Digital meeting with the Technological Director of the European LifeWatch Consortium

Online, 7 October 2020. Under the title ‘LifeWatch ERIC in support of compliance with the 2030 Agenda and Europe Green Deal in the context of Climate Change’, the Chief Technology Officer of the European LifeWatch ERIC Consortium, Dr Juan Miguel González-Aranda, will participate in the new Digital Meeting organized by the Official College of Telecommunications Engineers that will take place on Wednesday, October 7, starting at 6:00 p.m.

Those interested in attending this digital event, which will be moderated by the journalist Juan Luis Pavon and will be broadcast via zoom, should register at this link.

Space and the 2030 SDGs

Online, 9 October 2020.  Today, from 12:00 to 14:00, LifeWatch ERIC CTO Juan Miguel González-Aranda will feature in a discussion to frame the contribution of space applications to the attainment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

By and large, space is not strongly referenced in the SDGs currently, and there needs to be a stronger articulation of the role and contribution of EU support mechanisms. Today’s workshop provides an opportunity to inform and educate the SDG leadership on how space fits in the overall scheme of delivering on the SDGs and Agenda 2030. The discussion, therefore will focus on broad technological principles.

The European Union, the United Nations and many other stakeholders have recognised the transformative nature of digital technologies and have committed to growing the digital economy globally. Clearly, this will comprise different applications and different manifestations in different parts of the world. This workshop will consider the theme of resilience in all its forms and how space can aid capacity building to achieve greater resilience, through the creation of partnerships and collaborations that will allow future space innovations to prosper. 

Please register for this ScienceDigital@UNGA75 event here. 

Agenda:

  • 12h00 Declan Kirrane, Chair, ScienceDigital@UNGA75
  • 12h10 Niall Smith, Head of Research / Head of Blackrock Castle Observatory, Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland
  • 12h30 Thorsten Rudolph; AZO Space, Germany
  • 12h45 Juan Miguel González-Aranda, Chief Technology Officer, LifeWatch ERIC, Spain
  • 13h00 Francisco Colomer, Director, Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE), Netherlands
  • 13h15 Milind Pimprikar, CANEUS International, Canada
  • 13h30 Oscar Horacio Aguilar Colindres, Permanent Observer for the Fund for the Development of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC)
  • 13h45 Discussion
  • 14h00 Conclusion.

LifeWatch Belgium 2nd Users & Stakeholders Meeting

Online, 15-16 October 2020. Due to the current Covid-19 situation, this year’s edition of the LifeWatch Users & Stakeholders Meeting will be entirely online!

On Day One, 15th October, the Belgian LifeWatch partners will bring a series of user stories, while on Day Two, 16th October,, specific aspects of the Belgian LifeWatch infrastructure will be demonstrated.

Registration is mandatory. Please register here. After registration you will receive a personal Zoom link that will be valid for both days.

Agenda:

Day One – Thursday October 15th 2020: User stories

10:00-10:20:    General introduction LifeWatch Belgium

10:20-10:35:    The World Ocean Assessment, a global exercise supported by the LifeWatch Species Information Backbone (Leen Vandepitte, VLIZ)

10:35-10:50:    Downstream migration through a shipping canal: challenges on the road (Jenna Vergeynst, UGent)

10:50-11:00:    Interactive questionnaire: which training is needed in the future?

11:00-11:15:    Comparison of methods to model species habitat networks for decision-making in nature conservation: the case of the wildcat in southern Belgium (Axel Bourdouxhe, LifeWatch-WB)

11:15-11:30:    mARS/POLA3R (Biodiversity.aq)

11:30-11:45:    The need for accurate and comprehensive DNA sequence databases to reliably identify species of policy concern (Kenny Meganck and Sophie Gombeer, BopCo)

11:45-12:00:    15 minutes of questions

12:00-12:10:    Closure of day 1 (outlook, prospects)

Day Two – Friday October 16th 2020: Demonstrations

10:00-10:05:    Short introduction

10:05-10:25:    LifeWatch data R package (VLIZ)

10:25-10:45:    Agouti: A platform for managing wildlife camera-trapping projects (INBO)

10:45-11:05:    Exploring the landscape via the ecotopes with GIS software (LifeWatch-WB)

11:05-11:25:    POLA3R (Biodiversity.aq)

11:25-11:45:    The process of DNA-based species identification: bushmeat as a case story (BopCo)

Please don’t hesitate to circulate this event in your networks!

Click here to link to the agenda.

8th LifeWatch ERIC General Assembly

LifeWatch ERIC

The 8th General Assembly of LifeWatch ERIC will go ahead on Thursday 26 November 2020. The GA will take place online, in accordance with Covid-19 health guidelines.

9th EuroGOOS International Conference

3-5 May 2021, online: 9th EuroGOOS International Conference | Advances in Operational Oceanography: Expanding Europe’s ocean observing and forecasting capacity. In recent years, major developments have taken place in oceanography, particularly in the enhanced networking and cooperation in ocean observing, modelling, data management, and ocean services to society. 2021 marks the beginning of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

EuroGOOS is the European component of UNESCO’s Global Ocean Observing System, and their international conference takes place every three years. The conference provides a forum for a broad range of implementers and users of operational oceanography services, including marine scientists and technologists, private companies, and policymakers. The conference reviews the present ocean monitoring and forecasting capacities and oceanographic services, and identifies new science and technology priorities. It facilitates dialogue, experience sharing and future planning with both European and international partners and stakeholders, towards a more coordinated response to global challenges and societal needs related to seas and oceans. The themes for this virtual conference are:

  • In-situ and remote sensing observations: towards a European Ocean Observing System (EOOS) in the framework of the UN Ocean Decade
  • Ocean modelling and forecasting: extending and improving predictability: Global, regional, shelf and coastal forecasting systems, towards the Digital Twin of the Ocean, and
  • Meeting end-user needs and supporting marine development.

Participation in the 9th EuroGOOS International Conference is free.

ERIC Forum Meeting 2021

Online, 26-27 January 2021. The ERIC Forum meeting 2021 will be held online on 26-27 January. As well as bringing together the ERIC community and its stakeholders, the meeting will also incorporate updates from the ERIC Forum Implementation Project, where project partners will present the current status of each work package as well as the upcoming steps for the next year. 

Topics for discussion over the two days inlcude:

  • the role of ERICs in the new ERA (European Research Area)
  • ERICs and the new ESFRI Stakeholder Forum
  • the ERIC guidelines
  • opportunities for ERICs at the EIC (European Innovation Council) and more.

Please see here for the full programme.

RDA 17th Plenary Meeting

RDA 17th Plenary Meeting

Online, 20-22 April 2021. The Digital Curation Centre in collaboration with Jisc and STFC-UKRI will be hosting the RDA 17th Plenary meeting on 20-22 April 2021. Despite the welcome news regarding vaccination programmes being rolled out around the world, the uncertainty around in-person events is still unfortunately ongoing. Therefore, RDA and the Plenary 17 Organisers have decided to shift Plenary 17 to a fully virtual event.

One of the major strengths of RDA is the global reach of the network. Members come from 145 different countries and plenary meetings rotate around the continents. This diversity of collaboration is required to address global challenges and broker solutions that work for a manifold of different contexts. Richer outputs and standards occur as a result.

The RDA 17th Plenary Meeting in Edinburgh will focus on the themes of global challenges, global mechanisms for data reuse, sustainable solutions with benefits for all, and global cooperation to realise these ends.

  • How do you ensure global participation in the creation, relevance and use of mechanisms (technical and social) for data interchange?
  • How can technology lower barriers to uptake – and when might it create barriers? 
  • What means can we create to overcome non-technical barriers to uptake, be they formal (such as legislation and workflows) or informal, behavioural ones?
  • How do RDA values encourage diversity and safeguard the interests of all, rather than favouring privileged groups?
  • How can global fora speed up research into crises such as COVID-19, climate change and biodiversity?

The plenary will highlight several research use cases around global collaboration to address grand challenges and ensure societal impact of data reuse.  Click here for the programme structure, and respond here to the call for co-located events.

ENVRI Week 2021

Virtual Meeting, 1–5 February, 2021. ENVRI week is a week dedicated to Environmental Research Infrastructures. During the runtime of the ENVRI-FAIR project, it is organised once a year. ENVRI week hosts ENVRI-FAIR project related sessions as well as several other sessions targeting different groups of stakeholders.

ENVRI Week 2021 will take place, as last year, at the Hotel Elbflorenz in Dresden. More information about the meeting will come later this year. Don’t forget to follow the ENVRI-FAIR website for live event updates!

TiBE2020 Metabarcoding and Metagenomics

Online, 9-11 December 2020. The tenth edition of the Trends in Biodiversity and Evolution (TiBE) conference will be virtual this year and focus on Metabarcoding and Metagenomics. The meeting, held over three afternoons, will discuss exciting developments associated with the advent of ever more powerful DNA sequencing technologies, which are opening possibilities to explore the living world in ways that were unimaginable just a decade ago.

This annual event is organised by CIBIO-InBIO, the Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, connected through PORBIOTA with LifeWatch Portugal. It brings together senior researchers, post-graduate and graduate students working in the fields of biodiversity and evolutionary biology, to discuss cutting-edge findings in topics related to metabarcoding and metagenomic techniques, and their application in ecological and environmental research. The Conference is jointly organised by the CompBio and ApplEcol research groups. It will be hosted on an online platform that will facilitate networking opportunities and allow poster presentations. The program, including both plenary and short presentations from selected abstracts, is divided into three sessions:

• Molecular surveys of biodiversity and invasive species

• Next generation biomonitoring of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems

• Understanding species in interactions in complex ecosystems.

Abstracts are invited either as 15-minute oral presentations, or as 2-minute poster videos. Please note that only registered participants will be accepted as presenting authors. The abstract submission deadline is 27 October, 2020.