52°North Spatial Information Research GmbH

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. The project kicked-off in September 2024 and will continue until August 2028.

52°North’s role in the consortium is the design and development of 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 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.

Coordinator: G.A.C., France

Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain

Universität Bielefeld, Germany

Universiteit Hasselt, Belgium

Internationales Institut für angewandte Systemanalyse, Austria

Institutului Național de Cercetare Dezvoltare în Silvicultură Marin Drăcea, Romania

SingularLogic, Greece

IDC Italia S.R.L., Italy

Evisights B.V., Netherlands

Koinoniki Synetairistiki Epicheirisi Syllogikis KAI Koinonikis Ofeleias Amaranthus, Greece

Business Development Group S.R.L., Romania

European Network of Living Labs, Belgium

European Association of Remote Sensing Companies, Belgium

Verein der Europäischen Bürgerwissenschaften, Germany

A Sud Ecologia e Cooperazione OdV, Italy

Dikigorikos Syllogos Irakleiou, Greece,

Centro Internazionale di Alti Studi Agronomici Mediterranei, Italy

ENRICH Global, France

Stichting Waag Society, Netherlands

Barcelona Cicle de l’Aigua SA, Spain

Digital for Planet, Switzerland

The University of Exeter, United Kingdom

Westcountry Rivers Trust LBG, United Kingdom

Hands-on Developments for GeoNode

Developments for the next iteration of the Thünen Atlas

In previous years, 52°North supported the Thünen Institute with the migration of their legacy Thünen Atlas, which was based on GeoNode 3.x, to the next major release of GeoNode, version 4. As part of this effort, a set of features to improve the user experience and the platform’s capabilities for data exploration and analysis was implemented by a team of developers of Pixida and. 52°North in close collaboration with the Thünen Institute. It covered several thematic aspects. The main focus was on:

• Improvements for map delivery by extending the default MapStore2 widgets and views,
• Automatic synchronization of datasets across multiple GeoNode instances to improve publication workflows,
• Support for tabular (non-spatial) datasets and their visualization in dashboards.
• Improvements of deployment strategies using Docker and build pipelines

In 2024, development continued. The team of software engineers carried out the project using agile software development methods. The focus of this iteration was to establish several features that were required by the HoliSoils EU H2020 project. In particular, the team implemented support for dedicated sub-portals within GeoNode to present a specific part of the available data. In addition, we redeveloped or improved some MapStore2 widgets.

Pixida GmbH, Germany

Thünen-Institut, Germany

Enhancing Ecosystems Conservation via EO Solutions, Capacity Development and Co-design

Designing and developing a platform to manage technical aspects of scalable EO algorithm execution

PEOPLE-ECCO (Enhancing Ecosystems Conservation through Earth Observation Solutions, Capacity Development, and Co-design) is an ESA-funded initiative under the Earth Observation Science for Society (EO4Society) programme. This project addresses crucial needs expressed by Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that aim to enhance evidence-based ecosystem conservation. The PEOPLE-ECCO project follows two high-level objectives:

Engage CSOs/NGOs active in ecosystems conservation by involving them in the co-design of EO methodologies applicable in their operational practices and though EO capacity building activities;

Develop, test, demonstrate and validate EO-integrated methods, based on the identified user requirements and co-design.

Six NGOs/CSOs, referred to as “Early Adopters,” play a pivotal role in the project by contributing to the creation of actionable, relevant EO-based tools and methods. These Early Adopters include African Parks, the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds, the Lebanon Reforestation Initiative, IUCN Vietnam, the Prince Edward Island Watershed Alliance, and Reef Check Malaysia. Collectively, they represent efforts across four continents and manage a diverse array of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

The role of 52°North is to design and develop the platform that manages all technical aspects of the EO algorithm execution. The platform will provide an intuitive interface for the Early Adopters to configure and execute the algorithms for their specific areas of interest, as well as view and download previous analysis results. Under the hood, the architecture leverages the openEO platform to do the heavy lifting of EO data processing. The openEO process graph serves as the interoperability interface between the PEOPLE-ECCO system and the openEO platform.

University of Twente, ITC, Netherlands

Hatfield Consulting, Canada

DHI Consulting, Denmark

European Space Agency, France

Supporting research on our Earth with analytical tools and technological infrastructure