XII Ibero-American Congress  on Science and Technology Indicators

RICYT Congress

On 25-26 November 2025, LifeWatch ERIC attended the XII Ibero-American Congress on Science and Technology Indicators in Montevideo (Uruguay). Julio Paneque, Principal Software Engineer, represented the Research Infrastructure and presented a tool developed within the framework of the EU-LAC ENERGYTRAN project, in collaboration with other infrastructures and scientific institutions.

The tool monitors and assesses the progress of energy transition in EU and LAC countries, by calculating indexes based on publicly available datasets. It offers a transparent framework to track progress toward relevant SDGs, and supports evidence-based policymaking.

A highly relevant topic for the congress, which is one of the region’s leading events on science policy, research information systems, and international cooperation in science, technology and innovation.

Organised by OEI, ANII, IDB, and RELAI, and supported by UNESCO, the MEC of Uruguay, the IAI, and LACCEI, the event brought together policy makers, indicator specialists, researchers, and international organisations under the theme “Measuring the Contribution of Science to a Sustainable World“. This theme highlights the potential of science and technology – together with higher education and training – to drive innovation, development, and tangible responses to global challenges, including climate change, sustainable energy transition, and social inequalities, for which indicators serve as essential tools for evidence-based decision-making.

For more information on the event, visit this page.

RESTORE4Cs releases two new Policy Briefs on wetlands restoration

RESTORE4Cs Policy Brief 4-5

The Horizon Europe RESTORE4Cs project has released its 4th and 5th Policy Briefs:

  • Policy Brief #4: “Beyond public funds: diversifying financing for wetland restoration”, highlighting the urgent need to complement public funding with innovative financial instruments to ensure long-term wetland restoration in Europe.
  • Policy Brief #5: “Advancing Policy Integration Across Mediterranean Countries: Aligning with the Barcelona Convention and International Commitments Through a Common Evidence-Based Strategy”, promoting a harmonised set of indicators and metrics for evidence-based coastal wetlands protection strategies.

These documents provide funding entities and policymakers with clear, well-summarised knowledge from real studies, helping them understand the importance of taking specific actions.

To start with, wetlands provide essential services such as flood protection, clean water, and carbon storage, to name a few. Despite their importance, they still receive less than 9% of global nature-based solution funding. The RESTORE4Cs Case Pilots presented in Policy Brief 4 show that long-term management, monitoring, and maintenance remain severely underfunded, with public funds usually covering only the initial restoration costs.

Moreover, the ongoing loss of wetlands highlights the urgent need for effective policies to protect and restore these vital ecosystems. We need a framework that allows for consistent assessments of their health and status, guides adaptive management practices, and ensures that conservation and restoration efforts align with regional and international objectives.

For this reason, Policy Brief 5 explores a full set of performance indicators and metrics.
These key indicators will serve as a strategic planning framework to help countries plan, implement, and evaluate the impacts of their actions. They establish reference points to measure national efforts, identify areas for improvement, and support data-driven decision-making.

Read the full documents on RESTORE4Cs to learn more about the key recommendations and solutions proposed by the partners:

Deep Learning and marine recovery: the DTO-BioFlow project releases new study

DTO BioFlow Press Release

What can 26 years of underwater video recordings tell us about climate change and human pressures on the sea?

Researchers from the University of Gothenburg’s Tjärnö Marine Laboratory have analysed footage from Sweden’s Kosterhavet National Park, the first marine national park in Sweden, to get a clearer understanding of the rapid transformations that marine ecosystems are undergoing. Spanning over 26 years, this analysis has great potential to show us how human and climate influence are literally reshaping the sea floor.

The study, published in the Ecology and Evolution journal, has been funded by the DTO-BioFlow project. DTO-BioFlow is a Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Action, that brings together 28 European partners to improve access to marine biodiversity data, apply artificial intelligence in ocean monitoring, and connect these resources to EMODnet and EDITO. As part of the project’s consortium, LifeWatch ERIC demonstrates with policy-relevant use cases the benefit of an end-to-end approach for biodiversity monitoring, as part of the project’s consortium.

This work offers a concrete illustration of how AI can contribute to ecosystem monitoring and management, by transforming “sleeping data” like archives of footage into ecological knowledge: it can tell us if protection measures are actually working, and show us the seabed’s responses to rising temperatures.

The results of the study showed that the restrictions introduced over the past 25 years in Sweden’s waters have contributed to the recovery of sensitive seabed communities, creating solid ground for the implementation of similar measures in other areas.

Read more on the DTO-BioFlow website: https://dto-bioflow.eu/news/using-deep-learning-unlock-decades-marine-biodiversity-data-and-plan-marine-recovering

Virtual Research Environments and Essential Variables: LifeWatch ERIC sessions at EGU 2026 open for abstracts submissions

EGU 2026

LifeWatch ERIC is co-organising two interesting sessions during EGU 2026, the European GeoSciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, from 3-8 May 2026. One of the biggest conferences on environmental and earth sciences expects to welcome around 20,000 scientists, presenting their work and learning from and networking with other researchers.

The first session focuses on Virtual Research Environments in Earth and Environmental science, which is at the heart of LifeWatch services and organised in close collaboration with our colleagues in the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), the University of Amsterdam and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. This session aims to bring together case studies and innovative approaches from different domains of the earth sciences, both from a technology point of view, and scientific applications based on workflows, virtual laboratories and even digital twins of (parts of) the environment.

The second session we organise is in collaboration with our ENVRI colleagues and inspired by the work in th the current ENVRI-Hub-Next project where Essential Variables (EVs) play a key role. This session will explore the technical, infrastructural, and policy advancements required to make EVs the foundational language for global environmental cooperation. We welcome contributions addressing scientific use cases, technical barriers, and emerging solutions.

In the links below, you can find more information, or submit an abstract to present your scientific and/or technical use case, work or results in one of the two sessions:
Virtual Research Environments: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU26/session/56636
Essential Variables: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU26/session/57662

Long Live Biodiversity Data! LifeWatch ERIC and LifeWatch Italy at Living Data 2025

Living Data 2025 (1)

The Living Data 2025 Conference took place in Bogotá, Colombia, from 21-24 October 2025, bringing together biodiversity networks, scientists, researchers, practitioners and other experts from around the world. The event offered an opportunity to connect with the Latin American community and exchange experiences with global biodiversity data initiatives.

This year’s programme focused on three main themes:

  • Building standards that promote data sharing and interoperability;
  • Bringing together and providing access to diverse sources of information;
  • Monitoring our progress toward conserving and restoring the planet’s biodiversity.

LifeWatch ERIC participated actively in the event, co-organising a symposium led by Christos Arvanitidis, CEO, together Niels Raes (NLBIF/Naturalis Biodiversity Centre), Lyubomir Penev, Peter Bozakov, and Nikol Yovcheva (Pensoft Publishers) , titled “Long Live Biodiversity Data: Knowledge Transfer and Continuity across Research Projects”. The session spread over two days, 22 and 23 October (the recording is available here: https://www.livingdata2025.com/program.html?session=6788879-1_2025-10-22_Caldas).

The symposium addressed one of the main challenges in international research projects: their limited duration. The discussion therefore focused on how to ensure that the knowledge and data produced continue to have an impact beyond the projects’ lifetime.

Experts from across DiSSCo, LifeWatch ERIC and Pensoft communities explored strategies for securing the legacy of research results through open science practices, with a particular emphasis on the quality of data for effective reuse, the standardisation of nomenclature, and the development of FAIR foundations for biodiversity genomics. They also discussed the integration of digital tools to enhance collaboration, from platforms for data-rich publication to systems enabling faster communication of invasive species alerts and the translation of local findings into policy-relevant knowledge.

Christos Arvanitidis presented the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub, developed within the BiCIKL project, as a concrete example of how European and global communities can work together to ensure lasting access to biodiversity knowledge in his talk, titled “In his talk, titled “Biodiversity Knowledge Hub: Bridging Research Infrastructures, Aggregators, and Communities – Past, Present, and Future”.

Examples from several international initiatives demonstrated how the continuity of biodiversity data can be maintained through information hubs, semantic frameworks, and collaborative workflows that enable exchanges within the global biodiversity data space.

In parallel with the symposium, LifeWatch ERIC and LifeWatch Italy contributed several oral presentations:

  • Christos Arvanitidis | Transforming Knowledge into Practice: Science, Technology and Innovation in Support of the UN SDGs.
  • Christos Arvanitidis | Biodiversity Knowledge Hub: Bridging Research Infrastructures, Aggregators, and Communities – Past, Present, and Future
  • Maite Irazábal Pla | A FAIR tool for assessing the environmental impact of energy transition policies.
  • Andrea Tarallo | A new platform to build and support citizen science projects in biodiversity.
  • Andrea Tarallo | LifeWatch Italy infrastructure: a national asset for Open and FAIR Biodiversity Data.
  • Martina Pulieri | Bridging biodiversity data: an ontology-driven approach
  • Ilaria Rosati | Traits Thesaurus: a semantic artefact to harmonise data and metadata of aquatic organism traits
  • Cristina Di Muri | A FAIR and Open approach for the study and integrated management of Invasive Alien Species in Italy
  • Cristina Di Muri | Empowering data integration and semantic interoperability across environmental domains to address the biodiversity crisis and related environmental challenges.

Overall, it was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with project partners, exchange ideas with institutions from our field, and meet colleagues from our national node, LifeWatch Italy. Take a look at the conference website for updates, recordings, photos and more: www.livingdata2025.com

In the picture: Christos Arvanitidis, Maite Irazábal Pla (LifeWatch ERIC), Ilaria Rosati, Andrea Tarallo, Cristina Di Muri (LifeWatch Italy).

ENERGYTRAN: highlights from the international e-learning course on Open Science and Environmental Challenges

Guillermo Anlló opens the ENERGYTRAN Open Science and Environmental Challenges e-course

From 22 to 26 September 2025, the EULAC ENERGYTRAN project delivered the e-learning Course “Environmental Challenges and Open Science – an approach to Innovation and Technology” in San José, Costa Rica.

Organised in a hybrid format, with in-person sessions hosted at the Centro Nacional de Alta Tecnología (CeNAT) and streamed online, the event brought together a wide range of countries and institutions from across Latin America and Europe.

The course was designed to train professionals in the principles and practices of Open Science, and potential applications to tackle global issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem degradation. Experts from EU-LAC shared knowledge, tools and case studies demonstrating how Open Science fosters collaboration, accelerates discovery, and strengthens inclusive participation to research.

The programme combined both international and regional perspectives. Guillermo Anlló from UNESCO opened the presentations with a reflection on the role of Open Science, and the urgent need for a cultural shift. Giulia Malaguarnera (University of Minho/OpenAIRE, Portugal) showed how Open Science has become institutionalised in Europe, supported by infrastructures like OpenAIRE and EOSC, highlighting ongoing debates on research assessment. Andrea Mora Campos (Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica) offered the Latin America’s perspective through the description of its community-driven model, built on non-commercial open access and strong networks like La Referencia and SciELO.

The second day featured a session on open software by Kevin Moraga García (Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica), with contributions from Diana Andone (UPT Timisoara, România) and Ricardo Andrade, Alexandre Lucas, and Carlos Silva (INESCTEC, Portugal), who showcased open tools, repositories, and practical applications.

The focus of the third shifted to infrastructures and capacity building. Tania Altamirano (RedCLARA) presented digital ecosystems in Latin America, Allan Campos (CeNAT, Costa Rica) highlighted the benefits of Open Science for early-career researchers, and Radu Vasiu (UPT Timisoara) examined publication impact and quality methods.

The fourth day explored the application of Open Science to biodiversity and environmental sciences, with Francisco Pando (GBIF, Spain) and Julio Paneque (LifeWatch ERIC, Spain) presenting FAIR data and a range of biodiversity-related tools.

Finally, the closing day turned to social participation and citizen science. Rafael Corrales (UNESCO, Costa Rica) emphasised the integration of scientific, local, and Indigenous knowledge, while Valeria Arza (UNSAM, Argentina) shared experiences of citizen science initiatives from the region.

This course, one of the deliverables of the ENERGYTRAN project, was the result of a joint effort between CeNAT, OEI, INESCTEC, IPS, and LifeWatch ERIC to promote a model of science that is more collaborative, transparent, and accessible to all.

Agroecology & Digital Innovation: LifeWatch ERIC at ERSAC 2025

ERSAC 2025

The ERSAC Conference 2025 (European Research Services on Agroecology), from 1 to 3 October 2025, brought together scientists, decision-makers and practitioners across Europe to exchange strategies for a sustainable and resilient agriculture sector and advance actions in support of the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy.

LifeWatch ERIC joined the conference under the framework of the AgroServ Project (https://www.lifewatch.eu/agroserv): a network of research infrastructures that offer integrated services, with the objective of accelerating the agroecological transition. LifeWatch ERIC contributes through its infrastructure, data services and coordination in order to strengthen the collaboration across infrastructures.

Iria Soto Embodas (Scientific Researchers at LifeWatch ERIC’s ICT Core, presented a talk on “Data and Monitoring for the Agroecological Transition in the Agroecology Partnership.”, in the session dedicated to Agroecological Transition for Sustainable and Resilient Agriculture. Iria emphasised the need for harmonised data collection and monitoring standards in Europe, and the role of ICT and digital platforms in evaluating, supporting, and scaling agroecological practices. In fact, associating agroecological policy and practice with robust monitoring and data systems can support sustainable farming at scale.

Are you curious to learn more about agroecology? We had a conversation on this topic with José Manuel Ávila-Castuera, Senior Scientific Manager. Listen to the podcast to learn more about this approach: https://www.lifewatch.eu/podcasts/agroecology-applying-ecological-processes-to-agriculture.

Highlights: ‘Marine SABRES in Fairs’ at the EU Researchers’ Night 2025

Marine SABRES in Fairs - ERN 2025

For one night, research and discovery took centre stage in Lecce at the European Researchers’ Night – ERN Apulia Med 2025. LifeWatch ERIC welcomed more than 80 visitors at its ‘Marine SABRES in Fairs’ stand, offering an immersive journey into marine biodiversity, ecosystem resilience, and the future of the blue economy.

Children, families, students, and curious citizens explored the results of Marine SABRES, a Horizon Europe project that is working across Europe to restore marine ecosystems and ensure sustainable use of ocean resources. Posters, brochures, videos and hands-on materials guided the audience through the project’s work and its mission to make ecosystem-based management more practical and achievable.

One of the highlights of the night was the preview of the Marine SABRES Serious Game. For the first time, young visitors could try out the interactive online game, ahead of the official School Competition scheduled for World Fisheries Day, 21 November 2025. The game is designed for students between 10 and 18 years old and helps them discover how human activities affect marine ecosystems, and why this matters for our own well-being.

The stand also featured the documentary trailers produced by the LifeWatch Italy Multimedia Production Centre, offering a glimpse into the project’s three marine regions: the Arctic Northeast Atlantic, the Tuscan Archipelago and Macaronesia. Additional filming is planned during the next Marine SABRES General Assembly in Pisa (21–23 October 2025).


See the full photo gallery to revisit the key moments of the event.

If you missed the event, you can still watch the documentary trailers on LifeWatching.tv and discover the Serious Game School Competition.

For more information, please visit Marine SABRES official website: www.marinesabres.eu

Marine SABRES launches the 2nd Serious Game School Competition

Marine SABRES School Competition

After a successful 2024 edition with 10 classes playing from across Europe, Marine SABRES launches a new online serious game and School Competition to help students explore the links between human activities, changes in marine ecosystems and impacts on our well-being. Registration is now open for teachers.

Marine SABRES invites secondary school teachers across Europe to take part in the Marine SABRES School Competition 2025, an online learning experience built around a new serious game that brings pupils closer to the science of our seas.

The 2025 edition will take place on World Fisheries Day, Friday 21 November 2025, from 09:00 to 17:00 CET. Throughout the day, participating classes will be guided to find answers to questions designed by a community of researchers committed to marine biodiversity and sustainable ocean use.

This initiative is designed for teachers of natural and social sciences, English and CLIL, citizenship, and environmental or sustainability education, and supports both lower (10-13) and upper (14-18) secondary students. Only teachers can register and, on the day of the School Competition, they will mentor their students while they play the online serious game.

Through game-based challenges and classroom quizzes, teachers can help their classes discover how strong the link between people and the ocean is, improve awareness and attitudes toward the marine environment to which we all belong, and learn from one another with the support of a European network of researchers.

Registration is open and accepted until the day of the event: click here to sign up for the competition.

LifeWatch ERIC presents preliminary results of ENERGYTRAN at high-level meeting in Costa Rica

ENERGYTRAN Preliminary Results

San José, Costa Rica, 18 September 2025. LifeWatch ERIC participated in the High-Level Meeting on Energy Transition and Climate Sustainability, organised by the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) at the Consejo Nacional de Rectores (CONARE). The event brought together regional and international leaders, as well as representatives from international organisations, embassies, universities, research centres, and civil society, to forge strategic alliances for accelerating the energy transition across Ibero-America and Europe.

Representing LifeWatch ERIC, Maite Irazabal delivered a presentation on the preliminary results of the EULAC ENERGYTRAN project, highlighting its contributions to strengthening collaboration between Europe and Latin America. Among the results presented were advances in open science practices, the use of digital research infrastructures, and the development of analytical tools that support evidence-based decision-making in climate and energy policies. These outcomes illustrate how European Research Infrastructures are fostering interoperability, data access, and collaborative workflows to address global sustainability challenges.

The project is currently piloting innovative approaches, including analytical workflows for the energy transition, e-learning courses, and virtual collaboration platforms, all designed to improve the accessibility, quality, and usability of large-scale environmental and energy data.

“By fostering collaboration across regions, we are building a more sustainable and resilient knowledge ecosystem,” said Maite Irazabal during her presentation. “The ENERGYTRAN project is not only advancing science and innovation but also creating the conditions for more inclusive and impactful solutions to today’s environmental challenges.”

The participation of LifeWatch ERIC in this meeting marked another step towards reinforcing its long-term engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean, positioning open science and research infrastructures at the core of international cooperation for sustainability.