ENFORCE - Empowering Citizens to Protect the Environment

Empowering Citizens to Join Forces with Public Authorities in Protecting the Environment

ENFORCE will help support legal actions and policy enforcement for environmental protection using geo-data workflows

The ENFORCE project (Empower citizeNs to join Forces with public authORities in proteCting the Environment) is dedicated to fostering sustainable practices and ensuring environmental regulatory compliance among various organizations. By employing Living Labs and Citizen Science methodologies, ENFORCE will create innovative tools that bridge the gap between data reporting, monitoring, and policy enforcement. The project integrates data collection (e.g., Copernicus satellite data), analysis, and stakeholder participation to meet these goals. Central to its strategy is the development of a collaboration hub that will introduce the concept of a Data Readiness Level (DRL) to assess the suitability of datasets for legal use. Additionally, ENFORCE will leverage geospatial intelligence and explainable AI to enhance environmental governance, aligning with the Green Deal Data Space initiative. These tools and strategies will be tested and refined at eight pilot sites in seven countries, supplemented by capacity-building and policy recommendation efforts.

ENFORCE Architecture — Architecture of the data governance and processing layer

52°North’s role in the consortium is to design and develop a geospatial information infrastructure that supports the envisioned 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 a “Tools Plaza”, providing data science and analysis functionality for environmental compliance data workflows. In addition, 52°North supports the requirements analysis, which is an integral part of the Living Labs in the early stages of the project. Our team will also assist the other partners with the integration of data sources, both public and provided by partners, into the ENFORCE infrastructure.

The work in 2025 focused on the following three major areas.

Data governance frameworks: The 52°North team developed a high-level architecture for Data Space Compliance and Provenance Mechanisms, detailing component interactions within and outside the planned ENFORCE Plaza. Subsequently, we implemented and deployed a preliminary Case Study (CS) API Connector for CS4 data (MINKA and MANORBA apps). The service periodically gathers MINKA data and receives MANORBA data via HTTP POST, storing both in a database. Data from both apps can be retrieved as GeoJSON and visualized using a basic map component.

Provenance registry implementation and metadata: We implemented an initial provenance service to capture provenance metadata. This metadata is gathered from data accessed via the CS API Connector and originates from the MINKA and MANORBA applications. Essential metadata, such as user ID, observation time, and updated time, is captured. Notably, the MINKA app also supplies complex information, including details about the AI models used. To ensure consistency across all CS efforts, a common metadata model needs to be defined.

Data Space compliance and policy integration: Our team created an Eclipse Data Space Connector (EDC) sandbox (access can be granted upon request). A minimum viable Data Space was set up using Docker to test the creation of assets (data services), usage policies, and workflows for contract-based data access. A pygeoapi containing a simple dataset was used as the example asset. The next step is to use this sandbox with the CS API Connector.