Earth observation technologies for the mining life cycle in support of EU autonomy and transition to a climate-neutral economy (RIA) | HORIZON-CL4-2022-RESILIENCE-01-08

Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Unlock the potential of Earth Observation technologies, including Copernicus, through the development of downstream products and services for the whole mining life cycle,
• Strength EU autonomy in the area of raw materials, while enabling a successful transition to a climate-neutral, circular and digital EU economy;
• Contribute to the implementation of the following actions of the EU Action Plan on Critical Raw Materials: Action 7 - Deploy Earth-observation programmes and remote sensing for resource exploration, operations and post-closure environmental management

Actions should develop and innovate new methods to analyse Earth Observation data, enabling systematic mineral exploration and continuous monitoring of extraction, closure and post closure activities.

These developments and innovations should be built upon Copernicus satellite constellations, and/or European national and commercial satellite missions, including, e.g. COSMO-Skymed, EnMAP, PRISMA, TerraSAR-X, airborne and low-altitude platforms, ground based remote sensing, also including conventional in situ techniques, methods and field work measurements.

Actions targeting mineral exploration should develop EO methods that exploit multispectral, hyperspectral, SAR and in situ data permitting to systematically revise and update pre-existing maps and datasets identifying new mineral deposits at various scales, from mining regions to specific mining projects.

Actions targeting monitoring of extraction, closure and post closure activities should develop EO methods that exploit radar, optical and in situ data to innovate products and services: a) early warning systems and platforms that reduce operation risks; b) multi-sensor and multi-platform environmental monitoring systems that reduce the impacts on human health and preserve ecosystems.

Foreseen outputs of this action could be, but not limited to, new methods to exploit EO data permitting to generate the following results at various scales, from mining regions to specific mining projects.

For mineral exploration and mining monitoring:

• improved maps and techniques to map potential target areas of critical raw materials
• improved maps of mining waste deposits
• improved seabed mineral mapping by exploring the connection between sea shore and coastal areas
• Ground instability maps
• improved maps of mining waste deposits
• Mineral stockpile volume estimation
• Acid mine drainage maps

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.