The ENFORCE EU-funded initiative commences its 4-year journey 

The new Horizon Europe initiative, ENFORCE (Empower citizeNs to join Forces with public authORities in proteCting the Environment), brings together 25 partners from 10 European countries, aiming to drive the development of participatory environmental monitoring and enforcement systems, and advance environmental governance practices, in line with the Green Deal Data Space initiative.

ENFORCE is funded under the “Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment” pillar, with a total budget of €7.3 million. It is co-funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding Guarantee and received funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). Coordinated by Dr. Svetlana Klessova from G.A.C. (France) as the Project Coordinator and Prof. Chrysi Laspidou from the University of Thessaly (Greece) as the Scientific Coordinator, ENFORCE aims to bring communities and authorities together to ensure compliance with environmental regulations and promote sustainable management practices.

Environmental compliance is essential for protecting natural resources and mitigating the impacts of pollution on human health and ecosystems. However, existing practices often struggle with challenges such as inconsistent data and a lack of coordination among stakeholders. ENFORCE tackles these issues by leveraging citizen science and innovative technologies to ensure that locally collected environmental data meets the standards and formats required by authorities for effective enforcement actions.

To achieve this, ENFORCE will develop creative toolkits and protocols that align citizen-collected data with official standards, enhancing its admissibility in court and its utility in environmental compliance cases. The project introduces the concept of Data Readiness Level (DRL), a framework designed to evaluate the maturity of data for use as legal evidence. It will also employ geo-spatial intelligence and AI-enhanced tools to improve data quality and reliability.

ENFORCE strives to move beyond awareness-raising to empower citizens and public authorities towards co-creating a pan-European collaboration and innovation hub to mainstream the use of citizen science for environmental compliance assurance : the ENFORCE Plaza.

Aligned with the European Green Deal, ENFORCE sets out to achieve 4 main objectives:

1. Promoting Compliance: Engaging citizens in the collection of high-quality environmental data through digital tools, visualizations, and social media strategies. This includes a co-created plan for preventing environmental crimes and encouraging voluntary compliance.
2.  Monitoring Compliance: Developing best practices for the collection and verification of data, ensuring that it is fit-for-purpose and can be used as legal evidence. This involves integrating various data sources, including citizen science, field-based sensors, and satellite images.
3. Enforcing Compliance: Enhancing the capacity of authorities to act on citizen-collected data, improving the collection of admissible evidence for environmental crime prosecution, and organising training workshops to upskill stakeholders in the use of digital tools and evidence collection.
4. Creating a One-Stop-Shop for Environmental Compliance: Establishing the ENFORCE Plaza, a collaborative platform that will serve as a meeting place and resource hub for environmental compliance initiatives, fostering collaboration among citizens, municipalities, and innovators.

ENFORCE’s outcomes will support the European Union’s broader sustainability goals and align with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in fostering sustainable cities and communities through enhanced environmental governance.

The project will be implemented through 8 case studies across Europe, including Valle Galeria (Italy), Brașov (Romania), Crete (Greece), Barcelona Urban Beaches (Spain), Puglia (Italy), Flanders (Belgium), East Devon Catchment (UK), and Amsterdam (Netherlands). Each location presents unique environmental challenges, allowing ENFORCE to tailor its approach to meet diverse local needs. By engaging grassroots organisations, local and regional authorities, and a diverse group of researchers, ENFORCE aims to develop a robust, interdisciplinary strategy for effective environmental monitoring and enforcement.

52°North’s role in the consortium is the design and development of a geospatial information infrastructure that supports data workflows. In particular, the integration of OGC API-driven systems into the Data Space ecosystem will be a central research topic. The concepts will be facilitated in an ENFORCE “Tools Plaza” providing data science and analysis functionality for environmental compliance data workflows. In addition, 52°North will support the requirements analysis that will be an integral part of the Living Labs in the early stages of the project. Our team will also be responsible for assisting the other partners with the integration of data sources, both public and provided by partners, into the ENFORCE infrastructure.

The project officially began on September 1, 2024 and will run until August 31, 2028. During a two-day meeting in Nice, France, on September 10th and 11th, 2024, the consortium officially inaugurated the project’s activities. This assembly, hosted by project coordinator G.A.C. Group (France), brought together 48 representatives from all partner organisations and established the foundation for a collaborative effort spanning 4 years.