National programmes
NCEO is part of pioneering research initiatives to address critical environmental challenges and support sustainable development.
Our programmes leverage advanced technologies and collaborative partnerships to drive innovations in climate science, agriculture, and environmental management. These projects unite leading experts, researchers, and stakeholders to deliver impactful solutions and valuable data for understanding and managing Earth’s dynamic systems.
Explore our initiatives to see how NCEO is making a difference:
EOCIS
EOCIS is a research collaboration promoting exploitation of Earth-observation based climate information in science, decision-making and business. The unique UK provision of trustworthy climate data that EOCIS is creating is being translated into positive climate action, meeting UK business and government needs.
EOCIS is a collaboration of 11 universities and four national research centres supported by the government-business-academic network Space4Climate. This collaboration is funded via NERC, administered by NCEO, and coordinating with digital infrastructure developments in the EO Data Hub. Being a large collaboration, a broad range of Earth observation missions and data products are involved, more details of which can be found at www.eocis.org.
EOCIS addresses UK calls for actionable, high-quality and trustworthy climate information to inform responses to climate change in science, decision-making and business. Demand for such climate intelligence is growing in the UK, including in the finance sector where London is the premier centre for climate finance. EOCIS sustains world-class capability in global climate information (eight climate datasets) previously involved in Copernicus services, and ongoing scientific advances of these capabilities. New and improved global and UK-focussed climate information is created, curated, disseminated, and exploited widely to better understand our climate and inform climate actions that make the UK more climate-resilient through avoided costs, disruption and health impacts.
EOCIS is providing a new picture of how the UK is changing and how this information can inform and protect us in domains from health to finance. A resilient UK will be able to make improved decisions based on modern, high-quality EOCIS data streams both at home and abroad.
Professor Chris Merchant
NCEO Ocean and Earth Observation Scientist, based at the University of Reading.
Key research groups
The collaboration covers the universities of Reading (project lead), Bangor, Edinburgh, King’s College London, Lancaster, Leeds, Leicester, Northumbria, Southampton, Swansea and University College London; and the British Antarctic Survey Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, the National Physical Laboratory, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory.
Additionally, eight funded actionable information projects have been commissioned involving government agencies, non-governmental organisations and businesses. EOCIS has engaged with climate services overseas for coordination.
Research priorities
- Trusted, world-class data quantifying global, regional and UK environmental change – covering methane to temperature to ice-sheets and beyond.
- Application of EOCIS data to business and decision making through bespoke joint projects (covering areas from solar power management to wildfire risk to food security).
- New modes of access to EOCIS data and models via the Earth Observation Data Hub.
Our current work includes
- Drought monitoring and warning in Kenya for food security.
- UK landscape carbon flux estimation.
- High-resolution surface temperature across the UK.
- Water quality in UK coastal zones and lake catchments.
Earth Observation DataHub (EODH)
Programme summary
The EODH project aims to develop and operate a new centralised software infrastructure – a DataHub – to provide a new ‘single point’ of access for UK EO data offerings from distributed public and commercial centres. The Earth Observation DataHub will be a place where the UK EO data community can access and develop new EO services and tools, all based on a standardised set of services and APIs.
EODH is initially a pathfinder project that will bring new thinking and experimental developments that will result in practical services for users. By the end of the initial project phase, EODH expect to have a community of researchers, industry and government working together to provide Earth observation data in new and innovative ways.
NCEO role in the programme
NCEO leads the EODH, with key project members at the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) and the University of Leicester, Satellite Applications Catapult, Met Office, and NPL.
Key stakeholders:
- NERC
- Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)
- UK Space Agency
Lead industrial partners
- Airbus Defence and Space
- Earth-i and Planet
- Sparkgeo
- Spyrosoft
- Oxidian
- Telespazio UK
Funding and partners
EODH is funded by NERC through the Department of Science Innovation and Technology Earth Observation Investment programme. This pathfinder element of the project is scheduled to run from February 2023 to March 2025.