Defra Earth Observation Centre of Excellence
The Defra Earth Observation Centre of Excellence (EOCoE) is a virtual hub bringing together Earth Observation expertise. The EOCoE is run by Defra with the secretariat based in the Defra Central Science Division.
The Defra EOCoE consists of member organisations who use Earth Observation for environmental and societal purposes. The Defra EOCoE meets monthly and works in collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders from across the Earth Observation sector.
Our role
The Defra EOCoE brings expertise together and provides support through:
- identifying opportunities for Earth Observation to support policy relating to the environment and society, for example, in agriculture, nature protection, flood mitigation and response, detection of illegal fishing, and drought and fire early risk evaluation
- enabling knowledge sharing and collaboration across organisations
- providing some funding for innovative research and development projects, including proof of concept studies.
- acting as an intelligent customer for data access platforms, such as the Defra Earth Observation Data Service
Our priorities
The EOCoE’s priorities are to:
- champion the use of Earth Observation, ensuring the potential is understood, and the investment secured to realise and deliver
- bring together internal and external expertise, to build a community for sharing ideas, knowledge, and methods, developing common tools, and integrating products
- identify and quantify where earth observation could give the greatest impact in informing decisions on policies and initiatives across government, including the 25 Year Environment Plan
- provide leadership as an intelligent customer, to facilitate work by other teams to ensure Earth Observation data are findable, accessible, able to be shared and used widely
- establish the tools to enable staff across centre members to analyse and interrogate earth observation data
- develop standards and guidance to ensure we are using and integrating the various types of earth observation data consistently
Our members
The Defra EOCoE current members are:
- Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
- Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA)
- Centre for Environment, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Science (Cefas)
- Environment Agency
- Forest Research
- Geospatial Commission
- Historic England
- Department of Agriculture, Environment, and Rural Affairs (Northern Ireland)
- Joint Nature Conservation Committee
- Marine Management Organisation
- National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO)
- Natural England
- Natural Resources Wales (Cyfoeth Naturiol Cymru)
- NatureScot (NàdarAlba)
- Rural Payments Agency
- Scottish Government
- South Downs National Park Authority
- Welsh Government
Roadmaps
Every 5 years, the Defra EOCoE develops a roadmap which sets out the vision for the centre’s work and the use of Earth Observation across Defra for the coming 5 years.
There has been a 2-year gap between the first and second EOCoE roadmaps, due to delays caused by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.