Event Categories: Project

Why Mappings Matter and how to make them FAIR – A FAIR-IMPACT Workshop

Online, 13 April 2023.

Semantic artefacts – a broader term to include ontologies, terminologies, taxonomies, thesauri, vocabularies, metadata schemas and standards – are key to achieving data interoperability and are therefore essential to the implementation of the FAIR principles. With the growing number of semantic artefacts and their diversified uses, interconnecting these artefacts becomes critical but also more challenging. To achieve interoperability and integration, one solution is to identify/generate mappings/crosswalks between different artefacts of the same domain or used to represent the same type of information. This process, known in the semantic web domain as ontology matching or ontology alignment, should be applied to the whole spectrum of semantic artefacts.

As any other type of data, we need a strategy to deal with mappings and ensure mappings are made available following the FAIR principles in relevant mapping repositories where they can be curated, integrated and rendered for reuse. Recent initiatives like the SEMAF study or the SSSOM format or the activities within the FAIR-IMPACT and FAIRCORE4EOSC projects have highlighted the needs of communities to find, access and reuse mappings and crosswalks in a machine actionable format which is not currently addressed.

FAIR-IMPACT is starting a series of workshops to discuss issues around mappings and crosswalks and how they can become shareable and reusable, i.e. FAIR, elevating them to “first class” citizens in the FAIR data world.

The first one will take place on Thursday 13 Apr at 14:00 – 18:00 CEST.

Registration and agenda information can be found on the FAIR-IMPACT website.

Goal of the event

The 1^stFAIR-IMPACT workshop of the series, ‘Why Mappings Matter and how to make them FAIR?’, will introduce participants to the motivation behind doing mappings and how they could benefit even more by making mappings FAIR. Then a series of Show and Tell presentations will take place, where use cases and practices from a range of communities –spanning domains, research infrastructures, projects, task forces, and working groups– will be presented. During this workshop, FAIR-IMPACT will also introduce The Simple Standard for Sharing Ontological Mappings (SSSOM) as a candidate format for defining and sharing entity mappings, considering also its pivotal role in the FAIRCORE4EOSC technical specifications.

The presentations will be followed by a collaborative work on mapping aspects, including methodologies, formats, tools, requirements for FAIR mappings and examples.

The main objective of this workshop is to define, together with different communities, the initial requirements for developing a useful framework around FAIR mappings including the requirements to adhere to the FAIR principles.

This workshop is organised by FAIR-IMPACT and the SSSOM developer community.

DOORS Mobilisation and Mutual Learning Workshop

Constanta, Romania, 6 April 2023.

The first round of the DOORS project’s Mobilisation and Mutual Learning (MML) workshops will kick off on April 6, 2023, in Constanta, Romania. The goal of the workshop is to bring together experts and users of marine products, to raise awareness and share knowledge and skills, using Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) principles.

Objectives of the workshop

To engage Black Sea citizens and stakeholders in highly participatory training and co-creation activities to ensure suitability of existing and future Research Infrastructure services to the Black Sea region;
To train researchers and companies on how to use existing specific services, tools, data, EU data aggregation infrastructures and services (e.g. EMODnet) and protocols offered by the European Marine Research Infrastructures, to make the most of existing data and monitoring initiatives that can feed into the Blue Economy and political decision making for the region;
To set in motion inclusive mechanisms for international sharing of knowledge, building common understanding and cocreating solutions to marine societal challenges and base them on the RRI principles and socio-technical approach.

Session Topics

Sessions include plenary expert talks, round table discussions and hand-on practical exercises to explore existing pan-European marine data infrastructures including:

The European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) and how to navigate the marine products catalogue, identify relevant products for the specific users and how to use them.
The Marine Litter Watch (MLW), a citizen-based app that aims to help fill data gaps in beach litter monitoring.
DOORS Observation Mapping Tool which illustrates the main marine observing capacities and marine data infrastructures identified in the Black Sea.
The DOORS #BlackSeaLitterFree Campaign which raised awareness about marine litter, problems and solutions.
An introduction to the DOORS System of Systems (SoS), in a working beta version, demonstrating how to access marine data on the platform .

Introducing our System of Systems (SoS)

In DOORS, the foundation of our work will be our System of Systems (SoS) platform which will revolutionise how we handle, process and understand data from the entire region. One of our main goals is to harmonise scientific approaches for gathering data, integrating all existing data as well as new satellite data into a consolidated system that works for everyone.

Video: A short working demo of the System of Systems interface. © DOORS Black Sea

Register for the Event

This workshop is suitable for anyone responsible for collecting or managing marine environmental data in the public sector, industry for education or research. Please remember to share the event widely within your networks.

Webinar: Digital Earth Twins to build resilience to climate change

Online, 4 April 2023.

BioDT: a Digital Twin prototype to help protect and restore biodiversity

Understanding the forces shaping biodiversity is needed for rational management of natural resources and also to meet the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 to restore biodiversity in Europe. In particular, researchers need to be able to better predict global biodiversity dynamics and how species interact with their environment and with each other. This can be an extremely difficult task because the processes underlying biodiversity dynamics are complex. Innovative ways to combine data, models and interaction processes are required to predict these dynamics and offer solutions that promote a sustainable management of Earth’s biodiversity and its ecosystems.

For this reason, the BioDT consortium aims to push the current boundaries of predictive understanding of biodiversity dynamics by developing a Biodiversity Digital Twin (BioDT) providing advanced modelling, simulation and prediction capabilities.

BioDT, DestinE and Digital Earth Twins: a joint webinar to showcase opportunities, challenges and future trends in virtual twins

The webinar “Digital Earth Twins to build resilience to climate change” aims to showcase best practices, challenges and emerging patterns in developing digital twins. The involved speakers are experts and developers in the field and are going to highlight, during a one-hour event, the main aspects to be taken into account while developing highly-complex technology systems, such as BioDT, Destination Earth and ClimateDT.

The event includes also an interactive session where the participants can get in contact with the speakers and ask direct questions.

Registration for the webinar is mandatory, but free.

Register for the event

Draft Agenda (all times CEST)

10:00 – Welcome & Introduction
10:05 – Digital Earth Twins: a roadmap to build resilience to climate change – Christian Kirchsteiger, European Commission DG Connect
10:10 – Introduction of the Biodiversity Digital Twin: objectives, scope, expected results – Jesse Harrison, CSC & BioDT project manager
10:20 – Introduction of the digital earth twins and the DestinE work: objectives, scope, expected results – Thomas Geenen, EMCWF & DestinE
10:25 – BioDT and DestinE: collaboration to strengthen the development of Digital Earth Twins – Jeroen Broekhuijsen, TNO
10:30 – Test your knowledge (interactive session)
10:35 – Panel discussion on the role played by digital twins on green deal & EU digital strategy
- Jenni Kontkanen, CSC & Climate DT
- Thomas Geenen, EMCWF & DestinE
- Marina Tonani, Mercator Ocean & EDITO
11:00 – Conclusion

MARCO-BOLO Kick-off Meeting

Paris/Online, 14–15 March 2023.

The new MARCO-BOLO project’s hybrid kick-off meeting will take place in Paris from 14–15 March at the Pierre et Marie Curie Campus. The meeting will serve to plan the coordination between the different work pacakges and begin to plan ways of collaborating with similar projects in the field. In particular, two important plenary sessions will be held on data strategy and stakeholder engagement.

MARCO-BOLO, coordinated by EMBRC, aims to structure and strengthen European coastal and marine biodiversity observation capabilities, linking them to global efforts to understand and restore ocean health, hence ensuring that outputs respond to explicit stakeholder needs from policy, planning and industry. You can find out more about it on our Related Projects page.

Webinar: FAIR-IMPACT Open Call for Support

Online, 27 March 2023.

How can I practically apply the FAIR Principles in my work? How do I know what is the right FAIR-enabling tool for me?

To help answer these questions, the FAIR-IMPACT project will be launching the first of three open calls for financial support in April 2023. In this first open call, the project will be encouraging applications to participate in two defined support actions designed to help participants learn how to use specific tools, methods, and approaches to start (or continue) their journey to becoming more FAIR-enabling.

For more information on the open call, including FAQs and an Expression of Interest form, please check out the dedicated webpage.

On 27 March at 12.00 UTC/14.00 CEST, FAIR-IMPACT will be hosting a webinar to introduce potential applicants and other interested parties to the open call and to provide details about the two support actions on offer. The session will outline who the support action is aimed at, what will be expected of participants, how it will benefit them, the skills and expertise necessary to participate, and how to apply. There will be time during the webinar for attendees to ask questions about any aspects of the open call.

Registration for this webinar is free and open to all.

Login or sign up to the FAIR-IMPACT website and complete the registration form.

ANERIS Kick-Off Meeting

Barcelona, Spain, 8–9 March 2023.

LifeWatch ERIC is partnering in the new Horizon Europe project, ANERIS (operAtional seNsing lifE technologies for maRIne ecosystemS). The project proposes to develop the next generation of scientific instrumentation tools and methods for sensing marine-life. The design of the new instruments and methods will integrate different types of marine life-sensing technologies: genomics, imaging-biooptics and participatory sciences. The technologies will be implemented in a co-design framework, involving all the interested stakeholders: academia, industry, civil society and government.

The project proposes the concept of Operational Marine Biology (OMB), understood as a biodiversity information system for systematic and long-term routine measurements of the ocean and coastal life, and their rapid interpretation and dissemination. The production of FAIR Operational Marine Biology data will be carried out in a distributed IT infrastructure built from edge and cloud compute nodes, to be connected with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

The ANERIS Kick-Off Meeting will last two days and will take place at the Instituto de Ciencias del Mar del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, ICM-CSIC, Passeig Marítim de la Barceloneta 37-49, 08003 Barcelona.

To learn more about the projects in which LifeWatch ERIC is involved, please visit our Related Projects page.

EU LAC ResInfra – Kick-out Meeting

Madrid, Spain, 27–28 February 2023.

The EU LAC ResInfra project Kick-out Meeting will take place in Madrid at the end of February. The project consortium will discuss and analyse project progress and updates, and in particular, LifeWatch ERIC will present its final conclusions and recommendations to the Sustainability Plan as part of WP4. Future actions will also be decided.

Visit the project website.

Small Satellites & Services International Forum

Malaga, Spain, 21–23 February 2023.

The SMALL SATELLITES & SERVICES INTERNATIONAL FORUM is a workshop for small satellite designers, technicians, developers and launchers. The forum provides the perfect opportunity for experience and knowledge sharing of current and cutting-edge space and small satellite technologies. Over the course of three days the forum will present panels and sessions that will provide answers and insights from the experts, by examining evolving technologies and industry trends that can impact small satellites.

Jaime Lobo, LifeWatch ERIC Satellite & HAPS Operations Manager, will participate on Wednesday 22 February at 2:30 pm in the panel ‘Satellite Constellation & International Cooperation’, as coordinator of the operation of the AGAPA1 satellite. The AGAPA1 satellite has been commissioned by the Andalusian Agricultural and Fisheries Management Agency (AGAPA), along with the Junta de Andalucía, in the framework of the SmartFood project, which is one of the projects led by LifeWatch ERIC. It will monitor the effects of farming on the territory and its natural resources, to underpin future policies on preserving the environment and enabling sustainable farming in the Andalusian region. Now that the satellite has passed its Critical Design Review milestone, it will start assembly and readiness tests, which upon passing will allow it to launch in 2023 on a Falcon 9 from SpaceX (United States). The new AGAPA1 satellite will combine EO technologies with an IoT, radio which can communicate with sensors on the ground that are performing activities such as monitoring soil moisture or crops water content. The IoT radio can then take this information and make automatic decisions based on pre-agreed metrics, such as commanding the sensor to alter the percentage of water in the soil by watering it. This edge computing takes place in real-time, removing the process of manual decision-making on the ground, and could have significant impacts on agricultural territory management on a large scale.

Combining EO data with IoT increases the effectiveness of small satellites by making sense of the huge reams of data produced by the satellite and making it more actionable. The AGAPA1 satellite is planned to be part of OpenConstellation, a global shared satellite infrastructure built and managed by Open Cosmos, which encourages countries, institutions and companies to contribute their own satellites, which will create the world’s biggest mutualised constellation.

“FAIR environmental data for EOSC and the World: Engineering the ENVRI-Hub”, an RDA co-located event

Gothenburg and online, 20 March 2023.

The power of FAIRness

Good-quality data is essential to enable successful global climate action. The European Environmental Research Infrastructures, organised in the ENVRI Community, hold a wealth of data on Earth systems critical to tackling global climate challenges. Within the ENVRI-FAIR, a Horizon 2020 project in which LifeWatch ERIC is partner, the ENVRI Community created the ENVRI-Hub, a portal of services to ensure the availability, accessibility and interoperability of this trove of European environmental data.

Meet the ENVRI-Hub

The ENVRI Community is proud to introduce the ‘ENVRI-Hub’ concept and its achievements during this co-located event. The ENVRI-Hub is the central gateway to FAIR environmental data and services the European environmental research infrastructures offer. It offers a community-built platform that combines a service catalogue, a knowledge base, information on training resources that support service providers and users, and a virtual research environment with several initial science demonstrators, all accessible through a single access interface. Through the ENVRI-Hub, the ENVRI Community directly contributes to the European Open Science Cloud, opening up this wealth of data for exploitation to all scientific users, policymakers, and private partners.

Real cases for real users

This event will demonstrate several aspects of the technical and data architecture behind the ENVRI-Hub, from assessing the FAIRness of the ENVRIs and identifying the gaps to harmonising technical implementations across different infrastructures. It will also illustrate its value in various real-world science demonstrators. Discussions will follow with a panel of experts about the integration into EOSC, the current strengths and limitations of the ENVRI-Hub and possible future developments.

Programme

Presentation of the components of the ENVRIhub by ENVRI experts

ENVRIhub concept and architecture (Anca Hienola, ENVRI co-coordinator, FMI)
Catalogue of services and AAI (Keith Jeffery, ENVRI-FAIR Lead in Common FAIR Policies, EPOS, UKRI)
Knowledge base and search engine of ENVRI Hub (Zhiming Zhao, ENVRI-FAIR Lead in Common implementation and support, UvA, LifeWatch ERIC)
Key data aspects and choices (Maggie Helström, ENVRI-FAIR Co-lead in Training and capacity building, ICOS Carbon Portal, Lund University)
Science Demonstrators – which science case (Damien Boulanger, ENVRI-FAIR Co-lead in Implementation Atmospheric Subdomain, IAGOS, CNRS)

Q&A and discussion on the technology, ICT aspects and data

Panel discussion with the ENVRI-FAIR experts, the invited stakeholders and the audience

Improving FAIRness of data and service to attempt convergence at the ENVRI level
Future needs of the hub for ENVRI, Europe and the World
Integration into EOSC, consequences, opportunities, needs for collaboration and co-development
Relevance for science, consequences for data FAIRness
Interoperability of variable descriptions
Sustainability of the hub from the technical point of view

Panel members: ENVRI-FAIR presenters, Barbara Magagna (GO FAIR), Mark van de Sanden (SURF, EOSC Future), Ville Tenhunen (EGI)

Moderators: Angeliki Adamaki (Co-lead in WP5 of ENVRI-FAIR, Common requirements and testbed for (meta)data services, community standards and cataloguing, ICOS Carbon Portal, Lund University), Jacco Konijn (Part of ENVRI-FAIR communications strategies and tools, UvA, LifeWatch ERIC)

Practical info

“FAIR environmental data for EOSC and the World: Engineering the ENVRI-Hub”, an RDA co-located event

20.3.23, from 14:00-17:00 CET / 13:00-16:00 UTC
Pascal room, Lindholmen Conference Centre, Gothenburg, Sweden

This event is open to all.
You don’t need to be registered for the 20^th RDA General Assembly to attend this event.

> Sign up here <

Agroecology Living Labs & Research Infrastructures in Europe – experiences from ALL-Ready & AE4EUALL-Ready final conference

Brussels, Belgium, 27 September 2023.

ALL-Ready, in collaboration with AE4EU, is organising its final event in Brussels on 27 September 2023. The conference will be hosted by the Committee of the Regions.

The one-day conference will show how the two projects paved the way for a European Network of Living Labs and Research Infrastructures. Experiences from involved Living Labs and Research Infrastructures will give practical insights and a focus will be on how Regions can best support the agroecology transition with the help of Living Labs and Research Infrastructures and what role the future European partnership “Accelerating farming systems transition: agroecology living labs and research infrastructures” will play.

Through a series of panel discussions, the event will discuss how Living Labs and Research Infrastructures can support the agroecology transition. The conference will focus on how Agroecology Living Labs and Research Infrastructures can translate theory into practice and will explore lessons learned from three years of project work.

The closing session will focus on how regions can best support Living Labs and Research Infrastructures to drive the agroecology and urban transitions. The role of the Common Agriculture Policy network, local authorities, and the future European partnership “Accelerating farming systems transition: agroecology living labs and research infrastructures” will be discussed.

To register for the conference, please visit this page.