PreCommercial Procurement for the Customisation/Preoperationalisation of Water management Innovations from Space for European Climate Resilience

This PCP (Pre-Commercial Procurement) is a cross-border joint procurement of R&D services to reinforce public demand-driven innovation in end-user services in the area of Climate Change Adaptation through data-driven water management. The to-be-developed solutions are expected to achieve TRL 7-8. The PCP should deliver successful, innovative and fully tested product(s) and/or service(s) that meet the common needs of the Public Buyer Group (PBG) to procure research services, develop innovative marketable solutions, speed up the time-to-market and provide best value for money. More concretely, the common needs of the public buyer group are as follows. PCP WISE aims to develop smart, sustainable solutions to improve water management and climate resiliency by monitoring the ‘Soil-Water-Vegetation (SWV) System’. Market entities are challenged to design and develop a solution that achieves this by using and combining earth observation data and environmental data on the SWV-system. This to-be-developed integrated water intelligence information product/service aims to help decision-makers manage major challenges resulting from climate change, such as floods, droughts, wildfires, heat stress and infrastructure risks in both urban and rural areas. The PCP WISE project includes 5 use cases that serve as practical testing scenarios where innovative solutions must demonstrate their effectiveness in real-world conditions. They represent the diverse geographic and climatic contexts of the European continent that provide the reference framework against which the innovations are validated for relevance, resilience and impact. PCP WISE contractors are challenged by designing and developing a solution that is applicable and scalable to tackle all 5 use cases. Following the completion of the evaluation of the tenders received, the PCP has entered its implementation phase by means of awarding a Framework Agreement where contractors are developing the solution in competition. It includes call-offs for Specific Contracts for Phase 1: Solution Design, Phase 2: Prototype Development, and Phase 3: Validation and demonstration of the solutions. This project receives funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement number No. 101182917 and selected under the HORIZONCL62024 GOVERNANCE015, topic: Customisation/preoperationalisation of prototypes enduser services in the area Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation, with a budget of around €12 million earmarked for the R&D phases during the implementation of the PCP instrument. However, the European Union does not participate as a contracting authority in the procurement.