Since 1994 the European Commission has been supporting activities under the Environment and Climate programme of research and technological deΒ velopment, with the aim of developing cost-effective applications of satellite Earth observation (EO) for both environmental monitoring and research. This action has included support to methodological research, aimed at the development and evaluation of new techniques forming part ofthe chain of processing needed to transform data into useful information. Wherever appropriate, the Commission has emphasised the coordination of ongoing research funded at the national level, through the mechanism of concerted actions. Concerted actions are flexible and efficient means to marshal efforts at the European level for a certain period. They are proposed by groups of researchers active in a given field who have identified the added value to be gained by European cooperation, whilst continuing to pursue their own individual projects. In view of the rapid developments in the field of neural network over the last 10 years, together with the growing interest ofthe Earth observation community in this approach as a tool for data interpretation, the Commission decided in 1995 to support the concerted action COMPARES, following a proposal from a group of acknowledged European experts.