Europe’s list of achievements in space research and applications have largely delivered through collaboration in ESA and through national efforts. Establishing the GMES programme EU sustains a competitive infrastructure and knowledge to support Earth monitoring. The transfer of these capacities to the public sector and policy makers needs to be realized through active collaboration along the full Research and Technology value chain (research-development-customer/user). As the inland and near-coastal waters are under the strongest anthropogenic impact, there is a need for a better and more efficient way to monitor their ecological status & processes, which is the underlying scientific goal of this proposal. WaterS focuses on creating conditions for strategic dynamic partnerships in the form of long-term cooperation between three excellent research groups with proven high competence and capacity in the field of remote sensing of optically complex waters from Tartu Observatory (Estonia), Stockholm University (Sweden), Finnish Environment Institute (Finland), and three successful and quickly developing enterprises with unique complementary expertise and tools: Water Insight (The Netherlands); Brockmann Consult (Germany); Vattenfall Power Consult (Sweden). The advanced research programme of WaterS consortium will be realized through the following transfer of knowledge programme: • Introduction of the state-of-the-art methods and knowledge in optically complex waters in Nordic waters by researchers of the academia to service developers in the industry; • Supporting the development of new open-service concepts in EO business by exploiting complementary competences and synergy; • Bringing together academic and industry partners in five countries to learn and get familiar with different research and business traditions, cultural aspects and skills requirements.