Campaign for Space Resilience Nodes (SRNs) across Europe

Past

Space technologies are vital tools to build resilience of our society by delivering critical data and capabilities of monitoring, connectivity and positioning to rapidly respond to environmental challenges and crisis. For example, Satellite Earth Observation (EO) enables timely action against climate-related disasters and supports sustainable management of natural resources. Through this Campaign, we invite European innovators, businesses, and researchers to bring forward bold ideas leveraging space and digital technologies to deliver practical, scalable Space Resilience Nodes (SRNs) solutions enhancing Europe's capability to rapidly respond to crisis while boosting its economy.

This Campaign is open within the framework of the new European Resilience from Space (ERS) programme of the European Space Agency (ESA), and specifically part of its Element 2 activity to develop Space Resilience Nodes (SRNs). The idea of SRNs was originally developed within the Civil Security from Space (CSS) programme, and is now transferred to Element 2 of the ERS programme.  

SRNs are distributed digital Pooling & Sharing (P&S) environments enabling national Public Protection & Disaster Relief (PPDR) agencies to rapidly access space technologies and innovative space-based solutions to enhance their disaster and crisis management operations and wider civil protection applications. SRNs enable P&S of space-based services with a network of SRNs or other users, while fostering new market opportunities for low-latency space-based solutions.

It is important to note that this Campaign is not a call for “proposals” but a call for “ideas” that will serve as a basis for establishing competitive tenders in 2026 for SRNs under the ESA ERS-Earth Observation (EO) programme, following the outcome of the 2025 ESA Council of Ministers (CMIN25). As such, this Campaign provides you with a unique opportunity to present, promote and iterate your idea with ESA to shape the future of ERS programme on SRNs. It enables you to get ESA feedback, which could later be used turn your ideas into a potential proposal from 2026 depending on the outcome of CMIN25. Note that submitted ideas will remain confidential (only shared within the ESA evaluation team).  

To learn more about this Campaign, please join our webinar on 7th October, 10:30am CEST - register here. The contact point for the Campaign is resilience@esa.int  A short video describing the context of global challenges & the role of space technologies has been integrated for information; it highlights some currently running CSS projects, whose activities will be transferred to ERS Element 2 (SRN).

    Background

    The demand for rapid, real-time environmental data and geospatial intelligence products is rapidly increasing as the world tackles a global climate crisis alongside complex geopolitical and emerging security challenges. Despite rapid advances in technologies, there remains a persistent challenge: delivering the right information, in the right place, at the right time during crisis to both decision makers and - importantly - directly to first responders in the field.

    Space, and in particular Earth Observation (EO), can play a key role in this endeavour by providing a global view and routine monitoring of our planet. However, the Petabytes of data delivered by satellites also create new challenges, such as (i) the ability to extract actionable information from big data in real-time, (ii) latency issues in delivering the right information, and (iii) lack of reliable communication and bandwidth especially during crises when connectivity can collapse, or in remote areas with limited or non-existent connectivity.

    Another challenge is for end-users to swiftly identify and use the technology that can be most useful for them. They need to be able to fuse different data/analytics to get a full situational awareness, and to bundle different connectivity solutions to ensure resilient, ubiquitous communications. No single solution or provider can offer all that a user needs. Moreover, users need to be able to integrate space-enabled products directly into their operational environment and systems.

    In this context, the idea here is to foster the development of a suite of national/regional/international SRNs across Europe, that could later operate in an interconnected way, enhancing real-time crisis response through space-enabled and digital technologies, while boosting the European economy and reinforcing European collective resilience. The SRNs will leverage on existing national assets and infrastructures, such as capabilities of Public Protection & Disaster Response (PPDR) agencies, national computing, AI and observing infrastructures, enhancing and complementing them with space technologies while not replacing their existing systems or starting from scratch.

    Why Space Resilience Nodes (SRNs)? 

    The initial concept of SRNs has been originally developed within the CSS programme leading to projects like SAFEPLACE, SMART-CONNECT, CISERES and the Polish Hub.  This has helped consolidate the concept of SRNs, which aim to augment capabilities of national PPDR and other users by:

    • Enabling rapid and seamless access to a suite of space-based products (e.g. EO, SatCom, PNT, weather) and non-space products (e.g. terrestrial communication, social media intelligence), turning them into information products to be used and shared among a community of users (e.g. national civil protection stakeholders) through a Pooling & Sharing (P&S) mechanism.
    • Operating as a “broker” by simplifying the product discovery and transaction between providers and users, removing barriers and fragmentations for both the demands and the offers. SRNs could also combine and orchestrate different products to create new added value offers to the community of users it is serving.
    • Providing a “framework” for products providers to adapt/develop existing/new products tailored to and qualified against the operational needs of national civil protection stakeholders.
    • Fostering the development of tools, capabilities and practices to be shared among communities and network of SRNs, at regional and international scale. For example, a regional SRN can be developed to address specific thematic challenges like Arctic Security by linking national SRNs of different Nordic countries. 

    The network of SRNs will deliver enhanced value to ESA Members States enabling them to build collective resilience together by: 

    • Joining forces between national/regional nodes to share resources, knowledge and practices through a digital P&S platform for civil applications, analogous to the principle of the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) but enhanced by space-based solutions.
    • Simplifying the way users can discover and eventually use in their own operations space-enabled products to improve coordination and accelerate decision making during crisis management.
    • Enhancing reactivity to crisis by improving the process to procure or access EO information analytics and space-enabled products and reduce ordering delays from weeks/days/hours (as currently experienced) down to minutes/seconds.
    • Providing users with a one-stop-shop user experience by offering a wide portfolio of space-enabled products (e.g. EO, SatCom, navigation, Weather, data-lake) and other complementary products (e.g. Terrestrial 4G/5G, WIFI, IoT).
    • Empowering end users to develop tailored automated processes to task required observational systems and to turn data into information
    • Providing a sovereign P&S solution, which can help to reduce duplication in effort/resources, as well as enhancing the capabilities of users by bundling different products together.
    • Enhancing Crisis Readiness by enabling close to real-time situational awareness using EO and AI-based data compression, fusion, and analysis to transform massive data streams into actionable information within minutes.
    • Enabling Mission Critical Communications by developing resilient, secure field communication solutions, ensuring responders remain connected and coordinated, even if terrestrial infrastructure collapses or is unavailable.
    • Ensuring Interoperability by adopting and advancing new standards, to foster seamless coordination across diverse intelligence and communication systems.

    Some Elements of a SRN system

    • Information Services ensuring that "data" is turned into "actionable" information and delivered swiftly and securely to those who need it. This entails establishment of AI factory, computing infrastructures and AI models for data fusion and analysis, resilient satellite telecommunication including on-the-move and "last-mile" connectivity in the field, robust security and access controls and interactive user interfaces including through generative AI.
    • Multi-Domain Digital Marketplace providing users with a tailored portfolio of certified, field-tested, and interoperable space-enabled data, products and services, and making these available to users through a digital Pooling & Sharing marketplace, building on the GovSatCom heritage, and fostering new commercial opportunities.
    • Innovation Pipeline (as a Service) delivering an environment for rapid prototyping, integration, and certification of space-enabled solutions and EO data, this supports accelerated operational readiness and time-to-market, continuous user-driven product improvement, trust-building via rigorous certification and incremental testing, Seamless cooperation among space product providers and national authorities.
    • User Application Layer connecting users to critical services and information, providing a guided user journey supported by a set of mission templates, capturing operational needs tailored for users and use cases ( e.g Fire, flood) facilitating the selection of the most relevant product(s) in response to their context and needs 

    Objectives

    This Campaign aims to gather ideas to establish a suite of SRNs across Europe, which will enable seamless P&S of products within a community of users, and accelerate operational adoption of space enabled products.

    What we look for 

    • Team of companies, start-ups, and innovators with core expertise in space-enabled and digital technologies, big data processing with AI. Consortium can be national or international in particular to address regional SRNs.
    • User-driven approach to identifying and defining the needs and use cases of PPDRs agencies, identifying the information and coordination challenges where space data and technologies can have an impact.
    • Roadmap to integrate space-enabled products within the operational environments of the users, capability to define the system architecture of SRNs, vision to capture a new / emerging market, and ability to scale the project at European or international scale, with more partners and users, by connecting with other SRNs across Europe.

    Submission Process

    This Campaign is open exclusively to ESA economic operators. Both individual entities and consortia are welcome to propose ideas, which the ESA team will review and later provide feedback. 

      Schedule

      • 29 Sep: Opening of the Campaign
      • 7 Oct: Campaign Webinar - to better understand how to apply for the call for ideas, please register for the Webinar by Friday 3rd October at the ERS webinar link . 
      • 1 Nov: Closing Date for submission of ideas

      Feedback to the submitting teams will be provided in the following weeks.

      Questions may be addressed to resilience@esa.int