The Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH) was established in 1983 and is one of the largest research centres in Greece. FORTH consists of seven research Institutes, four of which are located in Heraklion and it is a Centre of Excellence involved in advanced research in biology, applied physics, computer science, applied mathematics, chemistry and chemical engineering, and the humanities.
The Remote Sensing Lab operates within the Institute of Applied and Computational Mathematics of FORTH. The Lab focuses on Earth Observation (EO) and its area of research is the study of environmental phenomena and problems in both urban and natural environments. Understanding Earth system processes, as well as their interaction effects of the manmade activities is an urgent and important research direction. The activities of the Lab focus on urban climate and urban planning, with emphasis on climate change mitigation and adaptation activities. Areas of research include the estimation of energy, water and carbon exchanges between the surface and the atmosphere and the identification of several city typologies and climatically meaningful urban zoning systems based on satellite observations. Emphasis is also given to the synergy of remote sensing, numerical models and GIS in urban environmental studies.
FORTH is involved in WP3 Global Modelling and data assimilation and WP7 Observations to support the benchmarking activities of the CO2 emission modelling approaches related to urban areas using in-situ data from observation networks.
Specifically, FORTH will contribute to the bottom-up emission model development activities of WP3 by providing expert knowledge and methodologies of how to involve urban in-situ Eddy Covariance observations of CO2 flux and atmospheric turbulence characteristics to the regional scale model development and evaluation. In the framework of WP7, FORTH will provide standardized datasets of urban in-situ meteorological observations and local scale Eddy Covariance CO2 flux measurements for selected cities. Moreover, FORTH will support the process of defining the requirements for in-situ observation networks regarding urban areas in partnership with ICOS, which will provide the coordination support and the hub of the in-situ observations.