HARMONIA will leverage existing tools, services and novel technologies to deliver an integrated resilience assessment platform working on top of GEOSS, seeing the current lack of a dedicated process of understanding and quantifying Climate Change (CC) effects on urban areas using Satellite and auxiliary data available on GEOSS, DIAS, urban TEP, GEP etc. platforms. HARMONIA will focus on a solution for climate applications supporting adaptation and mitigation measures of the Paris Agreement. HARMONIA will test modern Remote Sensing tools and 3D-4D monitoring, Machine Learning/Deep Learning techniques and develop a modular scalable data-driven multi-layer urban areas observation information knowledge base, using Satellite data time series, spatial information and auxiliary data, in-situ observing systems, which will integrate detailed information on local level of neighborhoods/building blocks. HARMONIA focuses on two pillars: a) Natural and manmade hazards intensified by CC: urban flooding, soil degradation and geo-hazards (landslides, earthquake, ground deformation) and b) Manmade hazards: heat islands, urban heat fluxes, Air Quality, Gas emissions. Sustainable reconstruction of urban areas and the health of humans and ecosystems, are top priorities. HARMONIA will take into account the local ecosystems of European urban areas, following an integrated and sustainable approach by incorporating the active communities’ participation initiative, which will involve the use of a social platform. Paying extra attention to Sustainable Urban Development, one of the Societal Benefit Areas posits that use of EO is a crucial tool towards resilient cities and the assessment of urban footprints, to promote equity, welfare and shared prosperity for all, feed new indicators for the monitoring of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals in an EU context.

Submarine landslides can be far larger than terrestrial landslides, and many generate destructive tsunamis. The Storegga Slide offshore Norway covers an area larger than Scotland and contains enough sediment to cover all of Scotland to a depth of 80 m. This huge slide occurred 8,200 years ago and extends for 800 km down slope. It produced a tsunami with a run up >20 m around the Norwegian Sea and 3-8 m on the Scottish mainland. The UK faces few other natural hazards that could cause damage on the scale of a repeat of the Storegga Slide tsunami. The Storegga Slide is not the only huge submarine slide in the Norwegian Sea. Published data suggest that there have been at least six such slides in the last 20,000 years. For instance, the Traenadjupet Slide occurred 4,000 years ago and involved ~900 km3 of sediment. Based on a recurrence interval of 4,000 years (2 events in the last 8,000 years, or 6 events in 20,000 years), there is a 5% probability of a major submarine slide, and possible tsunami, occurring in the next 200 years. Sedimentary deposits in Shetland dated at 1500 and 5500 years, in addition to the 8200 year Storegga deposit, are thought to indicate tsunami impacts and provide evidence that the Arctic tsunami hazard is still poorly understood. Given the potential impact of tsunamis generated by Arctic landslides, we need a rigorous assessment of the hazard they pose to the UK over the next 100-200 years, their potential cost to society, degree to which existing sea defences protect the UK, and how tsunami hazards could be incorporated into multi-hazard flood risk management. This project is timely because rapid climatic change in the Arctic could increase the risk posed by landslide-tsunamis. Crustal rebound associated with future ice melting may produce larger and more frequent earthquakes, such as probably triggered the Storegga Slide 8200 years ago. The Arctic is also predicted to undergo particularly rapid warming in the next few decades that could lead to dissociation of gas hydrates (ice-like compounds of methane and water) in marine sediments, weakening the sediment and potentially increasing the landsliding risk. Our objectives will be achieved through an integrated series of work blocks that examine the frequency of landslides in the Norwegian Sea preserved in the recent geological record, associated tsunami deposits in Shetland, future trends in frequency and size of earthquakes due to ice melting, slope stability and tsunami generation by landslides, tsunami inundation of the UK and potential societal costs. This forms a work flow that starts with observations of past landslides and evolves through modelling of their consequences to predicting and costing the consequences of potential future landslides and associated tsunamis. Particular attention will be paid to societal impacts and mitigation strategies, including examination of the effectiveness of current sea defences. This will be achieved through engagement of stakeholders from the start of the project, including government agencies that manage UK flood risk, international bodies responsible for tsunami warning systems, and the re-insurance sector. The main deliverables will be: (i) better understanding of frequency of past Arctic landslides and resulting tsunami impact on the UK (ii) improved models for submarine landslides and associated tsunamis that help to understand why certain landslides cause tsunamis, and others don't. (iii) a single modelling strategy that starts with a coupled landslide-tsunami source, tracks propagation of the tsunami across the Norwegian Sea, and ends with inundation of the UK coast. Tsunami sources of various sizes and origins will be tested (iv) a detailed evaluation of the consequences and societal cost to the UK of tsunami flooding , including the effectiveness of existing flood defences (v) an assessment of how climate change may alter landslide frequency and thus tsunami risk to the UK.

Aviation is one of the most critical infrastructures of the 21st century. Even comparably short interruptions can cause economic damage summing up to the Billion-Euro range. As evident from the past, aviation shows certain vulnerability with regard to natural hazards. The proposal EUNADICS-AV addresses airborne hazards (environmental emergency scenarios), including volcano eruptions, nuclear accidents and emergencies and other scenarios where aerosols and certain trace gases are injected into the atmosphere. Such events are considered rare, but may have an extremely high impact, as demonstrated during the European Volcanic Ash Crisis in 2010. Before the 1990s, insufficient monitoring as well as limited data analysis capabilities made it difficult to react to and to prepare for certain rare, high-impact events. Meanwhile, there are many data available during crisis situations, and the data analysis technology has improved significantly. However, there is still a significant gap in the Europe-wide availability of real time hazard measurement and monitoring information for airborne hazards describing “what, where, how much” in 3 dimensions, combined with a near-real-time European data analysis and assimilation system. The main objective of EUNADICS-AV is to close this gap in data and information availability, enabling all stakeholders in the aviation system to obtain fast, coherent and consistent information. This would allow a seamless response on a European scale, including ATM, ATC, airline flight dispatching and individual flight planning. In the SESAR 2020 Programme Execution Framework, EUNADICS-AV is a SESAR Enabling project (project delivering SESAR Technological Solutions). The project aims at passing a SESAR maturity level V2, which includes respective service validation activities, including validation exercises. Work will be also done to prepare a full V3 validation.

"<< Background >>BridgET aims at addressing a growing demand for highly skilled professionals in the coastal and marine geosciences sector, who can be innovative in visualization, analysis, model creation, interpretation and communication of geological and environmental data in 3D. Digital geologic mapping is a mature technology, although dramatically improved recently with the advent of new state-of-the-art techniques such as Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry and progress in computer vision and image analysis. Environmental reality-based 3D models can now be generated particularly through the aid of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). But the key advance has been the ability to easily construct high-resolution, photorealistic terrain models (as a base surface for 3D mapping) in the underwater environment. The submarine domain has always been less accessible and more economically challenging to investigate than the terrestrial one. But these technologies are now transforming field studies, enabling the resolution of problems that were extremely complex without technological progress, especially in industry (e.g. oil and gas, renewable energy, etc.), marine spatial planning and sustainable coastal and offshore environmental management practices. New methods and techniques have allowed a seamless combination of terrestrial and marine data, that is supporting the development of a more solid holistic approach to understand our changing environments and design appropriate management measures accordingly. The ability to easily examine multiple view angles of seamless seabed’s and coastal 3D surfaces, outside the logistical constraints, becomes even more efficient when 3D models can be experienced in Virtual Reality (VR). In this case, a true cognitive breakthrough is provided giving the potential to launch a new generation of studies as well as to promote inclusive teaching and learning that value the diversity of all learners and so actions for a sustainable future. Efforts are needed, however, to provide best practices for appropriate workflows when using VR in the field of coastal and marine geosciences in its many applications, and to outline how this technology can help inclusive 3D learning.The interdisciplinary European partnership of our project is made up by marine geoscientists and professionals with tracked expertise in geohazard assessment and climate-driven impacts in tectonically and/or climatically sensitive areas. The team will focus on learning and teaching how to build reality-based 3D model of selected submarine and coastal regions, to improve their exploration through the medium of VR, with a goal of developing an ad-hoc curriculum at postgraduate level to help students acquire and build their own advanced skills in these areas. BridgET aims at deeply renew the way in which applied marine geosciences can be taught, strengthening digital readiness, resilience and capacity in students. The most challenging impact we would like to achieve will be the promotion of a change toward a greater inclusion in the labor market commonly involved in delivering new tools, approaches, platforms and sensors for seafloor mapping, marine spatial planning and marine renewable energy, with the view of pursuing a more robust approach to diversity and inclusion in the field of marine geosciences, where there's a documented lack of diversity.<< Objectives >>BridgET has been designed to develop innovative and inclusive teaching methods to upgrade key skills and scientific expertise in the field of 3D geological mapping for reliable integration of onshore and offshore multiscale geospatial datasets, to provide standardized workflow for 3D reconstructions of coastal regions and submarine environments. An accurate integration of both terrestrial and submerged geospatial datasets, is indeed a practice that represents a major gap in coastal management and that still need to be addressed in many countries, where climate change, rising sea levels, tectonic and marine geohazard of different nature are considerable environmental issues. Accordingly, and through the implementation of project activities, BridgET will seek to provide innovation in the way in which coastal and marine geosciences are taught, where emphasis will be placed on the use of VR, not only as a tool to improve student engagement in the investigation and spatial understanding of coastal and submarine environments, but also as a vehicle to promote inclusion in the field of geosciences. We believe that developing novel methods of 3D immersive teaching about ‘hard to reach’ environments and bring the onshore and offshore environments into the classroom, for students of any gender, race, culture, etc..., will teach them those skills and competencies required by the labor market, that can make a difference for a sustainable future. This will be done providing dedicated schools where students can experience the use of innovative technologies on the filed, the process of the data with dedicated software, and their analysis to solve and assess real problems in a real context. New teaching methods will be designed in order to promote a more inclusive geoscience curriculum, that can also be followed by students with special educational needs, which is actually a very challenging issue in this field, where terrain field activities are required. As these procedures are not yet appropriately developed and adopted, the project will focus on their design and the production of tools and frameworks for their implementation in the curricula currently in place at the universities involved. Finally, BridgET will provide a rich collection of datasets, tools and toolkits for VR exploration and interactive learning paths that all partners will extensively use for outreach activities aimed at increasing the awareness of society on the need for effective measures for sustainable management of our resources and on the key role that marine geosciences will play in the grand environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.<< Implementation >>The project is based on the delivery of innovative and inclusive learning and teaching activities through the organization of dedicated summer schools for MSc students. Schools will focus on giving students a hands-on experience of the variety of methods and approaches adopted in geospatial data acquisition and processing for the seamless generation of 3D models (i.e. Digital Terrain Models – DTM) of coastal regions. Three case studies will be selected to approach a coastal geohazard assessment based on an immersive observation of geomorphological data/geological phenomena and human interaction with physical processes from multiple perspectives. Practical activities will be in particular carried out in Santorini, on the shores and slopes of mount Etna and in Maldives. In Maldives we will take advantage of a research facility of the University of Milano-Bicocca (MaRHE - Marine and High Educational Research - Center), established in 2009 with the purpose of carrying our research and high education activities. All areas have been and are currently studied by project participants that already have collected consistent amount of data in these regions, that are particularly sensitive to a number of different geohazards and pose different challenges to the local population and socio-economic framework. We will prepare a defined multiscale and multisource geospatial datasets for each coastal regions that will be further supplemented with dedicated surveys during summer schools. Their geospatial integration will allow the creation of a VR learning environment (implementing the dataset with proper tools and dedicated software) that will allow all students and teachers to navigate in real-time and study and analyze processes and environments that otherwise would be impossible to observe. Students will test the application of their knowledge to provide coastal geohazard assessment and proposal for management measures, for each of the proposed case study (one for each summer school). All the involved universities will promote the inclusion of new approach for teaching and training activity, in the field of marine geosciences, in their educational program at MSc level. We planned three transnational project meetings to define and plan precisely, from the beginning and through the progress of the project, all project activities, especially the summer schools, the expected project results and the organization of two multiplier events. During the first Kick-off meeting, a Management project Committee (MC) will be established with a selected representative from each partner. The MC will be in charge of the executive management and it will ensure the adherence of all activities to the project timetable supporting a unique decision-making process capable of ensuring a balanced management of the implementation. Besides teaching activities, two multiplier events and a variety of outreach activities will be organized. One national multiplier event will focus on encouraging a more effective communication between academics, scientists, industries, professionals and social parties, with the goal of gathering information to better design a new curriculum in marine geohazard assessment and sustainability of coastal regions and to promote a major inclusive perspective in the labor market, showing the BridgET approach. A second one, planned toward the end of the project, will be organized as a side event within the framework of a relevant international conference in geosciences (es. EGU or analogue) to facilitate dissemination of project results (such as best practices to generate seamless 3D models for coastal and marine research and geohazard management practices) and to give demonstration on the effectiveness of VR in improving teaching methods and in increasing awareness on marine and coastal geohazard in the society. Data and products produced by the project will be also used to integrate outreach activities commonly carried out by participants.<< Results >>A pan European project that fosters interdisciplinary cooperation to improve the understanding and teaching of geohazard science is offered by BridgET. Each academic institution has existing postgraduate courses in natural/environmental/marine sciences that include marine geoscience topics, therefore there will be important teaching and learning outcomes form BridgET. A specific project result (which will actually be generated by the sum of all project products and activities) will consist indeed in the design of a new curriculum in marine geohazard assessment and sustainability of coastal regions. In addition, students attending the field activities will be able to accrue learning credits as each of the universities involved has a given amount for credits assigned to field activities. 3 more specific and research oriented project results will instead include the generation of ideal workflows to join offshore and onshore geospatial dataset, which is a practice still not standardized, although data accuracy and reliability is strongly needed to obtain suitable product that can be efficiently used for sustainable management purposes. Project results such as (PR2) ""UAV surveys and methodology for generating shallow water bathymetry"", (PR3) ""guidelines for generating seamless 3D models for coastal environments"" and (PR4) ""Methodology for underwater photogrammetry in deep water"" have been designed to provide best practices that should be adopted as reference document to provide reliable products for coastal management. Interactive learning paths, dataset and toolkit for VR exploration (projecr results PR5, PR6, PR7 and PR8) will finally provide data and products that can be used for a variety of purposes: -The drone and underwater videos and imagery data will be processed to generate a series of virtual reality environments: these will be delivered as packed data files containing VR-ready drone and ROV data, to provide demonstrators for erosion, landslide, active tectonics and volcanic features in both terrestrial and submarine environments. These files can be unpacked (unzipped) on a standard computer and are designed ready for view in 3D virtual reality using headsets. They will constitute a rich database to be used for inclusive teaching purposes that can be shared at academic level and used for dissemination and outreach. - Toolkit will be delivered that allow all students to navigate, map, measure and export features from within the virtual reality using fully immersive headsets and hand-held controllers. The toolkit will allow students to seamlessly switch between onshore and offshore examples of each geohazard to allow them to interact with terrestrial and submarine examples. The tools will allow students to export features (points, lines or polygons) from the VR for further processing or map production in other software such as image analysis or Geographical Information Systems (GIS). - Interactive learning path will be provided to make students experience in VR different, innovative and more inclusive research methods in marine geosciences, in particular, to promote innovative learning environment in marine geosciences, a virtual cruise will be developed using as a start the Norwegian R/V «Helmer Hanssen» owned by the University of Tromsø. The virtual cruise will include content (instrument description, purposes of samplings, data acquisition) in the 360° images and 360° videos of all the decks and laboratories, to build up taylored teaching material for the students. The virtual cruise will be accessible by phones, tablets, desktops, touch screens, big screen TVs, mobile VR headsets, WebVR. Additional virtual environments regarding research tools and lab will be generated using reality-based 3D models and 360° videos produced during the three BridgET summer schools."