“Resilience requires not only better technologies, but new ways to bring them into use”

Dr. Moßgraber, what is changing fundamentally in climate-related crisis management?

Jürgen Moßgraber:  We are seeing a shift from reacting to events towards anticipating them earlier and more systematically. Short-term warnings remain important, but resilience against floods, droughts, wildfires or cascading infrastructure impacts increasingly depends on understanding longer-term developments such as soil moisture, vegetation stress and water availability. The EU project PCP WISE addresses this pre-disaster phase by translating EO data into operationally relevant products for climate resilience.

Why does this also change how innovation has to be organised?

Because these emerging requirements are often not covered by existing market solutions. In PCP WISE, the state-of-the-art analysis showed that available tools address only part of the operational needs, but do not form integrated, interoperable systems ready for cross-border use. In pre-commercial procurement (PCP), instead of buying products, public buyers launch a competitive process to commission R&D services, including design, prototyping and testing of alternative approaches.

How does this work in practice?

Within PCP WISE, a Europe-wide tender invites multiple suppliers to develop prototypes in successive competitive phases. After each phase, solutions are evaluated against joint operational and technical criteria, and only the most promising approaches move forward. This allows end users to compare alternatives early, influence development based on real needs and reduce the risk of later integration problems. It creates transparency for public authorities and a realistic path from prototype to near operational use for innovators.

What role does Fraunhofer IOSB play in this process?

We support the translation of operational requirements into technical guidance that underpins the procurement. In PCP WISE, this includes co-designing use cases with users, structuring requirements, and defining principles for interoperability, compliance to standards and operational robustness. EO data, such as Copernicus products, are an important input, but the focus is on making technologies deployable within real systems.

Why is this relevant beyond crisis management?

Similar challenges arise wherever public actors need digital or data driven capabilities that are not yet available on the market. Pre-commercial procurement provides a way to align technology development with real demand and to shorten the path from innovation to application. In PCP WISE, this logic is applied to climate resilience—but the underlying approach is transferable far beyond this domain.

Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Moßgraber is the spokesperson for the Energy, Material Cycles and Crisis Management business unit and head of the Information Management and Production Control department (ILT).