A strategic workshop to help shape the future of Europe's Earth Observation system
Introduction
Earth Observation (EO) is entering a period of structural change. Climate pressure, geopolitical instability, rapid advances in AI and digital technologies, a growing commercial space domain, and evolving user expectations are challenging the EO ecosystem of today. Together, these drivers are transforming both the demand for information and the way that information must be generated, trusted, delivered and used.
Europe’s Earth Observation capability is world-class. However, the assumptions underpinning today’s EO architecture are already being stressed by:
- Increasing demand for timely, trusted, decision-ready information
- Growing dependence on AI-driven prediction, data assimilation and automated analysis
- Rising complexity across institutional, commercial, scientific, operational and security domains
- Greater exposure to systemic risks, dependencies and disruption
- Pressure on financial resources and shifting political and programme priorities
Incremental evolution is no longer sufficient. The challenge ahead is not only to add new missions, but to ensure that satellites, ground segment, data infrastructure, services, interfaces and governance evolve coherently as a system-of-systems architecture capable of meeting the challenges anticipated for 2040–2060.
A first workshop in 2025 considered the European Earth Observation Ecosystem as a system-of-systems. Its results helped shape the ESA Earth Observation Ecosystem Reference Architecture Blueprint 2025 Edition.
What will we do in this workshop?
The 2026 workshop will stress test and challenge the assumptions underpinning the Blueprint, and explore how the European EO ecosystem may need to evolve in the 2040–2060 timeframe.
Using structured scenario-framing narratives, participants will work through four steps:
Scan — What is changing?
Identify the major drivers shaping EO, including climate change, AI, geopolitics, markets, technology, security needs and evolving user expectations. Explore how these drivers affect what Europe needs to observe, and how observations may need to be made, processed and delivered.
Assess — What do those changes imply?
Explore how these drivers affect future information needs, observing-system requirements, data architectures, service models and institutional roles. Identify where today’s assumptions may no longer hold.
Stress test — What are the implications for the EO ecosystem?
Use contrasting future scenarios to expose gaps, vulnerabilities, trade-offs, dependencies and emerging opportunities in the current system. Test the resilience of today’s EO architecture against future conditions that may place very different demands on missions, constellations, data systems, services and governance.
Shape — What needs to be done, and why?
Identify priorities, architectural options and strategic actions for Europe. The results will help shape the 2026 edition of the ESA EO Reference Architecture Blueprint.
This process is intended to move the discussion from reactive evolution towards proactive system architecture design.
Scenarios are not predictions. They are tools to test robustness, reveal choices early, and explore options while they remain open.