The Focus
The focus of this call will be on developing applications of European relevance that will provide users with quantitative or qualitative information on the changing environment, e.g. change detection in climate, biodiversity, water bodies, coastal areas, built environment, green areas, forestry, agricultural land and crops, and atmospheric composition. Other areas of application will be considered provided that they address broad environmental or social themes across geographic scales.
Conditions for Entry
Any legal entity from the 28 EU Member States plus the countries associated with Horizon 2020 can participate.
It is mandatory
that the data used for the proposed applications are available under the conditions of full and open access with no restrictions for reuse except for the obligation to acknowledge the source of the input data. If data used are not part of the GEOSS Data CORE, data from EU-funded projects, or other openly available or crowd-generated data that comply with the sharing and use conditions of the GEOSS Data-CORE, it is the responsibility of the participant to ensure that such data are in fact provided under the conditions of full and open access. In such cases the applicants must provide evidence verifying the conditions of full and open access, e.g. applicable licences or licensing agreements. In cases where crowd-generated data are used, it is equally the responsibility of the applicant to ensure that informed consent for their reuse is obtained, and that all legal requirements on data protection and privacy are met.
The Evaluation Criteria
The entries will be evaluated by an international panel co-chaired by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) and including representatives of the public and private sectors and academia. Criteria for evaluation of the application will include relevance for use in Europe, ease of use of the apps by non-expert users, innovative characteristics of the proposed application, and contribution to environmental or social objectives, including active citizen participation in data collection and analysis.
All applications need to clearly address the following four questions:
- What is the proposed app going to do?
- Which datasets will it use?
- If parts of the app are already developed, what is the added value of the proposal?
- What are the advantages of the proposed app compared to already existing ones?
The Awards
The best applicants will be awarded contracts by the JRC for a maximum of € 13 500 to develop the applications further, and take them to the stage of first public release within three months of signing the contracts. The winners will also be invited to present their applications at the GEO Plenary meeting in St Petersburg, Russia, during the week of the 9-10 November 2016. This will give visibility to the winning teams and provide opportunities for further development. Travel and daily allowance will be supported by the European Commission for one person from each winning team.
Ownership of the Results
The documentation and source codes delivered to the European Commission (EC) at the end of the contract will be published by the EC as open source software using the EU Public License (EUPL). This will allow for further development of the applications in the future, even for commercial purposes, as long as the original source code remains open.
To ensure reuse, the successful applicants who sign a contract with the JRC to develop their application must agree to transfer the full ownership of the results to the European Union (EU), including copyrights and other intellectual property rights. Due acknowledgement of the developers names and logos will of course be given.
Since the entire source code has to be released under the EUPL, it is the responsibility of the contractors to ensure that the developed applications are cleared of any IPR belonging to third parties. All the data used in the app have to be provided under the conditions of full and open access.
Sample Data
A subset of the GEOSS Data CORE resources for each of the topic areas addressed by GEOSS with direct links to their data services is available here.
Dates
- Launch of the call: 15 March 2016
- Deadline for submitting the application concept, prototype, or user story (e.g. as document, slide presentation or video): 8 April 2016
- Selection and notification of winning applications: 22 April 2016
- Contracts with the JRC signed: June 2016
- Apps delivered to the JRC with documentation: 30 September 2016
- Testing by the JRC and user panels: October 2016
- Presentation at the GEO Plenary meeting in St Petersburg, Russia: November 2016 (exact dates to be confirmed)
For detailed information, see the MYGEOSS site.
Submissions will be open from 15 March to 8 April 2016.
Links:
MYGEOSS Third Call For Innovative Apps in the environmental and social domains