ERMES (An Earth obseRvation Model based RicE information Service) aims to develop a prototype of downstream services based on the assimilation of EO and in situ data within crop modeling solutions. Two services are foreseen: Regional Rice Service (RRS) customised for providing public authorities with an agro-monitoring system for crop mapping, yield estimating and risk forecast and Local Rice Service (LRS) for the private sector (farmers, agro-services) providing added value information on yield variability, risk alert and crop damage at farm scale. The project received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration (FP7/2007-2013) and will last three years (2014 – 2017). The project is coordinated by CNR-IREA (Institute on Electromagnetic Sensing of Environment), and involves partners of four European countries (Greece, Spain, Italy, Switzerland) with strong expertise in different scientific domains, such as: Remote Sensing, Crop Modeling, Agronomy and Information and Communication Technology.