RESTORE4Cs Policy Briefs #6 and #7: Coastal Wetlands Indicators and Social Acceptability

RESTORE4Cs Policy Brief 6 (1)

The RESTORE4Cs project has published two more Policy Briefs that add to the 5 previously published by the consortium: https://www.restore4cs.eu/resources/policy-briefs/.

Policy Brief #6 “European Coastal Wetland Indicators: A proposal for monitoring policy processes across space and time”, offers a practical approach to track the status, trends, and policy performance of Europe’s coastal wetlands.

In fact, despite covering less than 0.6% of the European landscape, coastal wetlands provide important benefits to the environment, such as carbon storage, protection from storm, regulation of water flows. They also filter pollutants, and support a diversity of threatened species.

In order to protect and preserve wetlands, countries need to be able to monitor them through robust and harmonised indicators that track their extent, health, biodiversity, the progress of restorations, GHG emissions and removals, among others. The RESTORE4Cs approach integrates remote sensing, GIS, modelling, machine learning and in-situ monitoring to enable timely and high-quality assessment. You can read and download the full document: https://www.restore4cs.eu/restore4cs-6th-policy-brief

Policy Brief #7 “Social Acceptability: The Key Ingredient for Enhanced Coastal Wetland Restoration”, tackles the topic of social acceptability (the degree to which something reflects a community’s values, beliefs, and norms), and how this can “make or break” the success of wetland restoration across six European sites. Using a participatory, multi-criteria analysis, RESTORE4Cs researchers combined scientific assessments with local stakeholders’ perspectives.

They also analysed which key drivers play a bigger role in shaping acceptability: according to their findings, these are local economic interests, environmental benefits, and cultural values, while other aspects, such as trust, participation, and contextual knowledge, seem to be undervalued in decision-making.

Read and download the document here to get the key policy recommendations: https://www.restore4cs.eu/restore4cs-7th-policy-brief

How to turn data into impact: meet LifeWatch ERIC’s new CTO – Part two

Anne Fouilloux

In November 2025 LifeWatch ERIC welcomed its new Chief Technology Officer, Anne Fouilloux, to guide its technological strategy and ensure alignment with global advances in biodiversity and ecosystem research across Europe.

In this second part of our two-part interview, we asked her about her vision on how to turn data into impact, and how to break down silos and enable cross-discipline, cross-border collaboration.

If you missed it, you can read Part 1 here, where we focused on Anne’s experiences that shaped her work, real-life examples from her previous roles, and how these influence her approach as CTO.

Anne, you once mentioned on social media that we ‘turn data into impact for a better world’. How do you think we can achieve this?

“We strengthen the connections between research and real-world conservation through three key areas:

  • Making data trustworthy through provenance: At ECMWF, traceability built trust. Users could trace exactly which observations influenced forecasts. Biodiversity faces similar challenges with field observations, satellite imagery, eDNA, and citizen science. When conservation managers make decisions, they need confidence in their data’s origins and quality. A lot of very good work is done at LifeWatch ERIC on FAIR data management and we need to pursue this effort, not only for datasets but for our tools and workflows. FAIR Digital Objects is becoming increasingly mature and I believe it will help LifeWatch ERIC a lot in its operation. We are distributed by nature and we need to interoperate with others but also with ourselves.
  • Serving diverse communities effectively: Through Galaxy, Pangeo, and my current FAIR2Adapt project, I learned that accessible infrastructure matters as much as powerful infrastructure. We should strategically design systems that serve everyone, from citizen scientists to policymakers, with clear purposes and sustainable approaches. However, there is no single interface or tool that can fit everyone. We need to be able to build bespoke tools and interfaces in a streamlined manner.
  • Creating feedback loops: Real impact comes from connecting observation to understanding to action to learning. Can we trace conservation outcomes back to the research that enabled them? That continuous improvement cycle turns data into lasting impact for biodiversity and our planet. To get feedback, we need tools to measure, ask questions and collect answers in a way that is not disruptive to end-users. We cannot collect everything automatically but we should try to collect as much relevant information as possible, while preserving people’s privacy. We need to present transparently how we do and measure our progress and/or correct our mistakes.”

How does your mission evolve in the European Research Infrastructure landscape?

“European RIs work at a unique scale that opens exciting strategic opportunities.

  • From distributed to coordinated: LifeWatch ERIC’s federated nature across member states distributed geographically is a tremendous strength. It makes us more resilient, more fault tolerant and more importantly, we see the world from different angles and cultures. It can help us to increase the interoperability of our e-infrastructure. My experience with distributed governance, building frameworks that enable innovation while maintaining interoperability, helps harness this diversity. We can align technology efforts while respecting each center’s autonomy and expertise.
  • From independence to strategic partnership: My collaboration work with ELIXIR for leveraging their tooling and workflow tools, EGI for computing, and through EOSC shows how RIs complement each other. I want to help LifeWatch ERIC identify where we should lead, where we should partner, and where we should leverage others’ strengths, especially as we want to use and prepare for AI, quantum computing, and many other emerging technologies that will transform biodiversity research and increase data and compute sovereignty.
  • From operations to strategic impact: securing sustainable infrastructure funding and building capacity across member states ensures that expertise is distributed throughout our network. I’ve learned from organisations such as ECMWF, NeIC, and Sigma-2 how to plan next-generation infrastructure while maintaining current operations, and I’m excited to apply these lessons at LifeWatch ERIC. The ‘e-’ is clearly an advantage here, and we need to leverage it.
  • From capability to transformation: LifeWatch ERIC has impressive scientific foundations, strong ICT expertise and dedicated people across our member states. My goal is helping us work strategically together, maximising our collective impact for biodiversity conservation, climate adaptation, and the urgent environmental challenges ahead. The opportunity is clear: build on our strong foundation to create digitally integrated infrastructure that serves researchers, practitioners, and policymakers across Europe. I’m ready to take on this challenge and contribute to that mission.”

We thank again Anne Fouilloux for the insightful answers and we wish her the best of luck in her new role!

“Fish Don’t Know Borders”: how LifeWatch Belgium’s ETN connects research across Europe

ETN

LifeWatch Belgium connects researchers in the field of acoustic telemetry through a collaborative network called ETN (The European Tracking Network). ETN allows them to share the outputs of acoustic receivers and follow animal movements from the rivers to the seas, drawing important insights on how marine life links ecosystems in European waters.

This network, initially including just a few receivers along the Belgian coast, is now one of Europe’s largest monitoring systems, involving more than 600 European researchers who track fish and other aquatic species in order to study their migration, and their movement across borders.

Although the Permanent Belgian Acoustic Received Network receives signals from tagged freshwater, marine, and diadromous fish species in Belgian waters, it shares data through the ETN’s open platform to ensure they are available for researchers all over Europe.

In fact, during their lifespan, fish move between estuaries, coasts, and open seas, regardless of political borders set by humans! Shouldn’t science be able to cross those borders too?

Read the full article on LifeWatch Belgium: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/fish-dont-know-borders-tracking-aquatic-life-across-europe

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.

Agroecology Partnership Meeting in Plasencia

Plasencia

On 11 November 2025, LifeWatch ERIC took part in the Meeting of Living Labs and Research Infrastructures in Agroecology, at the Centro de Agricultura Ecológica y de Montaña (CAEM–CICYTEX) in Plasencia (Spain), within the framework of the European Partnership for Agroecology (https://www.lifewatch.eu/agroecology-partnership).

The meeting gathered Spanish members of the Partnership to share the progress of ongoing activities, present new joiners and introducing work packages starting in the second phase.

It was also a chance to explore the ground for potential synergies and future collaboration opportunities. During the event, Iria Soto, Senior Scientific Manager at LifeWatch ERIC, facilitated the Working Table on Research Infrastructures and Links with Living Labs, together with José Manuel Ávila, Senior Scientific Manager at LifeWatch ERIC.

This session aimed to identify challenges, barriers, and opportunities in the interaction between Research Infrastructures and Living Labs, as well as to discuss tools and models for stronger, long-term connections beyond project-based collaborations.

The activity is part of a broader task, in which LifeWatch ERIC contributes to strengthening collaboration between scientific infrastructures and agroecological territories, leveraging its expertise in e-Science, FAIR data, and virtual research environments to support the transition toward more sustainable food systems.

The meeting also featured representatives from several institutions, including CSIC, AEI, CDTI, Junta de Extremadura, FUNDECYT-PCTEX, AGAPA, and the University of Córdoba, among other Spanish partners of the Partnership.

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:

A conversation with Anne Fouilloux: meet LifeWatch ERIC’s new CTO

Anne Fouilloux CTO

November 2025 marks an important transition for LifeWatch ERIC, with the arrival of its new Chief Technology Officer, Anne Fouilloux. In this role, Anne will guide the development of LifeWatch ERIC’s technological strategy and strengthen the organisation’s capacity to serve the biodiversity and ecosystem research community across Europe.

We had the pleasure of sitting down with her for a conversation about her vision, and what she hopes to build together with our community. Anne brings over two decades of experience in Open Science, FAIR principles, and Research Infrastructures. She has dedicated her work to build seamless information flows connecting scientists, researchers, and technologists, working across academia, international organisations, and scientific collaborations in Norway, the UK, and France.

This two-part interview begins by focusing on Anne’s professional journey: the experiences that shaped her, real-life examples from her day-to-day work, and how this perspective will inform her approach as CTO.

Anne, what brought you to LifeWatch ERIC at this moment of your career? What made you feel that this was the right next step for you?

“The ‘e‘ in e-infrastructure, that digital ecosystem connecting people, data, and tools across borders, has always fascinated me. I first experienced its potential during the EOSC-Nordic project with the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration, where we enabled ecologists to run complex Earth system models through user-friendly interfaces and automated workflows. Working across distributed networks showed me how combining different perspectives under a common mission achieves far greater impact than isolated efforts. LifeWatch ERIC’s distributed structure resonates deeply with my experience. The timing feels right because there’s tremendous opportunity ahead for LifeWatch ERIC. And on my side, after years supporting grassroots research community through initiatives like Pangeo big Data geoscience, and the Galaxy Project, I’m excited to contribute strategically to infrastructure with both the mandate and mission to maximise impact for biodiversity research across Europe.”

You bring over 25 years of experience in research software engineering, open science practices, knowledge transfer, and bridging gaps between science and industry. How will this background shape your approach at LifeWatch ERIC?

“I’ve learned that successful infrastructure requires understanding users deeply, enabling innovation through thoughtful governance, recognising the work done by the technical and scientific teams that support users, and critically, planning for both today and tomorrow. In e-infrastructure, this is amplified:

  • Balancing present and future is essential. At ECMWF, the system had to run operationally every six hours while also supporting cutting-edge research. This taught me you can’t just optimise for today or dream about tomorrow: you need both. You maximise what exists while preparing infrastructure and people for what’s coming. My priority is helping us make the best of our current resources while establishing a clear strategic roadmap. LifeWatch ERIC has valuable capabilities, from computational resources to tools to people. Strategic coordination helps us amplify these strengths.
  • Preparing users and staff is as important as preparing infrastructure. At ECMWF, we introduced an observational data governance that helped scientists integrate their research into operations smoothly. When leading the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration for Earth System Tools (NICEST), we helped Nordic researchers prepare for next-generation computing. It’s never just about the technology: it’s about ensuring people can actually use it effectively and build on each other’s work.
  • Strategic collaboration multiplies impact. We can’t build everything ourselves, nor should we. My collaboration work with ELIXIR, EGI, Euro-BioImaging, and through EOSC taught me that smart collaboration with other Research Infrastructures lets us focus where we add unique value while leveraging others’ expertise for shared needs. This is particularly critical for LifeWatch ERIC in the context of EOSC nodes and in leveraging or preparing for technologies such as AI and quantum computing, as well as evolving cybersecurity challenges, where effective partnerships are indispensable.”.

Stay tuned for the second part of this interview! Anne will share her vision on how to turn data into impact, and how LifeWatch ERIC can contribute to breaking down silos and enable cross-discipline collaboration and synthetic knowledge.

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

LifeWatch ERIC at TICAL 2025: Sustainable Science and Strategic Alliances

TICAL 2025

LifeWatch ERIC took part in TICAL 2025, the annual conference of the RedCLARA organisation in San José, Costa Rica (November 11–13, 2025), where leaders from digital research infrastructures, academia, and innovation networks from across Latin America and Europe exchange experiences of sustainable collaboration.

Maite Irazábal, Scientific Coordination Support, and Christos Arvanitidis, CEO, contributed with talks and panel discussions to this year’s conference theme “Innovation that Transforms”.

Maite Irazábal presented “FAIR Tools for Assessing the Environmental Impact of Energy Transition Policies”, in the framework of the EU–LAC EnergyTran project. These prototype tools support evidence-based policymaking in the context of the energy transition, by integrating FAIR data and workflow-based analytics from European and Latin American Research Infrastructures (RIs).

The presentation highlighted the importance of data interoperability and open collaboration in addressing sustainability challenges, and the role of infrastructures like LifeWatch ERIC in connecting science with policy.

Christos Arvanitidis offered a broader perspective on the role of RIs in tackling planetary challenges. He highlighted their potential to break barriers and promote innovation and sustainable science. In LifeWatch ERIC, this is made possible thanks to the RI’s multidimensional and multidisciplinary approach, which federates FAIR data, reproducible analytics, and mobilised research communities to accelerate scientific progress and produce synthetic knowledge.

He also presented LifeWatch ERIC’s technological developments such as its Virtual Research Environments (VREs) and Science Knowledge Graphs (SKG), digital ecosystems where researchers can co-develop workflows, access high-performance computing resources, and transform data into actionable insights.

One of the highlights of the conference was the panel on “Research Infrastructures that Transform: Connecting Knowledge and Collaboration between Latin America and Europe,” moderated by Paola Arellano (REUNA Chile). The discussions reiterated the importance of interoperability among research infrastructures and the need for joint work between Latin American and European scientific communities.

Key reflections that emerged from this discussion are that European RIs should open their resources and developments to Latin America to enable collaborative science, and that strengthened EU–LAC international cooperation, political dialogue, mutual understanding, and equitable access to research, could bring better results in science, technology, and innovation.

These interventions reinforced the importance of strategic and sustainable alliances between Europe and Latin America. LifeWatch ERIC and RedCLARA, bound by a Memorandum of Understanding, continue to strengthen cooperation in open science, FAIR data management, and the creation of shared digital tools.

For more information about TICAL, visit https://tical2025.redclara.net/en/programa.

The Crete Declaration published on RIO – Research Ideas and Outcomes Journal

the Crete Declaration illustration

The Crete Declaration (https://www.lifewatch.eu/crete-declaration) is a Declaration of Intent signed on 30 June 2025, on the occasion of the BEeS 2025 Conference, during the “Working Table on Life component of the Biosphere: Complementarities and Synergies”. The event gathered European Research Infrastructures (RIs), projects and organisations with the common goal of exploring shared solutions to today’s global challenges.

Coordinated by LifeWatch ERIC, the signing of the Crete Declaration followed the Working Table’s objective of defining a collaborative roadmap among the parties. Their shared ambition is to advance the One Health approach, a strategy to optimise the health of people, animals, and ecosystems, through collaboration, research product integration, and open science.

This is of vital importance since the challenges of our time (climate change, biodiversity degradation, emerging diseases and many others) are complex and deeply intertwined, and therefore demand a joint effort of complementary strengths.

The policy brief containing the Crete Declaration is now published on the RIO (Research Ideas and Outcomes) journal, as the latest contribution to the LifeWatch ERIC Strategic Working Plan Outcomes open-science collection (https://riojournal.com/topical_collection/243/), a one-stop access point to the most important deliverables by the research infrastructure consortium.

The Declaration focused the signatories’ commitment around four key strategic points:

  • Strengthening the strategic collaboration
  • Advancing data integration and FAIR principles
  • Supporting Open Science Ecosystems
  • Informing Policy and Practice

The parties welcome all European stakeholders committed to One Health to endorse this Declaration and contribute to its implementation.

Read more on EurekAlert, Pensoft and AlphaGalileo.