GMV is contributing to the new RethinkAction platform for climate change adaptation

On June 16th, 2025, the Integrated Assessment Platform was officially launched as part of Europe’s RethinkAction project. This platform is an innovative digital tool that can help policymakers, local stakeholders, and members of the public make smarter land‑use decisions, as a way of mitigating and adapting to climate change. The project has funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program, and is being carried out by a multidisciplinary consortium with 13 partners from 9 countries. This new platform represents a milestone for participatory climate action, by offering advanced capabilities that can simulate scenarios, assess risks, and test land‑use policies at the local scale.

GMV is contributing its expertise in spatial analysis. Specifically, the company is taking the lead for producing high-resolution land use/land cover (LULC) maps based on Sentinel‑2 satellite imaging, for each of the six European case studies selected on the basis of their territorial, climatic, and socioeconomic diversity. These maps are being generated with a resolution of 10x10 meters, which provides an accurate understanding of how different types of land use and land cover are distributed, and how these distributions have evolved in recent decades. This mapping represents an essential foundation for solutions based on climate change analysis, planning, and mitigation, because the contents can be fed into the platform’s local and global dynamic models. This in turn allows generation of suitability maps that support decision-making, for improved land use knowledge and management.

The platform includes a catalog of more than 60 land‑use based adaptation and mitigation solutions (LAMS), which can be applied to industries such as agriculture, energy, forestry, water management, and urban development. It also provides access to high-resolution climate data and specific regional maps, along with a simulation engine that can be used to explore climate policies and risks at the NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 scales, for adaptation to real territorial planning needs.

One of the most notable aspects of the project is its participatory approach. The RethinkAction community of end users includes institutional decision-makers, various local stakeholders, and members of the public, who are all actively participating in the platform’s creation. This approach ensures that the functionalities offered will reflect the actual needs of each region. 

Case studies

1. Gotland (Sweden): a boreal forest region with heavy agricultural pressure and seasonal tourism.
2. Tarn-et-Garonne (France): an Atlantic zone with a mosaic of agricultural and forested landscapes.
3. Southern Great Plain (Hungary): a steppe zone with intensive agriculture and a risk of desertification.
4. Valle d’Aosta (Italy): an alpine environment characterized by winter tourism and forest management.
5. Province of Almería (Spain): an area notable for its water stress and intensive greenhouse agriculture.
6. Azores Archipelago (Portugal): a territory of small islands with sensitive biodiversity and a mixed economy.

Details of GMV’s activities 

For each of these cases, GMV has generated:

• Current land use/land cover (LULC) maps with high resolution (10x10 m), by applying supervised classification techniques to Sentinel‑2 images (and Landsat 8 images in the Azores), covering the period of 2021‑2022.

• Two levels of detail (L1 with 12 classes and L2 with 21 classes), which include irrigated/dry crop farming, housing developments, industrial zones, vacant land, forest zones (primary, managed, and plantations), and vulnerable ecosystems.

• An accuracy assessment using confusion matrices and a total of more than 10,000 validation points for the six territories, with accuracy values of more than 85% obtained in most cases.

• Estimates of occupied surface area (in hectares) for each land use/land cover category at all levels, including percentages of evolution over time for each class.

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