In its Advice Paper Nr.4 of June 2010, Challenges for Biodiversity Research in Europe, the League of European Research Universities (LERU) stresses the importance of investing in a European infrastructure for biodiversity data and research: "Europe must invest in adequate infrastructures to support biodiversity research to increase our knowledge of the impact of biodiversity on the functioning of ecosystems and hence help decision makers in devising cost-effective management plans to reach the stated goals. [...]. European-wide biodiversity infrastructures, such as the ESFRI ´LifeWatch´ project, are of key importance. Interoperable databases using adopted standards as well as tools and expertises to use the data are needed." (p.14)

Read the full paper on the LERU website or download it here.

Copenhagen and Amsterdam, 24 June 2010 -- The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the LifeWatch infrastructure for biodiversity and ecosystem research recently joined forces by signing a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) that will enable the two organizations to collaborate on development and sharing of critical biodiversity informatics infrastructure and information.

LifeWatch, a consortium of institutions and organisations acting on behalf of a number of European States and scientific networks, is working towards establishing a distributed infrastructure that would support scientific research within the context of European strategies concerning biodiversity and eco-systems.

The main objective of the MoC is to put in place an institutional framework that will allow the two like-minded initiatives to work closely together on a number of common strategic issues.  Such activities include the promotion of a free and open data sharing policy, fostering the use of common standards and protocols, effective communication and coordination, supporting GBIF infrastructure with LifeWatch capabilities, and the strengthening of services that would assist LifeWatch-users in publishing their data via the GBIF network.

"Through this agreement, both organizations - and the informatics community at large - are benefitting from 10 years of investment in GBIF by countries to date," said Dr. Nick King, Executive Secretary of the GBIF. Wouter Los, project leader of the LifeWatch preparatory phase, commented: "Based on our respective mandates which are very complementary, GBIF and LifeWatch now have a formal framework in place for cooperation and collaboration on infrastructural developments."

LifeWatch is intended to occupy a strategic position within the European informatics science research infrastructure context.  Building upon the existing GBIF data resources and supporting informatics infrastructure, LifeWatch will provide enhanced analytical and modeling services, as well as bring in additional data resources.  As a result larger numbers of users in the region are expected to share their data through the GBIF network, which is already in use by many European countries.  Through the complementarity of GBIF's data e-infrastructure and web services and LifeWatch's comprehensive range of analytical tools and services, the alliance has the potential to deliver a new breadth and depth of biodiversity research in Europe.

The MoC also seeks to leverage and synergise the two organisations' country membership-based status and the respective distributed research infrastructures. The agreement (full text here) came into force on the 14th of June 2010.

At the LifeWatch General Assembly held on April 28 in Aarhus (Demark), a number of important decisions for the future of the project were taken:

• The General Assembly agrees with the outline of the LifeWatch construction plan, the cost structure and the target time line.
• The General Assembly confirms the choice for the Community legal framework for a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) as the basis for the planned legal establishment of the research infrastructure.
• The General Assembly proposes the countries willing to be involved in the process towards entering the construction and subsequent operations of the LifeWatch research infrastructure to sign a Memorandum of Intent with the objective to establish a Stakeholders Board to guide the transition from the Preparatory Project to the Construction Phase.

LifeWatch is designed as an international research infrastructure, but its development and operations will be driven by the individual user. While the infrastructure scale is European, its architecture integrates local components that can be easily accessed through a single portal by researchers anywhere in Europe and beyond.

The first of the series of LifeWatch Progress Papers is dedicated to this subject. You can order your paper copy from the This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or download it.

The LifeWatch demonstrator "FlySafe" is featured on the International Science Grid This Week website. "FlySafe" predicts where and when birds are flying in order to help pilots avoid them. It creates statistical models and computer simulations woven from real-time data of bird migration from military and meteorological radars and GPS tracking of individual tagged birds, which can be tied in with maps.

ISGWT also spoke to LifeWatch's Axel Poigné, winner of the best poster prize at the EGEE conference in Barcelona last September.

Read the article

The updated LifeWatch Reference Model is now available for download. The new version has rephrased large parts of the service viewpoint and it has added the engineering viewpoint and parts of a Technological Viewpoint. The Engineering viewpoint defines policies for the engineering of the LifeWatch system, while the technology viewpoint presents technological options.

The document can be downloaded from the downloads page.