The goal of DECUMANUS is the development and consolidation of a set of sustainable services that allows city managers to include geospatial products into their climate change strategies.
The selected application areas are based on related state-of-the-art Earth Observation techniques, methodologies and products, and user requirements related to urban climate change adaptation and attribution: assessment of urban climate change; land monitoring services providing land consumption information and urban ecosystems assessment and tools; provision of EO products to improve the energy efficiency in cities, and tools to alert the population of health risks due to poor air quality and heat waves.
The project has a clear user-driven approach: the proposed concept, approach and objectives are based on the previous experience of the partners working with urban managers and the users involved. Cities will be fully integrated in the project (defining requirements, testing products and services, validating results and acting as ambassadors of these technologies for other cities).
Technological and methodological gaps between the current state-of-the-art and the user requirements have been detected, and need to be solved including assimilation of EO data into urban climate/air quality models; the adaptation of scientific models to operational products and services; improvement of the accessibility; and the usage of the geo-spatial products by non-expert users.
The business model includes two levels of services:
- Basic services: information of thermal effects, air quality or land use, etc, delivered via website.
- Premium services: datasets, indicators, models, etc that will need a strong interaction and/or the use of local information (on-demand production and delivery subject to price).
Part of the DECUMANUS project will be the production of a small number of premium services that are pre-operational or operational depending on data availability.