Abstract

The overall objective of GRAAL is to foster the development of GMES Downstream Services and develop the link of GMES with Regions (and other local authorities of comparable importance). The essence of GRAAL lies in the balance between these two sub-objectives. The members of the GRAAL consortium believe that there is as much a need to develop the awareness of GMES in LRAs as it is necessary to ensure that there are Service Providers in a position to serve this market and to accomplish the Lisbon strategy-related objectives of GMES. It is proposed to achieve this overall ambition through the following objectives: • To characterise the offer in terms of GMES services for LRAs; • To establish an observatory of the GMES Downstream Service sector; • To develop a user oriented tool implemented on a Website where demand and offer will meet and where exchanges can take place by using the most advanced web-based technologies; • To increase awareness of GMES among LRAs and potential Service Providers; All the activities shall be conducted in coordination with the DORIS_Net project. To maximise the overall efficiency of the work performed by the two projects, this coordination will be based on a clear distribution of tasks and targets.