Interregional Investments Projects Accelerating Commercial Exploitation of Earth-Observation and Space Technologies

I3-SPACE is a pioneering European initiative designed to accelerate interregional innovation investment, market uptake and commercial exploitation in the Earth Observation (EO), GNSS and space-enabled services sectors.

Coordinated by the AIR Centre and bringing together 15 partners from eight EU countries — Portugal, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Greece, Slovenia, Croatia and the Netherlands — the project aims to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness, technological autonomy and resilience within the rapidly evolving space economy.

I3-SPACE addresses key barriers that continue to limit the commercial uptake of EO- and GNSS-based solutions, including fragmented regional ecosystems, investment and scale-up constraints, regulatory complexity, and limited market adoption.

The project develops and validates a coordinated portfolio of business cases across four strategic application areas:

AgriTech & Water Management
Blue & Coastal Intelligence
Urban & Climate Intelligence
Forestry & Environmental Risk

Through regional intelligence mapping, pilot demonstrations, market validation and business development activities, I3-SPACE will support the transition of promising technologies from technical readiness towards wider commercial deployment.

A key component of the project is its cascade-funding scheme, through which 20 additional SMEs will be supported to test, integrate and adopt EO- and GNSS-based solutions, helping reduce market-entry barriers and strengthen European interregional space value chains.

By connecting companies, research organisations, innovation intermediaries and regional actors across regions at different levels of development, I3-SPACE seeks to generate stronger innovation flows, new investment opportunities and tangible economic impact across Europe’s strategic space ecosystem.

Coordinator: AIR Centre
Consortium: 15 partners from 8 EU countries
EU funding / Grant awarded: to be confirmed against the Grant Agreement before publication
Programme: Interregional Innovation Investments (I3) Instrument

AGRI-BIOCIRCULAR-HUB

Coordinator: AIR Centre
Consortium: 15 partners from 8 EU countries
EU funding / Grant awarded: to be confirmed against the Grant Agreement before publication
Programme: Interregional Innovation Investments (I3) Instrument

Cases

AGRI-BIOCIRCULAR-HUB

Coordinator: AIR Centre Consortium: 15 partners from 8 EU countries EU funding / Grant awarded: to be confirmed against the Grant Agreement before publication Programme: Interregional Innovation Investments (I3) Instrument

Cases

Coordinator: AIR Centre
Consortium: 15 partners from 8 EU countries
EU funding / Grant awarded: to be confirmed against the Grant Agreement before publication
Programme: Interregional Innovation Investments (I3) Instrument