Technical Review Meeting 2 with FFG and UBA for Concept Design

The GHG-KIT second Review Meeting with The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft, FFG), The Environment Agency Austria (Umweltbundesamt GmbH, UBA) and The Austrian Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (Bundesministerium für Klimaschutz, Umwelt, Energie, Mobilität, Innovation und Technologie = BMK) combined with the second Advisory Board Meeting took place on the 11th of July hybrid online/onsite hosted by UBA at their premises on Spittelauer Lände in Vienna. This Technical Review Meeting 2 with FFG and UBA on Concept Design focused on the outcome of Work Package WP3 "Overall Concept EO Improved GHG Reporting".

Based on the initial user requirements gathered during the preliminary phase of the GHG-KIT project within WP2 “Consolidation and Sustainability”, the aim of this meeting was the finalization of the first design and method developments of the 2 prototypes: (i) Verification Element (ii) LULUCF Inventory Reporter, through 4 main presentations by WP Leads:

1. WRF-CHEM Atmospheric transport model and VPRM biogeochemical model by GeoSphere

2. Atmospheric FLEXPART transport model and FLEXINVERT inverse model by the University of Vienna

3. Task 7.3 on Verification (comparison with independent GHG data) by SISTEMA

4. WP6: EO Integrated LULUCF Prototype by GeoVille.

One of the highlights is an interesting use case for atmospheric modelling combining ground-based measurements of CO₂ & CH₄ mole fractions at the Arsenal Tower in Vienna from the Vienna Urban Carbon Laboratory (VUCL) initiative, the coverage of Sentinel-5P TROPOMI in a flat area and GHG-SAT Very High Spatial resolution data.

The next steps are the delivery of the Midterm Report at KO+12 in September 2023 followed by the Midterm Review at FFG’s premises in Vienna in December 2023. The interim deliverables will include a White Paper, Blueprints and benchmarking datasets, i.e., the 1st Land Use Activity Data map quality assessed for the reference year 2018 produced by GeoVille.

The meeting ended with a round-table with the 4 Advisory board members giving their recommendations on the concept design in their respective fields of expertise:

• Rona Thompson, NILU (Norway): Atmospheric/Inverse modelling

• Claus Zehner, ESA (Italy): ESA Mission Manager Sentinel-5P TROPOMI

• Kevin Black, FERS (Ireland): LULUCF expert

• Gerhard Triebnig, EOX (Vienna): Digital Marketplace, Exploitation Strategy

UBA also provided their feedback on the WP2 interim deliverable User Requirements and Technical Specifications (in-situ and satellite data) documents, to ensure the latter meet their needs and bring an added-value to the inventory, according to Agile process management loops. In this second phase, the Consortium will also address the requirements of the users beyond UBA as the main user/stakeholder, compiler of the GHG national inventory report, towards European standardization, connectivity and scalability of services.