In the context of rapid changes of our planet Earth, explosive population growth, accelerating industrialization, especially in the emerging countries, increasing exploitation of resources, serious natural hazards, recent natural disasters, and, importantly, the growing number of complex systems interacting with their environments, the European Training Network (ETN) MENELAOS^NT addresses the ever more significant problem of scientifically and technologically exploring the world on micro- and macroscopic scale. The research and development goal is to provide scientists with deeper insights, better understanding and more information to understand and monitor the basic processes and environments in order to predict and possibly control critical evolutions. This would support decision makers with more sophisticated and reliable information for deciding on sustainable measures.

MENELAOS^NT addresses societal key challenges, e.g., sustainable agriculture and forestry, bioeconomy, environmental changes, resource efficiency, as well as protecting freedom and security of the European society.
MENELAOS^NT applies Novel Technologies to realize multimodal – multi sensor data fusion to optimally combine the information, delivered by different sensors (in-situ/remote, optical/non optical) on different scales, with different resolutions and with different reliability. Traditional remote observation, as well as local (in-situ based) approaches have demonstrated to be insufficient to cope with the ample but very tailored information need of the decision-making bodies.