WQeMS aims to provide an operational Water Quality Emergency Monitoring Service to the water utilities industry in relation with the quality of the ‘water we drink’. Therefore, it will focus its activities on monitoring of lakes valorized by the water utilities for the delivery of drinking water. Sentinel data (i.e. Sentinel -2 and Sentinel-1) will be exploited for quality monitoring at a fine spatial resolution level, following validated processes with in situ data. The proposed WQeMS will exploit the Copernicus Data and Information Access Services (DIAS ONDA), instead of setting up its own download and processing infrastructure. Linkages with the existing Thematic Exploitation Platforms (TEPs), such as the Hydrology TEP for monitoring flood events and the Food Security TEP for supporting the sustainable intensification of farming from space will be pursued. Following cases are to be treated in real time in cooperation with drinking water production companies (public and private): - Slow developing phenomena (business-as-usual scenario), such as geogenic or anthropogenic release of potentially polluting elements through the bedrock or pollutants’ leaching in the underground aquifer through human rural activities, may influence water quality. Changes in the monitored chemical dissolved substances may be then detected. - Fast developing phenomena (e.g. floods spilling debris and mud or pollutant spills of chemicals in the lakes or algal bloom and potential release of toxins by cyanobacteria) produce huge quantities of contaminants at a short time interval bringing sanitation utilities at the edge of their performance capacity. Monitoring of the extent of the effluents in the lake; thus, providing a warning about the risk of water contamination, assist in mitigating impact, both for the water drinking water production and the environment.

Satellite remote sensing has been evolved into a powerful tool for global monitoring of surface waters. Earth Observations (EO) and remote sensing are widely used for quantifying the physical parameters of reservoirs as well as for retrieving selected water constituents concentrations. Space-O aims at the integration of state of the art (EO) and in situ monitoring with advanced hydrological, water quality models and ICT tools into a powerful decision support system (DSS) for generating real time, short to medium term forecasting water flows and quality data in reservoirs which will be used for the optimization of water treatment plants (WTPs) operations, establishing a complete service line from EO to water business sector. An operational service platform will be designed to facilitate increased interoperability among EO and modeled services. Data acquisition and integration of almost real time EO data in the hydrological and water quality models will be implemented in order to provide improved real-time, short to medium term water quantity and quality forecasting in reservoirs. A risk-based DSS will be developed in order to enable cost-effective and environmental sustainable Water Treatment Plants (WTPs) operation, based on the water quality parameters forecasts at the reservoir, the in situ monitoring data and the data collected through supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems used in WTPs for operation control. Additionally, developing Copernicus Services (C3S) will be jointly assessed with site-specific data sets generated through the satellite, modeling, in situ and citizens monitoring services, to produce continuous monitored indicators for enabling water quality Risk Assessment analysis on a catchment level.

Key principles of the Green Deal are to prioritise energy efficiency, develop a power sector based largely on renewable resources, to secure an affordable EU energy supply and to have a fully integrated, interconnected digitalised EU energy market. However, renewable energy scale up in Europe faces increasing resistance due to limitations in applicable land area and the willingness of local communities to have wind or solar parks close by. One possibility to resolve this issue is the usage of offshore space. Blue renewable energy sources such as offshore (floating) wind, floating solar (FPV), waves, tides and currents have a high and still unused potential to be explored. This is of particular importance in view of the current energy crisis and changing energy policy. For all offshore technologies, lengthy and expensive MetOcean, geophysical and environmental campaigns are needed, which slow down the upscaling of offshore renewables. The proposed Blue Energy Offshore Installation Accelerator (BLUE-X) will contribute to the Green Deal objectives and its related policies, in particular with regard to increasing the EU’s climate ambition for 2030 and 2050, supplying clean, affordable and secure energy, mitigating natural hazards and preserving and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity. BLUE-X is an innovative Copernicus based solution for optimising and accelerating decision making for blue renewable energy projects in all phases, from planning to construction, operation and decommissioning. The heart of this solution is a cloud-based IT network of relevant Earth observation and MetOcean data streams that are combined in decision support tools for each phase. As a result, the planning and construction phase can be significantly optimised, thereby reducing costs, and required time to full operation. BLUE-X will be available and showcased for all key offshore energy domains for some of the most important European offshore projects to date but can be applied anywhere.