EOMORES D5.3: Final Validation Report

The aim of the H2020 EOMORES project was to develop user-relevant and sustainable commercial downstream services for operational inland and coastal water quality monitoring and reporting. This service has now been developed based on a combination of satellite Earth Observation (EO), in situ and modelling components, with user feedback guiding product and service development throughout. Validation is a key part of the operational service development, in order to ensure the users can be confident in the service provided. Thus, this deliverable presents all validation results, using data collected during the three years of the EOMORES project (2017-2019) to validate the final service products (T5.1). Additionally, this deliverable evaluates the product fitness for purpose (T5.2) and the service functionalities and user satisfaction (T5.3).

Overall, the EOMORES service products indicated good performance according to the quantitative uncertainty metrics. EO product validation has been presented by region for each of the service products, including Chl-a, TSM, turbidity, Secchi depth, CDOM, LSWT and macrophyte coverage. From user assessment of the product fitness for purpose, most users received the products and found they were as expected and spatial patterns typically agreed with user expectations. Users highlighted that temporal frequency and spatial coverage was mostly sufficient and an improvement on their routine monitoring programmes. In general, the users were also (very) content with the quality of the service, with scores of 6+ out of 10 from all users for all criteria queried (Timely delivery, Format/interface, Ease of use, Operational capability). Some users are already implementing the EOMORES service for (bathing) water quality monitoring or to inform WFD and MSFD, while many more indicated they hope to use the EOMORES service in the future for a range of purposes. Overall, users were satisfied with the EOMROES service (7+ out of 10). These results indicate there are robust products included in the EOMORES service, and that users are typically satisfied with the service, highlighting the spatial coverage as a key improvement to current monitoring methods for inland and coastal waters.