intended to be used by all the stakeholders operating in the sites targeted by the SHELTER project, such as policymakers, fire brigades, construction companies, and research institutes.

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QuantCube Technology is a fintech company that provides high quality financial performance indicators to its clients.

Founded in 2013 by two entrepreneurs with strong expertise in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data, the company counts today in its portfolio of clients financial institutions such as Moody’s, the World Bank, Banque de France, Ardian, and Union Bancaire Privée (UBP).

The challenge

Financial forecasting is the process by which companies think about and prepare for the future. Forecasting involves assessing historical and current data concerning macroeconomics, environmental, social and governance factors.

While plenty of official economic data exists, these are often published with a lag of three or four months and for some areas of the world such data is difficult to access. As an example, up-to-date information on urban growth or maritime traffic, which can be linked to economic growth, is not available for many geographic areas, and it needs to be retrieved from sources other than official reports.

The satellite solution

Copernicus data are used by QuantCube to collect real-time information on four wide sectors of activity that are crucial to economic growth.

Agriculture: Sentinel-2 images, as well as meteorological data, are used to calculate real-time estimates of the crop yield per region and country, allowing for better tracking of agricultural activities.

Pollution: Sentinel-5p satellite images allow QuantCube to estimate the level of pollution per region and per country, focusing on the industrialised areas. Assessing the level of pollution (and in particular of NO2 emissions), allows for the tracking of industrial production.

Urban growth: Sentinel-2 images are used to measure and monitor urbanised surfaces and their yearly evolution. This helps QuantCube to track how cities change over time.

Water stress: Sentinel-2 satellite images allow for the montoring of water sources. Monitoring the fluctuation of water surfaces enables QuantCube to foresee droughts, which have a noticeable impact on water-intensive economic sectors.

To obtain the best possible accuracy, QuantCube Technology couples information extracted from satellite imagery with other data sources, such as job offers, sentiment data from social media, or logistics flows data.

The results of the analyses are delivered in real-time via the QuantCube Macroeconomic Intelligence Platform. The platform offers users different levels of granularity, ranging from sector data to country-level macroeconomic indices.

The results

The use of Copernicus-based data adds a significant value-adding layer to QuantCube’s offer of macro smart data, providing  information on regions where official statistics and indicators are difficult to obtain or are made available with some delay. In addition, the satellite images also allow for the monitoring of changes in a specific region or country over time to detect unusual trends.

In 2021, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub and the Bank of Italy placed QuantCube among the finalists for the G20 green and sustainable financial challenge, which was launched during the Italian G20 presidency.

“As climate change is increasingly affecting economic growth, environmental parameters are becoming more and more important for financial predictions. Hence, the use of satellite data will continue to play a crucial role in enabling companies to produce reliable financial and macroeconomic forecasts”. Alice Froidevaux, Lead Data Scientist, QuantCube Technology

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DSE-Data Science Experts is a company created in 2020 and focused on building products and solutions based on Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Based in Grenoble, France, the company today employs 11 people. The team’s vision is to help insurance companies to better support the agriculture sector in times of natural disasters.

The challenge

According to the World Meteorological Organization’s Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes, the number of disasters related to a weather, climate or water hazard has increased by a factor of five between 1970 and 2019 globally. Agrıculture is among the sectors that are affected the most by climate-related disasters.

To establish mechanisms, and in particular insurance schemes, to support the recovery of agricultural activities affected by disasters, there is a growing need for data and information to foresee and assess such damages.

The satellite solution

AIperion is a system, developed by DSE, that estimates the damage affecting agricultural fields, identifies the boundaries of flooded and burned areas, and detects the extent, impact and duration of droughts based on extreme weather events or natural disasters.

The system is based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to Earth observation images to identify and detect the boundaries of flooded and burned areas. It integrates meteorological data from the MSG mission (Meteosat Second Generation satellites) to detect the intensity and duration of extreme weather events.

AIPerion relies on data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 missions to calculate vegetation indices and estimate agricultural damage.

These analyses are combined to produce an assessment of the level of damage to the crops and of its causes. The results are provided to customers through a dashboard, in the form of maps and figures.

The results

By integrating Copernicus data into their software, DSE can provide precise information on the crops’ health and determine if the damage to crop reported by farmers is a consequence of natural disasters and not of fraud attempts.

Moreover, based on the information provided by DSE, insurance companies can determine the premium to be paid for crop losses caused by natural disasters.

Under the request of one insurance company, using this system DSE was able to map 80% of cultivated fields on the French territory to detect the growth status of vegetation. That was made possible thanks to the high temporal resolution of the Copernicus data and could not have been done by using in-situ surveying techniques.

Using free and open Copernicus data, DSE can provide its services at a much lower cost than the price that they would ask if they used other paying satellite data. As a result, after only one year of existence, the company can count some of the world’s biggest insurance companies among their customers.

In 2020, the AIPeiron system has been awarded the Copernicus Masters Prize for France.

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Castilla–La Mancha is a Spanish autonomous community located in the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula’s Inner Plateau. The community occupies an area of 79,463 km2, including over 3.5 million hectares of forests, which represent 13% of the whole Spanish forests.

INFOCAM, integrated in the Regional Department of Sustainable Development, leads the integral management of forest fires in Castilla-la Mancha. INFOCAM performs its tasks in coordination with all the departments of the Government of Castilla-La Mancha, with local and provincial entities, and with the companies and private owners that are involved in sustainable rural development.

The Analysis and Planning Unit (UNAP) of INFOCAM issues periodical forest fire risk reports, that are used to enforce preparedness and response to forest fires.

The challenge

In the summer of 2021, major forest fires led to both ecological and economic losses in Spain. Of all Spain’s regions, Castilla-La Mancha is the one with the most municipalities in high fire-risk areas, with a total of 780.

To limit the damage of fires on forests and take better preventive measures to avoid them, INFOCAM needs to monitor the conditions of the vegetation, as vegetation stress makes it prone to combustion, due to drought and high temperatures in summer or freeze in winter.

The satellite solution

Copernicus provides data on vegetation related to phenology, photosynthesis activity, and vegetation stress.

INFOCAM uses data from Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 satellites to estimate the density of green in the region and the amount of green and alive elements of the vegetation. This information is important to know the amount of vegetation that could be available for potential fires and is crucial to reduce uncertainty, especially with regard to emergency preparedness.

The results

The maps and the data concerning the forest fire risks are provided to the stakeholders through a web-GIS (Geographic Information System) and daily reports that are distributed to the entities in charge of managing forests and fire risks.

Remote sensing data provided by Copernicus represent a crucial tool to support fire services before the fire season starts and enable them to activate resources and procedures.

During emergencies, when fires are being managed, the satellites provide fire managers with information about the spatial distribution of the fire risk that is useful to design operational plans for fire extinction.

Based on the information on the fire risks contained in the maps, the region can increase or move resources (e.g., helicopters, fire engines and fire brigades) from prevention tasks to firefighting tasks in time.

Moreover, combined with wind and meteorological data, the maps allow for the forecasting of fire spreads into nearby areas.

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Operating under the authority of the Greek Ministry of Culture, the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Dodecanese is responsible for protecting, preserving, and studying all antiquities in the islands of the Dodecanese.

Rodini was part of the necropolis of the ancient city of Rhodes, in the largest island of the Dodecanese. The area includes the remains of some of the ancient monumental graves and cave sanctuaries, and a park in a valley crossed by a torrent. Shortly before the torrent meets the sea, a bridge built in Roman times is still in use today, being one of the main entry points to the modern city of Rhodes.

The challenge

Soaring temperatures, increasingly frequent floods, summer fires and storms, sea-level rise, and geological movements represent major threats to archaeological remains and historical beauties.

In Rodini, throughout the centuries, summer fires, storms and floods eroded the archaeological remains, which are also severely threatened by land displacements.

Due to the earthquakes, part of the Mausoleum complex in Rodini has collapsed. Another nearby grave complex presents a cracked rock façade, which could cause the crumbling of the grave monuments cut in it. Also the roman bridge, even though statically stable, is presenting fissures on the inner sides of the arches, which makes its monitoring necessary.

To prevent further damage to the monuments in Rodini and to adopt effective conservation measures, the Ephorate needed accurate and up-to-date information on land deformation in the area.

The satellite solution

In 2019, the Ephorate of Antiquities established a collaboration with the National Technical University of Athens, which resulted in their participation in the EU Horizon 2020 HYPERION project.

In Rhodes, HYPERION aimed at recording the damage to the monuments in Rodini that is directly related to the natural environment and the microclimate of the area, at assessing their degree of risk and the rate of their deterioration over time, and at building tools to plan for conservation and restoration measures.

More than 100 Sentinel images from 2016 to 2019 allowed the scientists from the University to create a land deformation map of Rodini and to assess the level of ground deformation in the area. The map shows a 10mm uplift between 2016 and 2019, which clearly affects the structural integrity of the monuments there.

The results

The ground deformation maps classify the level of ground deformation with different colours, and allow users to zoom on specific locations to know how the ground is moving there.

The maps serve as a non-invasive tool to collect the information needed to preserve cultural heritage in Rhodes. The movements are assessed with millimetre accuracy, providing the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Dodecanese with extremely precise data on the structural stress affecting the monuments. This information can be consulted for a specific day or as an annual average.

The Ephorate can identify the structures that need more urgent action and propose measures to secure and restore the monuments. For example, they will take action to stabilise the monuments that are more affected by land deformation in the ancient necropolis in Rodini and will ask the Municipality to stop or lighten the traffic on the Roman bridge.

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Village Data Analytics (VIDA) is a German-based SME created by two professionals with the aim of facilitating electrification in rural areas.

VIDA provides a software that yields information and management tools to governments, development organisations, investors, banks, companies, and NGOs on off-the-grid communities in remote areas.

The challenge

Sierra Leone is one of the world’s poorest countries, where only 23% of the population has access to electricity, which is below the sub-Saharan average of 30%. This hinders modern education and healthcare, job creation, competitiveness, and poverty reduction.

The lack of information on electrification is one of the main challenges for decision-makers to correctly plan electrification, especially in rural areas.

In January 2021, the World Bank approved a $50 million grant from the International Development Association (IDA) to improve access to electricity in Sierra Leone and enhance institutional capacity and commercial management of the sector.

The “Enhancing Sierra Leone Energy Access” project aims at helping the country’s economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic by providing access to low-cost electricity to households, businesses, health clinics and schools.

Within this framework, the creators of VIDA wanted to provide off-grid energy planners with information on where to extend the energy grid, also using mini-grids and solar-home systems.

The satellite solution

VIDA is a machine learning-based software that analyses satellite imagery, publicly available geospatial data, on ground survey data, and energy modelling to identify and characterise rural villages.

To visualise such information on maps, VIDA relies on Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images, as well as products derived from nightlight and very high-resolution imageries, and publicly available GIS data such as Open Street Maps (OSM) road data.

Earth Observation imageries are analysed by VIDA to obtain standardised data about villages at the individual household level, such as their position, their distance from the energy grid, the presence of roads and infrastructure, of cultivated fields, and the environmental features of the surrounding areas.

Such data are coupled with ground data on villages’ demographic, topographic, agricultural, and socio-economic features that are obtained from public authorities, existing databases, and surveys.

The results

The interactive map available on VIDA allows the government and stakeholders to pick relevant information from large amounts of data that can effectively support the electrification process at the local level.

In Sierra Leone, more than 500 villages were analysed with VIDA. The software delivered a long list of villages suitable for mini-grid development that could be presented to stakeholders. The settlements are sorted according to building connection count and settlement density, grid proximity, and infrastructure data, such as road access, proximity to a school or a hospital.

The use of the VIDA software and analysis helped unlock a $20 0m credit for electrification and will contribute to the electrification of over 500 new mini grids in the country.

“The Government of Sierra Leone can now accurately position the electricity grid and the villages, estimate their energy demand, and decide on how to best electrify them”. Tobias Engelmeier, founder of VIDA.

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The Environmental Protection Department of the City of Prague approves and implements the Climate Change Adaptation Strategy and its Implementation Plans.

The Department designs, manages and finances adaptation projects and analyses of some selected data. For these tasks the Department is supported, among others, by the Prague Institute for Planning and Development, which manages the Prague Geoportal, making available a number of maps of Prague.

The challenge

Considering the conspicuous presence of paved spaces, built areas and industrial infrastructure, Prague is particularly vulnerable to extreme heat events.

To implement adaptive measures, the Environmental Protection Department sought to visualise heat vulnerability and the areas that are affected the most in Prague, especially nearby public transport stops, where two-thirds of the city’s population spend a considerable amount of time.

The satellite solution

To assess the effects of climate change on transport stops, the Department asked for the support of ECOTEN Urban Comfort, a local start-up specialised in urban and environmental engineering.

As a first step, the company defined the indices to be taken into account for a heat assessment.

Among such indices, thermal exposure, which indicates the distribution of heat over the city, was calculated by identifying the warmest areas of the city during the days in which temperatures exceeded 30 °C. These data were extracted from images acquired by the Landsat 8 satellite in the summers between 2015 and 2019.

Adaptive capacity, which is the ability of the urban ecosystem to be resilient to heat events, was assessed by mapping greeneries and water bodies around public transport stops. This index was calculated by summing up the Advanced Vegetation Index and the Normalised Differential Water Index, both measured through data from the European Sentinel-2A satellite.

Combing all the indices, ECOTEN was able to produce the Urban Heat Vulnerability Map of the City of Prague.

The results

The Map classifies bus and tram stops in five categories, according to their degree of vulnerability to high temperatures.

Based on the information provided by the map, the Environmental Protection Department is taking measures to make transport stops more resilient to heatwaves and hence more comfortable for residents and tourists.

For example, green lawns were placed on the roofs of the most affected stops, together with misting devices and drinkable water fountains.

“Thanks to the Copernicus satellites, we have reliable, objective and shareable data to act against climate change”. Tereza Líbová, Climate change adaptation specialist, Department of Environmental Protection, City of Prague

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D-ICE is a French SME working on technological solutions to diminish the impact of boats on the environment.

The company is based in Nantes, with a team of 26 people, and operates in the fields of routing, clean energy and safety at sea. D-ICE assists ship owners and operators to find solutions to diminish their impact on the environment. In particular, they work on assessing the interest of adding wind-assisted ship propulsion systems onboard merchant ships.

The challenge

More than 3% of global carbon dioxide emissions can be attributed to ocean-going vessels, which is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from over 205 million cars. Moreover, boats powered by fuel also cause noise pollution that negatively affects marine life.

The carbon dioxide emissions of ships are directly proportional to fuel consumption and speed. To reduce their environmental impact and to align with the objectives of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the shipping industry is looking for solutions to reduce fuel consumption by using wind-assisted propulsion systems.

D-ICE decided to create systems to help ship operators to assess the interest of adding wind-assisted ship propulsion systems onboard their ships.

The satellite solution

Since 2020, D-ICE developed the SATORI software, an online service that estimates the fuel consumption of ships on specific routes. SATORI is particularly interesting to evaluate the performances of wind-assisted ship propulsion systems.

Initially funded by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS), SATORI relies on data from Copernicus satellites to acquire information on weather, wind, waves and sea currents on sea routes. Those historical data are made freely available by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service through two products: the Global Waves Reanalysis Waverys and the Global Ocean Physics Reanalysis.

The data are used to calculate ships’ motions and interactions with the environment. Indeed, the evaluation of wind, waves and currents is necessary for the model to calculate the speed of ships and their engine power between two points at a specific time.

The results

SATORI is built for shipowners, naval architects and providers of propulsion systems. Customers access SATORI through a web portal, where they can enter the ships’ data and their potential speed according to different directions and winds.

Users can perform statistical weather routing studies on the online interface, choose a route and the time periods on which they wish to assess the ships’ average consumption, and then create their own data visualisation to obtain the required forecasts (environmental conditions to be encountered, fuel saving associated with wind-assisted propulsion, ship motions).

SATORI has been already used by some notable skippers. For example, Total and Z&B are today using the software on some of their ships, while AYRO and Chantiers de l’Atlantique rely on it to design wind-assisted ship propulsion systems.

The same algorithm which powers SATORI was used to perform a study for the design team of the new Banque Populaire trimaran after their boat capsized during the Route du Rhum yacht race in 2018.

In 2021, the boat Maître Coq won the greatest sailing race around the world, solo, non-stop and without assistance: the Vendée Globe. D-ICE provided the skipper, Yannick Bestaven, with a software that contained a database of historical routes.

This database was computed with the same algorithm as SATORI. This tool helped him to confirm his routes’ choices and to eventually win the race.

“Thanks to this new technology, the shipping community can now validate business models around the new targets of the International Maritime Organization and take action to reduce greenhouse gases emissions globally”. Sylvain Faguet, D-ICE
Engineering.

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Port-la-Nouvelle is a French town in the Occitanie region, in the south of France, on the Mediterranean coast.

The historic port of Port-la-Nouvelle extends over 2.5 kilometres, and it represents a major economic asset in the area. Owned by the Region, it includes a commercial port, a fishing harbour, and a marina. The Chamber of Commerce of Aude is responsible for its daily management. This commercial port has historically specialised in the import of oil and the export of cereals.

The challenge

In 2018, the Occitanie region decided to start important works to adapt the commercial port of Port-la-Nouvelle to new traffics and allow for the development of new sectors.

Notably, the regional plan foresees the installation of floating wind-turbines and the creation of a green hydrogen production plant as from 2024. These works are part of a regional policy that aims at combining the economic development of the region with the valorisation of its environment.

Carrying out the works around the harbour implied dredging, which could bring back to the surface sediments on the seafloor, hence endangering the marine environment and the natural areas nearby.

To guarantee that the port expansion works were carried out sustainably, the Directorate for the Sea needed a reliable water quality monitoring system in the area of the works.

The satellite solution

i-SEA- a company based in Aquitaine, supported the port authorities to monitor water turbidity nearby the works, by using data from the Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 Copernicus satellites. The satellites provided data on water turbidity in the past and the near future.

Before the works started, satellite imagery allowed I-SEA and the Region to better understand the hydro-sedimentary processes of the site of Port-la-Nouvelle. During the works, the data contributed to in-situ monitoring, by providing a big  picture of water turbidity levels and a forecast of the turbidity levels expected within the next three days.

The results

Thanks to the Copernicus data, it was possible to avoid damage to the nearby natural areas and to prevent the infiltration of a turbid plume in the nearby pond of Bages Sigean.

The predictive method provided the personnel responsible the works in the Region with daily objective tools to monitor the impact of the expansion of the port on water turbidity and to adapt the works according to the forecasted turbidity levels.

In 2024, the commercial harbour of Port-la-Nouvelle will welcome the first floating wind turbines in the Mediterranean Sea. This operation is part of a regional strategy to achieve sustainable development in the littoral by using technology to boost the local economy, while safeguarding the environment.

“We do our best efforts to ensure that economic development is based on the safeguard and valorisation of the region’s natural resources”. Benjamin Grente, Directorate for the Sea, Occitanie Region.

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