Copernicus User Needs Collection

Copernicus is the Earth Observation Flagship programme of the European Union. It is user driven programme. It has observation capacities with currently 7 satellites in orbit, and information production services in 6 domains: land, emergency, security, climate change, atmosphere and marine. One of the objective of the programme started in 2011 is to ensure the long-term sustainability of the observation capacities for Europe. In this context, the European Commission and the European Space Agency are now preparing the Next Generation (2030) of Sentinel satellites.

To define the specifications of this Next Generation, the European Commission has launched several user requirement surveys and studies aimed at gathering the satellite observation long-term needs across different sectors.

User requirements have been gathered based on desk studies, exchanges and interactions with existing and potential user communities. They have been collected and analysed from different sources which include dedicated studies carried out between 2015 and 2018, requirements expressed by users during task forces and expert groups, and outcomes of several users’ requirement workshops and meetings organized during the last two years. Based on this collection of User Requirements, the European Space Agency has started now to define the potential specifications of the Next Generation of Copernicus satellites.

 The objective of the presentation will be to explain the process setup for collecting the User Requirements, their analysis and the outcomes.