Caeli is proud to announce its role as a partner in EO-TRUST, one of four space technology research projects recently awarded funding by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under its Knowledge and Innovation Covenant (KIC) program. The consortium, awarded a 1 million euro impact grant, brings together academic, governmental and industry partners to build a secure, reliable and independent European infrastructure for Earth Observation.

Why data resilience matters

Modern society depends heavily on space-based infrastructure for communication, navigation, climate monitoring, disaster response and security. That dependence also creates vulnerability: geopolitical tensions make it increasingly easy to disrupt, intercept or restrict access to satellite systems and the data they provide. For a country and continent that rely on Earth Observation data for everything from climate policy to national security, reducing dependence on non-European infrastructure has become a strategic priority.

EO-TRUST addresses this directly. The project develops resilient, European-based data infrastructures that remain operational under disruption, combined with trustworthy AI methods that improve the reliability, transparency and interpretability of satellite data, even under uncertain conditions. Legal and ethical safeguards are built into the system design from the outset, ensuring the resulting infrastructure supports responsible, informed decision-making.

The consortium

EO-TRUST is led by the Amsterdam Space Law & Sustainability Centre at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, together with the University of Twente. The project is co-funded by the Dutch Ministry of Defence and Caeli, with the Space Court Foundation and Black Holes B.V. joining as cooperation partners. This combination of legal expertise, technical research and applied industry knowledge is central to the project’s approach: building resilient space infrastructure requires more than technology alone, it also requires a solid legal and strategic framework for how that infrastructure is governed and used.

Caeli’s role: from raw data to actionable insight

Within the consortium, Caeli contributes the practical, applied side of Earth Observation: turning raw satellite data into reliable, ready-to-use insights. That contribution spans the full pipeline that makes large-scale, AI-driven Earth Observation possible in practice.

First, there is the infrastructure needed to bring satellite data in at scale, continuously ingesting and processing observations from multiple satellite missions in a way that is robust and reproducible. Second, there is the compute capacity required to run AI models on very large volumes of Earth Observation data, transforming raw satellite signals into consistent, high-resolution environmental insights. And third, there is the domain expertise to make that data meaningful: years of experience applying AI to Earth Observation for air quality and environmental monitoring across Europe.

This combination of infrastructure, compute power and applied AI expertise is exactly what a resilient, sovereign European Earth Observation capability needs. Not just the ability to receive satellite data, but the ability to process it reliably, at scale, and turn it into insights that can be trusted, including in disrupted or degraded conditions.

Why this matters beyond the project

For Caeli, contributing to EO-TRUST is a natural extension of the work we do every day: transforming satellite data into practical applications for air quality, healthy living environments and climate resilience. Being part of a national research program that addresses the resilience of Europe’s Earth Observation capabilities as a whole reflects how central reliable, independent access to environmental data has become — not only for individual applications, but for Europe’s broader technological and strategic autonomy.

Want to know more about how Caeli combines satellite data, AI and infrastructure to deliver reliable environmental insights at scale? Feel free to reach out to Martin Smit, martin@caeli.nl or +31 6 55772285.

Source: NWO – “Four research projects aimed at strengthening space technology receive funding”, (published July 2026.)