EUROPEAN COMMISSION
MEMO
Brussels, 11 December 2012
GMES/Copernicus – monitoring our earth from space,
good for jobs, good for the environment
GMES/Copernicus provides
supports satellite navigation
earth
observation,
while
Galileo
Galileo and GMES/Copernicus are complementary systems making use of satellite
technologies. Both systems have their strategic value as each of them has its own
mission, which do not overlap. Galileo is essentially a ‘navigation’ system providing a
permanent and more accurate than ever positioning and timing services worldwide.
GMES/Copernicus is an ‘Earth observation’ system providing information on the state of
our environment and improving the security of our citizens.
What will GMES/Copernicus do?
GMES/Copernicus will ensure the regular observation and monitoring of Earth subsystems, the atmosphere, oceans, and continental surfaces, and will provide reliable,
validated and guaranteed information in support of a broad range of environmental and
security applications and decisions.
The initiative has two main objectives:
1. to provide of sustainable, precise and reliable information about the environment and
citizen’s security, produced under EU control and tailored to the needs of a wide range
of users;
2. to create massive business opportunities for European companies, in particular SMEs,
to boost to innovation and employment in Europe.
GMES/Copernicus's services will allow us to monitor:
 greenhouse gases that warm our planet,
 reactive gases that influence the quality of the air we breathe,
 ozone layer and levels of solar UV radiation reaching the ground, and
 aerosols that affect temperature and air quality.
GMES/Copernicus services will also improve the management of natural resources,
including water, soil and forests — not only in Europe itself, but also in other continents,
including Africa. They will help protect our citizens from harm, e.g. through the monitoring
of forest fires and other natural and man-made disasters.
MEMO/12/966
GMES/Copernicus offers business opportunities
GMES/Copernicus's data collection and provision provides a huge potential for innovation
and business development. Apart from the benefits for European citizens in terms of new
innovative services, which improve their quality of life, it will generate economic growth
and around 85 000 new jobs over the period 2015-2030. Studies show that the societal
benefits exceed four to twelve times the cost (for more details see European EO and GMES
Downstream Services Market Study)
GMES/Copernicus services will deliver information to a chain of information re-processors
and end-users on a sustained basis. The “GMES/Copernicus economy” will grow by
attracting increased investment in the value-adding market to provide innovative
applications to meet increasing user demands and expectations. The definition and
implementation of services and related observation infrastructure is driven by user
requirements. GMES/Copernicus user communities include institutional users such as the
EU institutions, European intergovernmental institutions, public-sector users within EU
Member States, European public-sector users from non-EU countries, non-EU public sector
users and institutional research communities.
An example of user driven innovation based on GMES/Copernicus's services which could
generate business opportunities is the EU's ObsAIRve service.Obsairve. This smart phone
'app' enables real time access to air pollution data. In many European cities, air quality is
of concern and is therefore monitored around the clock. In most cities, industrial air
pollution abatement is, or tends to be, replaced by traffic-related air pollution. ObsAIRve
allows real time access to air pollution data through mobile devices such as smartphones.
Space manufacturing - Upstream impact
GMES/Copernicus will have a significant impact on the space manufacturing sector, which
we call the upstream impact. This is an important part of the European industrial policy.
Moreover, it will also affect the data production and dissemination sector, which we call
the midstream, as well as the value-added sector, which we call the downstream. A recent
study analysed the most attractive downstream market segments for GMES/Copernicus,
namely water, transport, oil and gas, non-life insurance, agriculture and electricity. The
study, based on this sectoral analysis, was also able to estimate the potential job impact
on the downstream activities.
The number of jobs which will be created downstream are estimated at 68,182. When we
add the upstream sectoral job creation, estimated at 16,403, the total impact of the
GMES/Copernicus programme can be estimated at 84,585 jobs. This number is not
including the midstream sector, as we do not have accurate data for this market segment.
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GMES/Copernicus will offer important new services
GMES/Copernicus will provide the following services:

a land monitoring service providing information in support of European policies,
such as environmental policies (nature protection and biodiversity, natural
resources, environmental hazards, environmental impact assessment, water
framework directive), regional policies, territorial cohesion and spatial
development, Common Transport Policy, policies relating to SMEs and the Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP);
 a marine service providing information on the state of the oceans, including sea
level, currents, salinity, oil slicks;
 an atmosphere service providing information concerning chemical composition of
the atmosphere driving climate change, and air quality as well as information on
solar radiation;
 an emergency response support service will address natural disasters e.g.
weather-driven hazards (e.g. storms, fires, floods), geophysical hazards (e.g.
earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, landslides and subsidence), man-made
disasters and humanitarian and civil emergencies (such emergencies are complex
and require multi-disciplinary response);
 a security support service, e.g. in the field of maritime surveillance carried out by
coast guards or critical infrastructure monitoring to reduce the number of terrorist
attacks.
 A climate change service will be developed transversely with the aim of
collecting reliable and continuous data on specific indicators to model climate
change scenarios.
GMES/Copernicus services should be fully and openly accessible within the restrictions
imposed by the overall legal and policy framework (e.g. security issues). This is in line
with the principles of the European Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS), and
Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) initiatives to promote the widest
possible sharing and use of Earth observation data and information.
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GMES/Copernicus's architecture and infrastructure
Copernicus's architecture consists of:

a Service component providing information for a broad range of environmental
and security-related application areas and stimulating a downstream sector serving
numerous applications on both a local and global scale,
 an Observation Infrastructure component with two sub-components for spacebased and airborne, seaborne and ground based (so-called ”in situ”) infrastructure.
In order to provide GMES/Copernicus services, service providers will depend on input from
space and in situ observation infrastructure. In many cases, observation infrastructure has
already been developed and put into operation by Member States. This existing
infrastructure has been and should be re-used as much as possible in order to avoid
duplication.
Only when - following a careful analysis of gaps in provision - existing capabilities have
been found to be inadequate in meeting user requirements, new developments have been
launched and financed by the EU. This is the case, in particular, for the space
infrastructure developed by the European Space Agency (ESA), the coordinator of the
implementation of the GMES/Copernicus space component. The provision of data from in
situ infrastructure is coordinated by the European Environmental Agency (EEA).
http://copernicus.eu
Copernicus on Europa
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