Over the course of the year, The CopPhil Center advanced the deployment of its Earth Observation services, strengthened the technical and institutional capacity of Philippine stakeholders, and consolidated its visibility across major events and forums in the Philippines and the wider ASEAN region. These efforts leveraged the close collaboration between European and Philippine partners, ensuring that the services, tools, and training delivered closely match real operational needs.
These achievements reflect CopPhil’s role as a flagship of the EU’s Global Gateway initiative, demonstrating how Copernicus data and services can be translated into practical capabilities which support disaster risk reduction, environmental monitoring, food security, and climate resilience in the Philippines.
In this article, we look back at 2025 as a defining year for CopPhil, marked by the delivery of core services, the scaling up of capacity-building activities, and a significant expansion of national and regional visibility. Building on the foundations laid in earlier phases of the initiative, 2025 saw CopPhil move decisively from development and testing toward operational readiness and local ownership.
Operationalizing the CopPhil EO Services
A major achievement of CopPhil in 2025 was the advancement of its Earth Observation (EO) services, transitioning from development and testing toward mature, operationally relevant outputs. Over the course of the year, the three EO services progressed in parallel, delivering products, refining workflows, and demonstrating how Copernicus data can support decision-making across land, coastal, and urban environments in the Philippines.
The services were developed across three thematic areas, including:
- Land Cover, Forest & Crop Monitoring
- Ground Motion Monitoring (GMS)
- Coastal Marine Habitat (Benthic) Monitoring
The Land, Forest and Crop Monitoring service delivered a broad suite of products derived from Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellite data. These included land cover maps, forest area and type classification, tree cover density, forest cover change detection, seasonal crop type mapping, and annual crop land extent.
Products were generated at high spatial resolution and tailored to national definitions and user needs, with particular attention given to change detection and temporal consistency. Information about land, forest, and crops can be merged into a harmonized land cover output, providing users with a clear and comprehensive view of land use dynamics.
Significant progress was also made on the Ground Motion Monitoring service, which applies radar interferometry techniques to detect slow ground deformation associated with subsidence, landslides, and other geophysical processes. In 2025, line-of-sight deformation products supported by time-series analysis were produced using open-source processing chains and Sentinel-1 data. These results demonstrated the service’s ability to capture millimetre-scale ground motion and laid the groundwork for more advanced products combining ascending and descending satellite passes to derive vertical and horizontal movement components.
For coastal and marine environments, the Benthic Habitat Monitoring service delivered bathymetry and benthic habitat maps for selected areas of interest. Using cloud-free Sentinel-2 imagery and locally available in situ data for calibration and validation, the service produced high-resolution maps identifying key shallow-water features such as seagrass, sand, and reef-related habitats. These outputs highlight the potential of EO data to complement existing coastal monitoring efforts, particularly in areas where in situ surveys are limited.
All EO services were integrated into the CopPhil platform, supported by visualization tools which allow users to explore, validate, and download products. Through close collaboration with Philippine stakeholders, co-development sessions, and hands-on training, the services developed in 2025 were made increasingly accessible and usable for real-world applications.
Platform Development and Handover
Alongside service development, 2025 marked a key year for the deployment of the CopPhil platform as the technical backbone enabling access to CopPhil services and Copernicus data. The platform hosts visualization tools which allow users to explore and validate Earth Observation products in a user-friendly environment.
The platform was prepared for deployment within the Philippines to support long-term sustainability and national ownership. Migration tests were successfully conducted on alternative infrastructure, allowing technical issues to be identified and resolved, and confirming stable access to the CopPhil Mirror Site, which hosts a Copernicus data archive covering the Philippines. The work performed in 2025 ensures that the platform will be technically ready for deployment after full migration to PhilSA-operated hardware. Together, these steps represent an important milestone toward the operational handover of CopPhil services.
Capacity Building at Scale
Capacity building remained a cornerstone of CopPhil activities in 2025, with a strong focus on translating technical capabilities into practical skills and long-term institutional knowledge. Over the course of the year, CopPhil delivered an extensive training programme covering the full range of pilot services and Earth Observation fundamentals.
16 training courses are now available through the CopPhil Digital Campus, providing a lasting learning resource for users across the country. In 2025, more than 300 participants from over 67 institutions took part in 21 training sessions, delivered through a combination of online and on-site formats. These sessions progressed from introductory and theoretical modules to hands-on practical training, enabling participants to apply EO tools and workflows to real-world use cases.
To recognize these achievements, a certification ceremony was held during Philippine Space Week in August 2025, celebrating participants who successfully completed the CopPhil training programme and highlighting the growing national community of EO practitioners supported by the initiative.
Events and Stakeholder Engagement
In 2025, CopPhil significantly expanded its visibility through active participation in major national and international events. In June, CopPhil was featured at the Living Planet Symposium organized by the European Space Agency in Vienna, Austria, increasing its international profile and connecting the initiative to the wider global Earth Observation community. The Philippine Space Week in August marked a major milestone, providing high-profile national visibility and direct engagement with local institutions, professionals, and students.
Regional outreach continued in November at the Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum (APRSAF). CopPhil contributed to the EU–Copernicus Youth Challenge and the SCOPE Digital launch event, highlighting opportunities for young professionals and regional collaboration. The year concluded with participation in PhilGEOS in December, firmly anchoring CopPhil within the Philippine Earth Observation and Geoinformatics ecosystem.
Looking Ahead
As CopPhil moves beyond a year of major delivery and visibility, the focus now shifts to building on this momentum and turning demonstrated capabilities into sustained impact. The foundations laid through service development, training, outreach and stakeholder engagement have positioned CopPhil as a growing reference point for the operational use of Earth Observation data in the Philippines.
Building on the achievements of 2025, CopPhil looks ahead to 2026 with a clear focus on mainstreaming Copernicus-based services, supporting their regular integration into institutional workflows and long-term, locally driven use across the Philippine EO ecosystem and partner governmental organizations.
Background Information
As a flagship and unique program of the EU’s Global Gateway strategy, CopPhil is designed to harness digital resources and space technology for sustainable development and to support innovations in research and business in close cooperation with government partners.
CopPhil is managed by the European Union Delegation to the Philippines. It is implemented by the European Space Agency (ESA) in partnership with the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) and the Philippine Department of Science and Technology (DOST). In addition to the development of the Earth Observation pilot services, the activities of CopPhil include the establishment of a Copernicus Data Center and IT infrastructure as well as awareness-raising and knowledge and skills transfer related to Copernicus data and information.
