ABOUT

enviroLENS, a Horizon 2020 innovation project funded by the European Commission, demonstrates and promotes the use of Earth observation as direct evidence for environmental law enforcement, including in a court of law and in related contractual negotiations. The project combines components from the corporate and legal sectors with Earth Observation-based services to support evidence-based decision-making in the environmental domain.

The mission of enviroLENS is to facilitate the utilization of European satellite capacities provided by Copernicus for environmental law enforcement and related cross-cutting sectors.

It addresses both the pro-active monitoring perspective to prevent damage to the environment, as well as the assessment of environmental violations for the enforcement of environmental law. Further, it will support environmental impact assessment procedures by providing information that supports contractual negotiations and discussions with clients.

Coordinated by GeoVille, the project combines the competence and expertise of Sinergise, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and DLA Piper to demonstrate and validate the value of using Earth Observation in the environmental law sector.

DLA Piper and IUCN’s on-the-ground examples will prove the applicability, the reliability and the relevance of the EO tools in the enforcement of environmental law. These examples also serve as showcases to stimulate acceptance and standardization and to promote the power of satellite imagery data as a reliable, timely, accurate and cost-effective source of evidence to the wider environmental law and conservation community.

Expected results

The main technological delivery of enviroLENS project is eLENS Portal, an advanced information system uniting Earth Observation with the environmental law and legal domain to create novel and unique types of services.

The project will provide a service portfolio that combines components from the corporate and legal sectors (offering evidence, show-cases and contacts for legal services based on specific location and theme) with EO-based services (alarming, monitoring and recording) to create value-added information that supports evidence-based decision-making in the environmental domain.