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The Calls are expected to be open to competitive tender in the second and third quarters of 2005. The subject procurements will take place in the framework of the Earth Observation Envelope Programme (EOEP), an optional programme of the European Space Agency.

All companies from the EOEP participating countries (A, B, DK, FIN, F, D, I, NL, N, E, S, CH, UK, CDN) interested in this procurement are kindly requested to access the intended tender documentation and to express interest in this IITT.

Potential Bidders are encouraged to express interest well in advance since this will allow ESA to keep them informed of any development that could take place in the preparation of the procurement process and will allow other companies to take their interest into consideration when establishing the strategy to reply to the Invitations to Tender.

These Invitations to Tender on the Data User Element (DUE) will call for the development of the following DUE projects:

• 05.1AE.05: INNOVATORS - USER PARTNERSHIP
• 05.1AE.06: INNOVATORS - TIGER
• 05.1AE.04: GLOBCOLOUR
• 05.1AE.07: SEVESEO

Companies are invited to submit bids for implementing and demonstrating innovative information services responding to the general objectives of the DUE programme. One or several targeted end-users who are expected to benefit substantially from the proposed services are to be engaged in advance and shall participate actively in the project. Service and product requirements are to be specified in advance at the initiative of the bidding team. The application areas or service themes are not imposed by ESA, but innovative service ideas are mandatory. Subjects already covered by past or ongoing projects within the Data User Programme and Data User Element (DUP and DUE), EOMD, GSE, EU 5th and 6th Framework Programmes or National programmes will not be considered. Each project shall be carried out over 12 months, and the maximum budget is 100K.

In 2002, ESA has initiated TIGER as a concrete step to implement the recommendations of the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The WSSD Plan of Implementation, the main document adopted by UN member countries, contains articles specifically referring to the role of earth observation for sustainable development. To put words into action, ESA started the TIGER initiative, which aims at developing sustainable earth observation information services for integrated water resources management in developing countries, with a particular focus on Africa. In this context, the Data User Element is launching this call for proposals, INNOVATORS TIGER, which has the double objective of: (i) giving African User organisations and industry an opportunity to capitalise on the latest research results and new technology in order to prototype and demonstrate innovative products, services and information systems to support integrated water management in Africa; (ii) improve the capabilities of African partners to use EO technology and build the basis for a long-term sustainable service. A maximum of 5 implementation and demonstration projects will be funded, each with a maximum budget of 100kEuro. Bidders shall implement and demonstrate innovative information services that gives a practical and concrete response to specific users needs expressed by African water organisations. To this end, projects shall be carried out by North-South partnerships involving European/Canadian Industry and research groups besides African users (e.g., National departments of Water) and technical centres (e.g., African remote-sensing centres, African National Environmental Agencies, local service providers).

The aim of GlobCOLOUR is to develop and demonstrate an EO-based service supporting global ocean carbon cycle research. The project will provide scientists with a long time-series of global ocean colour information, according to requirements specified by the global ocean colour user community. It will also put in place the capacity to continue the service in the future. Studies of global climate require long and well-calibrated time series that cannot currently be derived from any single satellite sensor. The project will therefore aim to demonstrate the production of a merged data set from several different data streams, such as MERIS, PARASOL, SeaWiFS and MODIS. The objective is to combine these data streams in such a way that the output product is independent of the input data source. To achieve this, a cross-calibration of each sensor's performance will first be made, including an analysis of the best available retrieval algorithms. Data-merging methods starting from both level 1 (radiance) and level 2 (chlorophyll) will be considered. The final choice of which merging algorithm to implement will be made following an intercomparison exercise, taking into account results from the EC/FP6 MERSEA ocean colour work package (WP 2.3) - scheduled to be available in Sept 2005. A strong validation of the final product against in-situ data will be performed following protocols already defined, for example, by the SIMBIOS project. An assessment will be made of the overall utility of the service, of the costs and future capability to continue the service, and of the potential wider user community.

The SEVESEO project aims at developing geo-spatial techniques for the management of industrial risks and technological accidents. The goal of the project is to develop some risk mapping services for SEVESO II industrial sites, integrating environmental parameters derived from satellite images. The demonstration of the SEVESEO services will imply the development of propagation models that aim at determining the environmental impact of a SEVESO accident, by modelling the dispersion of pollutants around the site. This implies the determination of the specific sensitivities of the environmental data around a SEVESO II site, for a given SEVESO substance and incident. The SEVESEO propagation models shall make use of the best existing models for each of the specific pollutant dispersion cases (marine, ground water, air). Various risk scenarios shall also be modelled, including the most disastrous cases. The SEVESO products to be produced are (i) Industrial risk maps around SEVESO II sites (typically 25x25km2) for a given environmental impact, SEVESO substance and incident, (ii) Environmental admissibility maps of pollutions around SEVESO II sites, with their evolution in time for different scenarios. The project will also deliver the SEVESEO information systems that will be installed at user premises. The SEVESEO information systems will be demonstrated on a number of SEVESO II sites located in five countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany and the Netherlands.