DTO-BioFlow: Building the biodiversity component of the Digital Twin of the Ocean

Funded through the EC Horizon Europe Programme and coordinated by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), DTO-BioFlow aims at incorporating previously unavailable or difficult-to-access marine-biodiversity data into the biodiversity component of the EU Digital Twin Ocean, ensuring sustainable data flows for marine biodiversity research.

When it comes to observing, mapping, and monitoring biodiversity in maritime ecosystems, marine habitats present specific and one-of-a-kind issues. In spite of the fact that significant advancement has been made in Europe to collect, harmonise, and make available data on marine biodiversity, particularly as a result of the efforts of European research infrastructure (such as EMODnet, Copernicus Marine, and other related European and international initiatives (MBON, OBIS, GOOS)), a large portion of the data that is currently being collected is unavailable and inaccessible; this type of data is referred to as “sleeping data.”

That’s the stage when DTO BioFlow Project steps in: its primary objective is to awaken sleeping biodiversity data, enabling a smooth integration of both existing and new data into the EU Digital Twin Ocean.

The project aligns with the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy and Nature Restoration Law and with the mission “Restore our oceans and waters by 2030”, both of which advocate for the protection and restoration of land and sea regions.

The DTO-BioFlow Kick off meeting

DTO-BioFlow project kicked off on September 27th in Ostend, Belgium. The meeting was hosted at the InnovOcean Campus and organised by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), the project’s coordinator, host and technical manager of the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) portal.

LifeWatch ERIC is one of the 30 partners from 14 countries that make up DTO-BioFlow Consortium. The other project partners include research, infrastructures (e.g., EMBRC), networks (MBON), organisations (ICES), global aggregators and platforms (OBIS), and others.

The consortium partners bring together biological monitoring infrastructures and experts, data managers, and DTO developers, marine biodiversity-relevant policy development and implementation and enabling the Mission to meet its 2030 targets.

Revolutionizing Access to Ocean Biodiversity Data and Driving Sustainable Integration

“Between September 2023 and February 2027, DTO-Bioflow will come up with creative and long-term solutions that will make previously unavailable or difficult-to-access marine-biodiversity data available to the public. The ultimate goal of the project is to increase the flow of relevant biodiversity data by unlocking current barriers to assimilation and ingestion.”, explains Klaas Deneudt, manager of the VLIZ Marine Observation Centre and coordinator of the DTO BioFlow project.

Over the next four years DTO-BioFlow consortium will work on consolidating standards, quality control, communication protocols, harmonisation pipelines, data products, data models, ingestion procedures and incentives for sustainable connection to improve the interoperability and digitisation of biodiversity data. The project will also test out various technologies that are both affordable and adaptable to carry out species monitoring on a massive scale. The end-to-end approach will be demonstrated via a number of science-based use cases and via mechanisms to monitor, measure progress and drive community action towards increasing biodiversity data flows. To learn more about DTO-BioFlow, please visit the project website.

SUBMERSE to Leverage Existing Subsea Infrastructure for Exciting New Fields of Research

Started in May 2023, SUBMERSE (SUBMarine cablEs for ReSearch and Exploration) project aims to utilise existing submarine cables already used by the research and education networking community, to monitor the Earth and its systems. By utilising existing equipment and infrastructure in a new way, SUBMERSE not only avoids the need for extra hardware under the sea, but also improves the return on investment by enhancing and widening its use.

The 36-month project, in which LifeWatch ERIC is a partner, will work closely with the diverse research communities who intend on using the data, to design and build the data generation service together, thereby creating a highly collaborative environment where data is generated by and for all parties. In this way, SUBMERSE goes beyond the traditional model of supporting and facilitating global research and education with infrastructure, to an environment where project partners and research communities together generate and share research from that infrastructure for multiple purposes.

Over the past five years, national seismic and oceanographic infrastructures, together with NRENs, and partners from universities, research institutes, and industry in parts of Europe have pioneered techniques to use submarine optical fibres to monitor the Earth and its systems. The methods and technologies used vary. However, two techniques show promise in the detail and scalability of their deployment: Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and State of Polarisation (SoP). The geographic locations where experiments have taken place, the length of experiments, the types of technologies used, and technological readiness levels of those technologies used also vary substantially from country to country.

SUBMERSE seeks to create and deliver a pilot activity which would serve as a blueprint for continuous monitoring upon many more cables in the future, which would lead to the opening of new market opportunities and the demonstration of methods to maximise the investments in research infrastructures, by using the by-products of their operations for the purposes of new scientific research. This would lead to the integration of established regional and national research infrastructures, thereby enabling world-class European research not possible before.

The Biodiversity Knowledge Hub is Online!

BKH

The Horizon 2020 BiCIKL Project, of which LifeWatch ERIC is partner, announces that the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub (BKH) is now online.

The BKH is a one-stop portal that allows users to access FAIR and interlinked biodiversity data and services in a few clicks. BKH has been designed to support a new emerging community of users over time and across the entire biodiversity research cycle providing its services to anybody, anywhere and anytime.

“We have invested our best energies and resources in the development of BKH and the Fair Data Place (FDP), which is the beating heart of the portal” – says Christos Arvanitidis, CEO of LifeWatch ERIC – “BKH has been designed to support a new emerging community of users across the entire biodiversity research cycle. Its purpose goes beyond the BiCIKL project itself: we are thrilled to say that BKH is meant to stay, aiming to reshape the way biodiversity knowledge is accessed and used.”

The BKH is designed to serve a new emerging community of users over time and across the entire biodiversity research cycle.

“The Knowledge Hub is the main product from our BiCIKL consortium, and we are delighted with the result! BKH can easily be seen as the beginning of the major shift in the way we search interlinked biodiversity information,” says Prof. Lyubomir Penev, BiCIKL’s Project coordinator and Founder of Pensoft Publishers. 

“Biodiversity researchers, research infrastructures and publishers interested in fields ranging from taxonomy to ecology and bioinformatics can now freely use BKH as a compass to navigate the oceans of biodiversity data. BKH will do the linkages,” he adds.

“The BKH outlines how users can navigate and access the linked data, tools and services of the infrastructures cooperating in BiCIKL,” said Joe Miller, Executive Secretary of GBIF—the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. “By revealing how they harvest, liberate and reuse data, these increasingly integrated sources enable researchers in the natural sciences to move more seamlessly between specimens and material samples, genomic and metagenomic data, scientific literature, and taxonomic names and units.”

A training programme on how to best utilise the platform is currently being developed by the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF), Pensoft Publishers, Plazi, Meise Botanic Garden, EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), ELIXIR Hub, GBIF – the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, and LifeWatch ERIC and will be finalised in the coming months.

A detailed description of the BKH tools and services provided by its contributing organisations is available here.

MARCO-BOLO CoP Survey

The MARCO-BOLO (MBO) project launched a survey to assess biodiversity data and monitoring needs of stakeholders in and beyond the EU.

MBO invites the broader biodiversity community to take part in this research and encourages biodiversity data users and non-users to share their experiences. The survey takes 10-12 minutes to complete and includes 25 questions.

Access the survey here and participate by 30 August 2023.

The results of this survey will feed into the creation of better data products usable by different stakeholders engaged in biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. MARCO-BOLO aims at supporting decision-making with the best available knowledge and data!

The survey is part of MARCO-BOLO “MARine Coastal BiOdiversity Long-term Observations: Strengthening biodiversity observation in support of decision making”, coordinated by Nicolas Pade (EMBRC-ERIC) and funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Programme (Grant Agreement No. 101082021)

For general questions or comments regarding the study and survey, please contact: mbosurvey.politikwissenschaft@univie.ac.at

For questions regarding the project, please contact: claire.laguionie@embrc.eu  

DecaNet: A Portal For Decapod Biodiversity Informatics

A picture of a decant

DecaNet is a database for decapod species and associated biodiversity information. Published on 23 June 2023, it falls under the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS). Besides marine species, it aims to provide an authoritative list including freshwater, terrestrial biomes and a growing number of fossil taxa.

Decapoda are one of the best-researched groups of Crustacea. Researchers studied 17,229 species (December 2022), far beyond taxonomy in various scientific fields. Hopefully, DecaNet will act as a one-stop shop for taxonomic and biodiversity information on the group.

The taxonomic/systematic backbone of DecaNet is now largely complete. The fifteen volunteer editors for recent taxa and two for fossil taxa will continually update it.  Over time, the database will incorporate more trait information, distributions, and perhaps even more.

DecaNet grew out of a meeting held in May 2022, at VLIZ (Oostende). Ten of the decapod editors met to discuss data content and structure and LifeWatch ERIC funded it. The first public presentation of the portal was at the 10th International Crustacean Congress in Wellington, New Zealand, in May 2023, a full year after the initial discussions.

The Data Management Team (DMT) is supported by LifeWatch Belgium, part of the E-Science European LifeWatch Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research.

LifeWatch ERIC at the EMODnet Biology Final Meeting

EMODnet Biology Final Meeting participants.

The CEO of LifeWatch ERIC, Christos Arvaniditis, attended the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) Biology Final Meeting that was held on 7-8 June 2023, at the Aquaculture Laboratories of the Hellenic Center for Marine Research (HCMR), in Crete, Greece.

During the meeting, LifeWatch ERIC’s CEO discussed the possibility of co-organising a Data Workshop and DG MARE / CINEA, who joined the meeting online, considered the future of EMODnet in a dialogue with the project’s partners.

The meeting was held in a hybrid format, with thirty participants present in person, while around twenty participated online. During EMODnet Biology Final Meeting, the project partners presented the deliverables and the work done throughout the last phases of the project.

LifeWatch ERIC at the AgroServ Conference

AgroServ Conference.

The first annual European Research Services on Agroecology Conference was held by AgroServ (a project in which LifeWatch ERIC is partner) from 5–6 June 2023 at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (in-person and online). This first edition of the AgoServ Conference was dedicated to presenting the various agroecological services accessible through AgroServ and the different aspects that shape research in the emerging field of agroecology. To promote and encourage interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to address the agroecological transition, the first call for transnational access to its services was launched during the event.

Since the transition towards a sustainable and resilient agricultural system must take into account ecological, economic and social factors, work sessions were dedicated to discussions and practical workshops to exchange ideas, meet researchers from different fields (chemists, biologists, agronomists, ecologists, bioengineers, analysts, social scientists, etc.) and build ideas for possible proposals.

As LifeWatch ERIC is one of the eleven partners of AgroServ, three people from the LifeWatch ERIC Agroecology team participated in the conference. The coordinator, José Manuel Ávila, and the researcher, Iria Soto, attended the conference in person, in Prague, while Ángela Ventura intervened remotely in the working group sessions, which were coordinated by the team of Analysis and Experimentation on Ecosystems (AnaEE ERIC).

In the working group on ‘Management and sustainability of agroecosystems, aquaculture and forests’, the importance of interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity was highlighted, opening dialogues about the need for the service to have offers coming from multidisciplinary teams. In fact, one crucial problem identified was the lack of understanding between different disciplines, which all have specific and different terminologies, different interests, etc., thus contributing to a complication of the situation that is AgroServ’s big challenge to date.

On the other hand, in the working group on ‘Living Labs’, problems about intellectual property rights were highlighted. The need to tackle this issue was confirmed so that all the agents, coming from different sectors and working on an innovative idea, will feel more comfortable when getting involved in the process.

Finally, in the working group on ‘Animal and Plant Health, Quality Food, and Valorisation of By-products from Agriculture’, progress was made regarding the great potential of small agricultural producers in setting trends in the circular economy model and in scaling up these practices. In order to achieve this, the researchers collaboration must prioritise a daily and high quality production model, in which waste is recycled and reused in examples such as farms converted into biorefineries, and in which alternative income is generated through bioproducts.

A Knowledge Baseline on Mediterranean Forests Supported by Innovation

'A knowledge baseline on Mediterranean forests supported by innovation' Group Picture.

The Environmental and Biodiversity Climate Change Lab (EnBiC2-Lab) organised a workshop at the University of Malaga on Friday 2 June 2023, entitled ‘A knowledge baseline on Mediterranean forests supported by innovation’, to explore how new technologies and innovative methodologies can be combined to improve sustainable forest management in the region.

LifeWatch ERIC is a key partner and that is why Christos Arvanitidis, LifeWatch CEO, spoke in his presentation about the integration of new technologies, citizen science data and national inventories to prioritize key areas for conservation and restoration. Innovative methods like Satellite Remote Sensing, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data allow for better forest cartography. LifeWatch ERIC’s advanced data collection, meta-analysis, and modelling systems have much to offer silviculture and the multifunctional management of Mediterranean forests.

EnBiC2-Lab is an ERDF project that provides services for the environment and biodiversity by bringing together databases on water, soil, air, fauna and flora. The workshop was organised by the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the European Topic Centre on Spatial Analysis and Synthesis of the University of Malaga (ETC-UMA), whose Director, Dania Abdul Malak, spoke about the importance of forests in reducing climate related risks.

The Mediterranean region is home to 75 million hectares of forest and woodlands renowned for their physical and biological heterogeneity, but the area is warming 20% faster than the global average. And despite indications of an increase in overall forested areas, 91% of Mediterranean forests are reported to be degraded and fragmented. There is an urgent need to find adequate tools and approaches to assess and manage these shared resources to ensure their long-term sustainability.

LifeWatch ERIC at the ALL-Ready Second Regional Workshop

On 11 May, LifeWatch ERIC hosted, at its ICT Core in Seville, the second regional workshop of the European project ALL-Ready: “Accelerating Agroecology Transition: Your potential role and benefits of contributing to a European network of Living Labs and Research Infrastructures”.

LifeWatch ERIC is is one of the main partners in this highly strategically relevant project. Its Agroecology team, led by José Manuel Ávila, Daniel Caro and Iria Soto, coordinated the morning session of the workshop together with Gerald Schwarz (Thünen Institute), Isidora Stojacic (BioSense Institute), Ophélie Bonnet (INRAE), Isabelle Couture (ENoLL – European Network of Living Labs), Jo Bijttebier and Sylvie Fosselle (ILVO Living Lab Agrifood Technology).

In the presentation, Gerard Schwarz marked the objectives of the implementation plan, stressing the importance of ensuring relevance for actors across Europe and specifying that this work in progress is to be finalised in early autumn 2023:

  • To provide a structured framework to sustainably implement, monitor and adapt the European Network in the long term;
  • To ensure its effective contribution to the partnership on Agroecology;
  • To deliver benefits to the agroecological community in Europe.

During the workshop, the participants formed several groups to exchange experiences and discuss solutions about the challenges of Agroecology Living Labs and Research Infrastructures, and to explore possible roles and contributions of the European Network, in relation to:

  • Thematic priorities of the Network;
  • Communication, networking and demonstration activities;
  • Funding requirements and strategies.

The ALL-Ready workshop served also to advance the production of ideas and proposals to further improve the understanding of which thematic areas and what kind of measures and activities, as part of the European Network, would be especially useful.

The coordinator of the session, Gerard Schwarz (Thünen Institute of Farm Economics), led the working day to discuss:

▪ Insights into topics, themes and issues that the European Network should address;
▪ Insights into type of communication and networking activities that are particularly needed;
▪ Insights into practical solutions foe addressing funding gaps;
▪ Insights into capacity building, including regional gaps in competences, and the role of local actors to support development of competences.

The perspectives and recommendations of the participants will be taken into account to for the implementation plan of a European Network.

The CEO of LifeWatch ERIC, Christos Arvanitidis, intervened in the closing session. He explained that it is necessary to build all together the European Network of Agroecology Living Labs and Research Infrastructures: “And as a Research Infrastructure focused on biodiversity and ecosystem, LifeWatch ERIC aims to support the community of practices to provide science-based evidence about agroecology practices and contribute to knowledge and data sharing to demonstrate and make visible its added value and impacts”.

Christos Arvanitidis also stated that LifeWatch ERIC is working to provide digital tools / e-Services to facilitate the adoption of agroecology practices based on collaboration with the different stakeholders (researchers, farmers, policymakers and citizens), but also in association with other Research Infrastructures. And he especially stressed that: “In the coming years, in the EU Partnership on Agroecology, LifeWatch ERIC will lead the design and implementation of a conceptual framework to monitor the AE transition and the consequent impacts. We encourage to work with us, as CoP, to co-design the specific tools that fit your needs to all together contribute to the make the European agricultural sector more sustainable, resilient and responsive to societal and policy demands”.

Future workshops of ALL-Ready will be held today 12 May, in Budapest, and on Monday 15 May, in Frankfurt. All the efforts made are directed towards the final conference, which will take place on 27 September 2023, in Brussels.

LifeWatch ERIC at the EOSC Future General Assembly and Project Meeting

EOSC Future General Assembly gathered at Casa de la Ciencia, Sevilla.

On 3–5 May, LifeWatch ERIC participated in the EOSC Future General Assembly and Project Meeting, held in Seville, Spain. The event was hosted by LifeWatch ERIC in Casa de la Ciencia, where all the entities who are the backbone of EOSC Future gathered.

Christos Arvanitidis, LifeWatch ERIC CEO, is very pleased with the level of participation and cooperation shown in the various sessions of this meeting: “Our assessment is very positive and increases expectations regarding the achievement of the objectives for the development of this platform”.

On the first day of the Meeting, LifeWatch ERIC’s CEO, Christos Arvanitidis, opened the first session by welcoming the participants and explaining the objectives of WP6, which is the Work Package coordinated by LifeWatch ERIC. Then Sally Chambers from Dariah (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) hosted the session “Onboarding and Integration: Challenges & Solutions”, indicating two main objectives:

  • To clarify the differences between the five resource types which can be on boarded into the EOSC-Exchange;
  • To explore the Resource Providers have faced when onboarding and integrating their resources into EOSC Exchange and use the methods of ‘user stories’ to explore how to ease the process.

The second part of the session was focused on “Implementing the Science Projects: Current status and next steps”, and was led by Cristina Huertas, LifeWatch ERIC International Initiatives and Project Manager. This second part of the session identified five main objectives:

  • To identify the Risks of the technical implementation of Science Projects;
  • To review the status of Scientific Documents;
  • To explore the way Science Projects could consider their sustainability after the end of the project;
  • To engage and satisfy the users;
  • To review the status of the webinars provided by the ten Science Projects to date.

On the first day of the General Assembly, forty people have participated in person, in total, and other representatives of the consortium have also intervened livestream. Among others, Yannis Ioannidis, Greek delegate to the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), member of the ESFRI Executive Board, and ESFRI representative to the e-Infrastructures Reflection Group (e-IRG). As coordinator of EOSC Future, Yannis Ioannidis chaired the assembly. A total of thirty-five entities have also been integrated into the EOSC Future consortium.

The first day of EOSC Future General Assembly has been moderated by Ron Dekker, associate consultant at Technopolis Group Belgium (where he coordinates the Open Science activities) and EOSC Future Project Leader, and Lennart Stoy, senior consultant in Technopolis Group Belgium.

On the second day of EOSC Future General Assembly and Project Meeting, Agis Evrigenis and Sophie Viscido, from Technopolis Group, led the session dedicated to the overview of the project implementation status, challenges and next steps. Then Paolo Manghi (Openaire), Roksana Wick (ACK Cyfronet), Mark Van de Sanden (Surf / Eudat) and Klaas Wierenge (Géant), coordinated the session about new and upcoming tech capabilities and led a short presentation and demos by the product teams (marketplace, providers, portal, helpdesk, etc.). EOSC Architecture and Interoperability Framework has also been presented, discussing tech planning towards project end and capabilities to be demonstrated at the month 30 review.

LifeWatch ERIC, with Christos Arvanitidis, Cristina Huertas, and Ana Mellado, led a session about the overview status of Science Projects. The topics covered included: progress to date, resources’ integration status and plans, lessons learned as piloting EOSC and post project sustainability.

Later in the afternoon, LifeWatch ERIC presented a scientific case in progress: Implementation ARMS workflow. This early-warning system for marine biological invasions allows non native invasive especies (NIS) researchers and stakeholders to identify newly arrived NIS, track the migration of already known NIS and monitor the composition of hard-bottom communities over long periods. This system is based on ARMS data (Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structure), which are quality controlled and open access based, permanently stored (Marine Data Archive) along with their metadata (IMIS, catalogue of VLIZ), ensuring fairness.

LifeWatch ERIC CEO, Christos Arvanitidis, introduced Joaquín López Lérida, LifeWatch ERIC Data e-Science Management Plan & BlockChain Officer, who also explained, whit a remote online presentation, how the integration of the platform is being done with EOSC. In terms of authentication, the integration has been confirmed to be ready for internal consumption of all LifeWatch ERIC Tesseract Services, including LifeBlock.

In the session about real-life demonstrations of use cases, (in view of the month 24 review), which has been led by Matthew Viljoen, another of the presentations that has aroused interest is the one presented by Carolina Simón, from the National Center for Biotechnology (Spain), who exposed the case of integration of Covid-19 Data with EOSC. On the other hand, Elisa Cauhé (EGI Foundation), presented results and next steps of the EOSC Digital Innovation Hub (DIH): eight projects collaborations, twenty-three supported pilots, and more than fifty funding opportunities.

The last day of EOSC Future General Assembly and Project Meeting was, instead, focused on addressing aspects such as EOSC Procurement, EOSC as a Data Space and also RDA Open Calls. The closing session revolved around updates provided by WP10 about the progress made for the project.

The EOSC Future Meeting held in Seville for three days has concluded with a standing ovation from all the participants to congratulate the LifeWatch ERIC team for the quality of their work as host of the meeting.

Ron Dekker, EOSC Future Project Leader, called on all the entities participating in the consortium to intensify the implementation of their work packages, in order to finish the last phase of the project in the best possible way. From 20-22 September 2023, the EOSC Symposium will take place in Madrid, in the context of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. In the context of the EOSC Future project, the EOSC Symposium will also be a critical platform to showcase project achievements and key exploitable results.