LifeWatch ERIC Internal Joint Initiative

Non-indigenous and Invasive species (NIS) are considered a major threat to biodiversity around the globe: they can impact ecosystems in many ways by outcompeting or predating on native species. Who has not heard of the Burmese pythons in Florida that eat alligators? The negative impact of imported rats and cats that have decimated island fauna populations? However, the long-term impacts of NIS on ecosystem integrity are poorly explored, and policy-makers are often left without sufficient information to make wise management decisions.

In the belief that the first steps in tackling biodiversity loss must be to improve our knowledge by developing better inter-disciplinary paradigms, LifeWatch ERIC is launching an exciting new Internal Joint Initiative (IJI), involving the scientific communities of National Nodes and other European Research Infrastructures, that will thoroughly describe the issues involved in ecosystem and habitat type vulnerability, and produce future scenarios under changing vectors to help decision-makers combat the impacts of climate change. 

The LifeWatch ERIC Internal Joint Initiative will combine data, semantic resources, data management services, and data analysis and modelling from its seven member countries – Belgium, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain – to bring together national assets on a scale never attempted before. This integration of Common Facilities and National Nodes will provide the comprehensive and synthetic knowledge so much needed by institutions and administrators.

By deploying and publishing on the LifeWatch ERIC web portal the federated resources and e-Tools and e-Resources, the Internal Joint Initiative will also define the requirements and architecture of the LifeWatch ERIC virtual research environments, and provide a clear demonstration of the Infrastructure’s added value for researchers in addressing specific biodiversity and ecosystem management issues. 

Non-indigenous and Invasive Species are a global problem. They are distributed among most plant and animal taxa, and present a number of key issues that remain challenging for both researchers and policy-makers. The knowledge produced by the Internal Joint Initiative will thus be of global significance. It is to be hoped that this demonstration case will be seen to have scientific and socio-economic implications for many different fields of investigation over the coming decades.

Info day on ERDF for Andalusia Region

LifeWatch ERIC held its open info day on 4 June 2019, in the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC – the Spanish National Research Council), in Sevilla (Spain), on European Research Development Funds -ERDF – for the Andalusia Region. The focus was on the resources allocated for LifeWatch ERIC on the programme. Through this networking event LifeWatch ERIC aims to identify and highlight key directions to boost research in tight collaboration with its Communities of Practice at pan-European and regional levels.

LifeWatch ERIC CEO, Christos Arvanitidis opened the event, and Juan Miguel González-Aranda, LifeWatch ERIC interim CTO, presented LifeWatch ERIC infrastructure in Spain, its ICT architecture and its integration at the European level. 

The many contributions scheduled during the day aimed at delivering a clearer picture of the potential and applications for research that LifeWatch ERIC brings, from smart and remote sensing, to supercomputing and data interoperability, from data management, the semantic web and Big Data, to deep learning and Artificial Intelligence. Cloud computing services such as Virtual Research Environments, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS featured consistently.

The event demonstrated integration and synergies with specific projects, such as EOSC, IBER-GRID and IBERLIFE, GBIF and networks like EU-CELAC and BIODIVERSA. Connections with the institutional actors were also at the heart of today’s programme with particular reference to the Environmental information system of Andalusia (REDIAM) and the Spanish cadastre of biodiversity (IEPNB). Last but not least, a wide space was left for the presentation of case studies and Q&A, with a full session dedicated to the technical aspects and project teams.

Towards a cultural change | First LifeWatch ERIC Scientific Community Meeting

The Scientific Community Meeting held in Rome from 27 – 29 May 2019 was designed to bring together the wider LifeWatch ERIC scientific communities of researchers and developers to generate and advance the discussion of the most promising lines of scientific development. In the view of the conference coordinator, Alberto Basset, Interim Director of the LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre in Lecce and Professor of Ecology at the University of Salento, the 3-day event hosted by the Italian National Research Council, leader of the Italian contribution to the infrastructure, “was a great success”.

A truly international event, the meeting boasted 150 participants from 12 different countries which, thanks to the contributions given by LifeWatch ERIC Common Facilities and National Nodes (Belgium, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain), delivered to its participants a rich programme featuring 20 plenary sessions and 40 presentations in working sessions. The Scientific Community Meeting was the first of its kind and ended in widespread positive feedback and calls for greater interdisciplinary cooperation.

The three days were structured around the three complimentary strands of Biodiversity & Ecosystem Theory, Marine Biodiversity & Ecosystem Functioning, and Data, Modelling & Supporting Disruptive Technologies. There was widespread appreciation of the e-Science capabilities that LifeWatch ERIC provides, and agreement that the architecture is flexible with a user-friendly interface.

Many technologies and innovative case studies were also on display: from remote sensor monitoring of fauna and flora populations, to collecting data on marine life. But beyond gizmos, the working groups ended up agreeing on the need for collaboration, to work across borders and to use metadata to create user stories that everyone can relate to, to create greater common understanding.

Over these three days in Rome, LifeWatch ERIC has moved closer to identifying major gaps in scientific knowledge that need to be addressed, has emphasised key societal challenges that biodiversity and ecosystem science are required to address, gathered indications of the services and VRE developments that user communities need, proposed innovative approaches, like the use of blockchain, and has identified the need to reinforce collaboration and trust. 

LifeWatch ERIC CEO, Christos Arvanitidis, closed proceedings by saying that the processes of life on this planet are complex; that we need complex infrastructures to model and understand that complexity, a task which no country can do alone; and that the scientific community has a responsibility to answer global concerns about climate change. He concluded, “We will use all our arsenal to integrate everything we have and try to give a synthetic knowledge to many more recipients, so we can make a proper response to society. All disciplines need to come together with open communication.”

You can find all of the presentations from the meeting on the minisite: www.lifewatch.eu/scientific-community-meeting

LifeWatch Spain

LifeWatch Spain

The LifeWatch ERIC Statutes foresee the creation of National Nodes, which in Spain has been translated into the creation of the Joint Research Unit LifeWatch Spain (JRU – LW.ES) in 2014. This entity brings together several organizations and institutions carrying out research, development, and innovation (R&D&I) activities in the biodiversity and ecology fields. Among others, to date, the JRU – LW.ES counts on the participation of Public Research Organizations, The Spanish National Research Council, International Excellence Campuses and Universities, the Ministries of Agriculture, Fishing and Food and Ecological Transition, Environment Technology and Innovation Parks and Institutions, Regional and Local Authorities, and Port Authorities. These organizations have expressed their interest in integrating into a network of excellence to promote biodiversity research, addressing major environmental challenges, and supporting knowledge-based strategic solutions for environmental preservation. Thus, the Spanish community supporting LifeWatch is structured by its Joint Research Unit, which is composed of more than 30 institutions of diverse nature.

At present, the Spanish community provides LifeWatch with three virtual research environments: 1) LIFE+RESPIRA. The main objective of this Project is to demonstrate that it is possible to improve the quality of life in European cities through the use of new technologies, combined with specific urban planning and management measures (http://www.liferespira.eu); 2) Deep Learning & Citizen Science LifeWatch, which provides computing resources to Citizen Science initiatives aimed at bringing Biodiversity research and IT closer to the people. Natusfera allows users to take georeferenced pictures of animals and plants that can be identified by experts, thereby creating a collaborative biodiversity map (http://deep.ifca.es); 3) SWIRL (Scenario-based Water Innovation and Research Laboratory), an e-infrastructure that was developed to respond to water resource management challenges, offering accessibility and traceability of data as well as a platform for cooperation (https://swirlvre.eu/). Finally, in 2018, thanks to funding from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, the Spanish Network of Excellence was launched. The main objectives of this network are to support and boost the activities within the JRU LW.ES, and thus, ultimately contribute to LifeWatch ERIC’s objectives.

LifeWatch ERIC Data Centres Working Meeting

LifeWatch-SI

Biodiversity and the functioning of ecosystems, including those precious services sustaining our life and our societies, are at risk, affecting the ecological sustainability of our Planet, our well-being and our future.

LifeWatch ERIC, the European e-Science Infrastructure of Biodiversity and Ecosystem research (www.lifewatch.eu) has organised a meeting in Ljubljana, on 13–14 December 2019, discussing with representatives of Common Facilities, National Nodes and the wider Slovenian scientific community and partners in the LifeWatch Slovenia consortium on the vision, mission and operational priorities of the research infrastructure. The ambition was to deploy the proper e-Infrastructure to scientists in order to build the science-based knowledge needed by all stakeholders, including local communities, in order to address these key global challenges.

The meeting has been focused on biodiversity and ecosystem data management, since the data already available, and big data, that are going to be collected through new technologies and the work of thousands of scientists in Europe, are the foundation to build the new knowledge required within the context of climate changes and biodiversity loss. However, it is necessary that Open Science becomes a reality and proper tools, allowing scientists to find, access, integrate, re-use and analyse the data already collected by the scientific community, actually developed and made available. These issues and the organisation of Distributed Data Centres on biodiversity and ecosystem research have been discussed in the meeting with the contribution of scientists from Belgium, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia LifeWatch Nodes, as well as from other environmental research infrastructures, particularly researchers also contributing to DiSSCo, Distributed Systems for Scientific Collections.

The meeting has also highlighted the global relevance of the scientific research of the Slovenian Institutions on biodiversity and ecosystems to address these global challenges from experience on model ecosystem types distributed at the Biosphere scale and relevant in the context of climate change.

Metadata, Vocabularies & Ontologies

Metadata Vocabularies Ontologies

On 12 & 13 November, the LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre organised the first working meeting on “Metadata, Controlled Vocabularies and Ontologies” in Lecce, Italy.

The aim of the meeting was to set a roadmap for a common strategy to be adopted on these within the LifeWatch ERIC community and in accordance with the FAIR principles.

Interim Executive Board Meeting

Form 26 – 29 June 2017, the Interim Executive Board of LifeWatch ERIC took place in Melpignano, Lecce, in the magnificent and recently renovated Palazzo Marchesale.

The meeting, hosted by the LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre, thanks to the support of the Town of Melpignano, was the first operative session of the infrastructure, after the I General Assembly held in Seville. Representatives from Spain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Greece and, obviously, Italy, had been meeting for four days to draft the strategical lines of the operative construction of the infrastructure, based on the valorisation of what already produced in the course of the preparatory phase.

Welcome, LifeWatch ERIC!

Deepening biodiversity and ecosystem related issues has become a crucial value in contemporary society, which is tackling global scale challenges on capital elements, such as resource supply, economic development, environmental security and human well-being. The European Commission recognises research in this area as a priority, moving further from the punctual programmes funding the many fixed-term projects, to the institution of a European Research Infrastructure Consortium, as a long term strategy to ensure sustainability of research. Welcome, LifeWatch ERIC!

LifeWatch ERIC is the 14th European research infrastructure to be granted this important status, and it is composed by eight founding member states and three common facilities. Through the use of the ICT, the infrastructure guarantees the access to big sets of data on biodiversity, ensuring their standardisation and interoperability, and providing researchers and institutions with tools and services allowing the creation of customised virtual research environments, supporting policy making.

Italy, through its Ministry for Education, University and Research (MIUR) and its National Research Council (CNR), plays a key role in LifeWatch ERIC, hosting its Service Centre, one of the three common facilities, at the University of Salento, and contributing with its e-Biodiversity Research Institute, powered by a Joint Research Unit counting more than 30 among top level universities, national institutes, regional agencies and academies of the country.

On 8 and 9  May 2017, the first General Assembly of LifeWatch ERIC took place in Seville (Spain), and elected the interim members of the statutory bodies which will manage the Consortium until the formal ones will be appointed. Prof. Alberto Basset has been named interim Director of the Service Centre and interim Member of the Executive Board.

On 23 May 2017, European Commission Director-General for Research & Innovation, Robert Jan-Smits, awarded the LifeWatch ERIC Plate to the Spanish Secretary of State for Research, Development & Innovation, Carmen Vela, who received it on behalf of the entire LifeWatch ERIC community.

Welcome, LifeWatch ERIC!

To see the LifeWatch ERIC statutes, please click here.

You can find the Communication of the European Commission here.

Outcomes of the Crete Technical Meeting

A LifeWatch marine technical meeting was held in the Hellenic Centre of Marine Research (Crete, Greece) from 3–5 June. The meeting was attended by participants of national LifeWatch projects from Spain, Italy, Greece, Sweden, Belgium and the EU funded projects BIOVEL, MicroB3, VIBRANT and EMODNet.