Study to examine the socio-economic impact of Copernicus in the EU : report on the Copernicus downstream sector and user benefits

Following the assessment of the Copernicus programme's impacts on the upstream segment, this study aims at characterising the benefits of and the barriers to the Earth Observation (EO) downstream and end user markets in Europe, in order to identify the levers that can support the development of economic activity exploiting Copernicus. After a review of the existing literature, the EO downstream market is characterised by using the US Landsat programme as a benchmark, by the role of large ICT players, the flourishing of platforms and cloud computing, and the overall Big Data trend. The European market is then investigated in detail for 8 promising value chains through consultation with a wide panel of stakeholders, to characterise the current impact of Copernicus according to economic, social, environmental and strategic perspectives, and to forecast the evolution of its contribution to growth and employment up to 2020. Based on the identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, recommendations are provided globally and specifically for each value chain, to foster market uptake by European companies. Though still rather low, the penetration of Copernicus data in the EO market is expected to grow in the future, with substantial benefits for both intermediate and end users.