LifeWatch and the National Roadmap Large-Scale Research Infrastructure
On August 31, a unique consortium of 23 leading Dutch institutes, including the Department of Natural Resources of ITC, with expertise in biodiversity research and eScience submitted a proposal to NWO, with the aim to establish the LifeWatch Research and Innovation Center in The Netherlands. This will allow The Netherlands to take on the scientific lead for LifeWatch Europe.
LifeWatch is an overarching research infrastructure for biodiversity and ecosystem data in Europe that builds upon existing networks. LifeWatch rests on three pillars within this domain: (i) developing smart methods to integrate and analyze existing data and new data generated by modern sensor systems, (ii) improving the digital accessibility of (public) research data in Europe, and (iii) designing solutions to sustain essential ecosystem services, complying with internationally agreed targets in this field. Researchers expect to be able to tackle scientific breakthroughs using LifeWatch on the complex relations between on the one hand the behaviour of organisms in a dynamic world, and biodiversity and ecosystem functioning on the other.
However, LifeWatch ambition is more than generating fundamental knowledge. Companies and sector organizations from ICT, consultancy and environmental engineering support LifeWatch because they need the knowledge for their activities. Innovative applications will be developed jointly, for instance in the field of eco-engineering and decision support, so that they can be used in their often international business.
A decision about funding of the proposal is expected in January 2012.
For more information please see www.lifewatch.eu or the Dutch LifeWatch proposal [pdf]. For questions please contact lifewatch@uva.nl.