Applications
Copernicus supports a variety of applications in several non-space domains. The range of applications enabled by Copernicus is enormous, spanning the public and private sectors across numerous market segments. Some key applications include:
Agriculture
Agriculture is one of the most promising markets in terms of the impact of Copernicus, especially in the area of precision farming. Copernicus also helps assess agricultural land use and trends, crop conditions and yield forecasts. It also supports input management, farm management recording and irrigation management. Together with Galileo and EGNOS, Copernicus is an essential technology for precision farming. Learn more here.
Blue Economy
Thanks to its capacity to monitor the physical and biogeochemical characteristics of the global ocean and regional seas, Copernicus supports a wide variety of Blue Economy applications such as the assessment of water quality, the mapping of fishing zones or the monitoring of harmful algal blooms. Learn more here.
Climate Change and Environment
By providing key indicators on climate change drivers such as carbon dioxide levels, and assessing its impacts on the environment such as melting of glaciers and sea ice and sea level rise, Copernicus supports Europe’s climate change adaptation and mitigation policies in a number of sectors. Learn more here.
Development and Cooperation
Thanks to its ability to address global challenges and to its free, full and open data policy, Copernicus supports the EU's presence on the international scene and plays a growing role in the EU’s bilateral relations with international partners. Learn more here.
Energy and Natural Resources
Copernicus data supports applications such as solar and wind energy production forecasting, renewable energy site selection, biomass monitoring, and water level monitoring, enabling the efficient exploitation of renewable energies. In this way, it will help to meet the growing global energy demands without increasing CO2 emissions. Learn more here.
Forestry
In the domain of forestry, Earth observation data is used to provide forest mapping and forest change mapping, and to produce maps supporting the completion of national forest inventories. Together with Galileo and EGNOS, Copernicus is helping to manage forest planning. Learn more here.
Health
Copernicus supports public health authorities in monitoring health-related environmental phenomena by supplying information pertinent to their activities such as air quality forecasts and UV forecasts. Copernicus can also help identify areas prone to the emergence and spread of epidemics, which depend on environmental factors such as water, sanitation, food or air quality. Learn more here.
Insurance and Disaster Management
Copernicus supports public authorities in all phases of disaster management, from preparedness, prevention and disaster response, where it supports civil protection operations with products such as disaster maps for example, to the recovery phase, where it helps to monitor the medium- and long-term impacts on the environment, human safety and the economy. Learn more here.
Security and Defence
Copernicus supports the EU's response to several security challenges, from border and maritime surveillance to the monitoring of critical infrastructures such as power plants, offshore platforms and pipelines. Learn more here.
Tourism
Copernicus can support applications in the domain of tourism, providing services such as coastal water quality monitoring or the detection and monitoring of jellyfish populations or algal blooms. Learn more here.
Transport
Copernicus provides numerous solutions to transport and transport safety issues, such as information on currents to support ship routing services and on environmental hazards, such as volcanic eruptions or the presence of sea ice, which can disrupt aviation and marine transport. Completed by the European positioning systems, Galileo and EGNOS, Copernicus is allowing the development of transport applications. Learn more here.
Urban Planning
Copernicus helps Europe’s municipalities and regions face diverse planning challenges, such waste management and exploitation of renewables energies, by providing information on land use and land cover classification, urban growth, urban green areas, urban heat islands, imperviousness, and so on. Together with Galileo and EGNOS, Copernicus is bringing added value to urban planning. Learn more here.