FORTH was established in 1983 and is one of the largest research centers in Greece with well organized facilities, highly qualified personnel and a reputation as a top-level research foundation worldwide. FORTH reports to the General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Hellenic Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. FORTH is a research centre consisting of seven research Institutes in four cities of Greece. Four of the Institutes and the central administration of the Centre are located in Heraklion on the island of Crete. FORTH is considered to be a Centre of Excellence involved in advanced research in biology, applied physics, computer science, applied mathematics, chemistry and chemical engineering, and the humanities. More than half of FORTH’s budget comes from competitive research grants from international organisations, such as the agencies of the EU and other public and private organisations. The Institute of Applied and Computational Mathematics (http://www.iacm.forth.gr) is one of the Institutes of FORTH mainly concerned with issues related to numerical analysis, environmental and physiological flows and non-linear wave phenomena, Earth Observation (EO), Geographical Information Systems (GIS), spatial statistical modeling and Decision Support Systems (DSS). EO is a key research direction in FORTH, intensifying the R&D efforts for the development of operational applications using GIS and remote sensing technologies that can lead to decision support systems in the domains of environmental monitoring, spatial and urban planning, transportation applications, and health. Emphasis is also given to the synergy of remote sensing, numerical models and GIS in environmental studies. EO activities at FORTH are specifically focused on: geophysical parameters estimation (surface albedo and emissivity, energy, water and carbon fluxes, aerosol concentrations); development of classification and change detection schemes; support the parameterization of flood and fire modelling; and urban applications (surface morphology, environmental quality, microclimate).
Principal Investigator:
Nektarios Chrysoulakis is a Director of Research at FORTH. He holds a BSc in Physics, a MSc in Environmental Physics and PhD in Remote Sensing from the University of Athens. He has been involved in R&D projects funded from organizations such as the European Union, the European Space Agency and the Ministries of Environment, Development, Culture and Education. Dr. Chrysoulakis was the coordinator of the FP7 projects BRIDGE (http://www.bridge-fp7.eu/) and GEOURBAN (http://geourban-fp7-eranet.com/). He has more than 100 publications in per-review journals and conference proceedings. He is the coordinator of the just started H2020 – Space project URBANFLUXES (637519).
In Ecopotential he is involved in WPs 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 12.