Fiches de projet

ACTRIS2BE
ACTRIS to Belgium: Central and National Facilities Support

• ESFRI-RI: ACTRIS-BE
• Durée du projet: 15/03/2024 - 14/06/2027
• Budget: 739 560 €
• Coordinateur: BIRA/IASB
• Partenaires financés: IRM/KMI
• Partenaires non financés: -
• Mots-clés: Atmospheric composition, reactive trace gases, aerosols, in situ, remote sensing, ACTRIS central and national facility

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Résumé

The Belgian federal component within ACTRIS is varied and extensive, involving 3 research groups (Infrared observations, UV-visible observations and Mass Spectrometry) within the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), and the Scientific Service Observations team at the Royal Meteorological Institute (KMI-IRM).
Foremost BIRA-IASB is leading the ACTRIS Reactive Trace Gas Remote Sensing (RTGRS) Central Facility (CREGARS) as well as the CREGARS FTIR and UVVIS clusters. It is thus responsible for providing key services to future ACTRIS National Facilities (NF) and users. This project will further develop these critical ACTRIS central facility (CF) infrastructures and services.
Moreover, BIRA-IASB participates in two candidate ACTRIS NF sites. A RTGRS NF at Reunion Island (jointly with France) and one at the Jungfraujoch site (Swiss, jointly with University of Liège).
Additionally BIRA-IASB also operates a mobile reactive trace gas in situ station, centred around a state-of-the-art PTR-TOF-MS Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) analyser. KMI-IRM is implementing an aerosol in situ NF in Uccle.
Within this project we will test, operate and implement consistent high-quality measurements and data delivery systems at these sites, as well as make the required improvements (instrumentation, calibration, sample treatment, data handling) to be compliant with ACTRIS requirements.

B3-ISO
High quality BioBanking in Belgium: the roads towards ISO 20387 accreditation

• ESFRI-RI: BBMRI
• Durée du projet: 4 years
• Budget: 646 000 €
• Coordinateur: Belgian Cancer Registry
• Partenaires financés: UAntwerpen, VUB
• Partenaires non financés: BBMRI.be biobanks, BELAC
• Mots-clés: BBMRI.be, BELAC, Biobanks, Quality, ISO-20387, Accreditation

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Résumé

Biobanks provide well characterized samples to researchers supporting biomedical research at all development stages. The European infrastructure for biobanking BBMRI-ERIC is reflected in the National Node BBMRI.be, established in 2013 at the Belgian Cancer Registry. In 2018, the Royal Decree on the biobanks changed the Belgian biobanking landscape as all human body material used for research now needs registration in an official Belgian biobank. Many standing, often academic, collections were thus absorbed into existing biobanks. At about the same time, the ISO 20387 accreditation, providing a quality framework for biobanks, was launched, but currently is not yet included in the portfolio of the Belgian accreditation organization BELAC. The ISO standard provides an excellent opportunity for the biobank infrastructure to harmonize the existing quality management systems and to expand their use to the add-on collections. Such increased quality level benefits the research community as high-quality sample collections are reflected into high impact research. In this proposal, BBMRI.be aims to develop a stepwise quality improvement program that can be implemented at the individual biobanks. At the same time, an accreditation program will be established together with BELAC, ultimately leading to ISO accreditation. This will have an impact on the sustainability of the Belgian biobanks within the European framework.

BE.DISSCo-FED
Reinforing the Belgian federal component in the setup of the DiSSCo ESFRI

• ESFRI-RI: DiSSCo
• Durée du projet: 15/03/2024 - 14/06/2026
• Budget: 388 640 €
• Coordinateur: IRSNB/KBIN
• Partenaires financés: MRAC/KMMA
• Partenaires non financés: -
• Mots-clés: Belgian Natural history collections, research infrastructure management, research infrastructure, access strategy, standards, persistent identifiers

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Résumé

The DiSSCo Research Infrastructure is now entering its implementation phase. The main financed partners of BE.DiSSCo-FED will be RBINS (member of the DiSSCo interim General Assembly - iGA) and RMCA (observer at the DiSSCo iGA). The project aims at strengthening the roles of these two federal institutions in the framework of DiSSCO at European and Belgian levels. RBINS will also strengthen its role as (proposed) National Node and as partner of the upcoming DiSSCo Transition European project (2023-2025), the last project before the creation of the ERIC and the RI construction phase.
RBINS contributed in DiSSCo Prepare, under the governance pillar, to the selection of the legal entity model (ERIC) and the drafting of the Statutes. The Institute collaborated also with CETAF (Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities) on the development of a Specialization tool, a prototype platform allowing the gathering, categorizing, storage and analysis of NH collections related information. These emanate from the core activities of DiSSCo community as existing data or to be developed by the Collections holding institutions and National Nodes. The prototype must now (2023) be implemented at the European RI and global scale and be ready for the integration of Natural History collections related data from more than 100 institutions.
One task of Be.DiSSCo-FED will be to analyse all the specialization data gathered in the tool to define a clear specialization strategy for the DiSSCo infrastructure. The associated research and development will focus on:
a) the analysis of the NH collections related data (e.g. Number of specimens per type of collections, number of digitized specimens, collections curators, etc.) , the research fields, the scientific infrastructures/instruments used for research or collection handling, the collections dedicated to exhibition, and the training of staff for collection curation or digitization techniques,
b) the integration of these data in dedicated visualisation and management decision tools. RBINS will collaborate on this two-fold technical (?) developments with the Belgian institutions relevant for DiSSCo (whether they have or not yet signed an MoU with the DiSSCo.eu partnership).
Another task will focus on the persistent identifier (PID) of collections. Both CETAF collections dashboard and DiSSCo Prepare specialization plan propose a hierarchy of the main DiSSCo collections and sub-collections. This hierarchy must be linked to the GrSciColl inventory and its Collection identification system. The goal is to use the diversity of the Belgian collections to develop and test a standardized identification of the collections, and to propose a dedicated strategy and tailored tools to the DiSSCo community.
The Be.DiSSCo-FED proposal will also work on the standardization of the Description of the collections using the Latimer Core proposed by TDWG and to the standardization of the multimedia files produced by the High-Resolution digitization of the specimens, to allow a FAIR access by Humans and machines.

Event

• 07-05-2024 | Kick-off meeting
  On May 17th, 2024, was the kick-off meeting of the Be.DiSSCo-FED project, the Belgian Federal initiative to align with the development of the EU DiSSCo Research Infrastructure, the EU funded project for the digitalization of the collections of European Natural History museums.  The Institute of Natural Sciences (Brussels) and the Royal Museum for Central Africa, leaders of Be.DiSSCo-FED, welcomed at the Institute of Natural Sciences the partners of the project to discuss the technical and governance aspects of the two years project and organize the work:
    - Meise Botanical Garden
    - Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF)
    - The Belgian Biodiversity Platform
    - The University of Mons
    - The University of Liege
  Be.DiSSCo-FED is funded by BELSPO until June 2026 and has for main objectives to :
  • Strengthen the roles of Belgium at the Federal and national levels within DiSSCo RI, and emphasize the role of RBINS as the Belgian National Node of DiSSCo EU
  • Define a strategy for the DiSSCo RI based on the specialization tools, a prototype platform developed with CETAF allowing the gathering, categorizing, storage and analysis of the expertise related to collections that are lying among Natural Sciences institutions.
  • Use the diversity of the Belgian collections to develop and test a standardized identification of the collections, and to propose a dedicated strategy and tailored tools to the DiSSCo community and stakeholders.​
  • Make digitalized data FAIR and Open-Source using internationally recognized standard(s).

  
  

  Most of Be.DiSSCo-FED partners during the kick-off meeting at the Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels
  Stay tuned for more news regarding the development of the project!

Co-SHARE
Coordination of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe [Partially]

• ESFRI-RI: SHARE
• Durée du projet: 4 years
• Budget: 494 255 €
• Coordinateur: UAntwerpen
• Partenaires financés: ULiège
• Partenaires non financés: -
• Mots-clés: Ageing, Health, Retirement, Well-being, Long-term care, Intergenerational relations

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Résumé

The ESFRI SHARE-ERIC is one of the largest research infrastructures in human sciences in Europe. The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is a micro data set on health, socio-economic status, and social networks of 140,000 individuals aged 50+ in 27 European countries and Israel. Since 2004, the SHARE project has completed eight waves, one every two years (480,000 interviews), plus two other waves in 2020 and 2021 dedicated to the impact of COVID-19. The anonymized data enable registered researchers to analyse the health, social, and economic life dimensions of the ageing population. By July 2021, more than 3,000 scientific publications are based on SHARE research data. Also national and international institutions such as the European Union rely on SHARE research data to construct cross-country comparable statistics on ageing. In Belgium SHARE research data are used to support evidence-based policy making in several key federal interests.
The Co-SHARE consortium consists of two university teams (the Centre for Social Policy Herman Deleeck (CSB) at the University of Antwerp (UA) and the Center of Public Economics and Population Economics (CREPP) at the University of Liège (ULiege)) and the Federal Planning Bureau as subcontractor. The university teams have been associated to the SHARE project from the beginning and act as Country Teams in charge of the project for the Dutch and French speaking population, respectively. From the creation of the SHARE-ERIC in 2011, Belgian federal entities supported the SHARE project in Belgium: BELSPO covers coordination costs and the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and Ministry of Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB) cover fieldwork costs upon the Dutch and French speaking population.
The general aim of the Co-SHARE project is to assure the Belgian participation to the ESFRI SHARE-ERIC and to support its mission for the Belgian population. The main outcome of the Co-SHARE project will be the (Belgian) SHARE data for Wave 9 and 10 (and beyond). In this project proposal, this general project aim is translated into three specific project objectives: (1) Coordination, project management and reporting; (2) Data Management; and (3) Valorisation, diffusion, and exploitation of research data and results. In this proposal, we will discuss how these objectives will be met, how the project will be concretely implemented, and what the expected results are.

Event

• 21-03-2024 | Symposium: SHARE-based research on Health, Ageing and Retirement
  SHARE, the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, is a research infrastructure for studying the effects of health, social, economic and environmental policies over the life-course of European citizens and beyond. Within this framework, the Belgian SHARE team affiliated with the University of Liège and the University of Antwerp warmly invites you to the SHARE Symposium in Brussels on the 21st of March 2024.
  More information...

DAMAR
A Dependable Archive for Managing (Sensitive) Records

• ESFRI-RI: SODHA
• Durée du projet: 15/12/2023 - 15/03/2028
• Budget: 739 190 €
• Coordinateur: ARA/AGR
• Partenaires financés: VUB, UCLouvain
• Partenaires non financés: -
• Mots-clés: Research data management, data archiving, sensitive data, sustainability, open data, social sciences

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Résumé

As of February 2023, the Social Sciences and Digital Humanities Archives (SODHA) has been running for 2 years and a half at the State Archives of Belgium. Thanks to feasibility studies financed by the Belgian Science Policy Office since 2015, a fully-fledged data archive for storing, documenting, sharing, and long-term archiving of social science data is now up and running. Now, to fully anchor the data archive service and secure its existence in Belgium and among the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA), a plan has been elaborated to accrue social science data from federal producers, alongside Belgian universities, and to highlight this sector’s contribution to social science research. To this end, we seek to make SODHA a one-stop shop (1) that provides researchers from all research institutions with everything they need in the way of research tools, legal advice, documentation on data management, data sources, data reuse, and so on. Furthermore, we wish to develop SODHA by utilizing the now available infrastructure and expertise to address a particular need, often expressed by social scientists when interacting with us, which is to set up a “data vault,” (2) i.e., a subsidiary service specialized in accruing, safekeeping, and providing limited and conditional access to sensitive data. The social sciences are rife with datasets whose contents cannot be shared without heavy anonymization or pseudonymisation work (when they can be shared at all). Drawing from the State Archives’ expertise on how to handle sensitive materials, we plan to elaborate a strict legal, policy, and technical framework to safeguard Belgian data and regulate access and reuse with utmost caution. Finally, our plan is committed to the sustainability (3) of the SODHA infrastructure by focusing on 3 axes: a technological upgrade that will enhance the security, robustness, and scalability of the infrastructure; the elaboration of consortia and cooperation agreements with other national and international infrastructures (Archives Portal Europe, Europeana, Orfeo, FRIS…), and the creation of a new organisational model with the aim of increasing the viability of the platform. In addition, the consortium will fully integrate SODHA into the open data policy of the federal government.

Event

• 06-03-2025 | Archiving in Times of Data
  Rejoignez-nous aux Archives générales du Royaume le 6 mars 2025 à l’occasion du premier anniversaire de DigiL4Arch et de DAMAR.
  La stratégie européenne en matière de données souligne l'importance d'accès aux données et de leur partage, introduisant de nouveaux enjeux et de nouvelles opportunités pour les archives.
  Nous aborderons les thèmes de l'archivage, de l'accès et de la conservation des données à l'ère numérique avec des experts nationaux et internationaux. Deux panels discuteront de l'impact de la numérisation croissante sur les pratiques archivistiques des points de vue légal et pratique.
  • La législation européenne sur les données et l'archivage : Explore les derniers développements de la législation européenne sur les données et leurs implications pour l'archivage numérique avec notre panel d'experts juridiques.
  • Archivage et partage de données : Découvrez les pratiques et les stratégies de gestion et de partage de données, à travers des exemples pratiques et des conclusions théoriques.
  DigiL4arch est un projet qui explore les enjeux juridiques de l'archivage numérique, afin d’établir des recommandations pour des amendements à la législation belge sur l'archivage.
  Le projet DAMAR vise à créer une archive fiable pour la gestion des documents (sensibles), en fournissant un environnement de dépôt de données sécurisé et robuste au sein de la plateforme des archives des sciences sociales et des humanités numériques (Sodha).
  Plus d'information...

 

DIGILAB.BE
DIGILAB Belgian Federated Repositories

• ESFRI-RI: HESCIDA
• Durée du projet: 15/12/2023 - 15/03/2028
• Budget: 738 235 €
• Coordinateur: KIK/IRPA
• Partenaires financés: KMKG/MRAH, UAntwerpen, ULiège, UGent
• Partenaires non financés: -
• Mots-clés: Heritage science, federated repositories, open science, fair, linked open data, data integration

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Résumé

Within the broad landscape of heritage studies, heritage science (HS) is a relatively new and growing field, which seeks to bridge the gap between science and humanities in the study of cultural heritage. HS plays a crucial role in the preservation and conservation of cultural heritage, by providing insights into the materials, construction and decay mechanisms of heritage objects, as well as developing new conservation and restoration methods. E-RIHS is the distributed infrastructure supporting HS. Besides the continuation of its ARCHLAB, FIXLAB and MOLAB access platforms, the E-RIHS community is building towards a new access platform, DIGILAB, providing access to digital HS data and tools. Previously, the Belspo-funded HESCIDA project has set the ambitious objective to develop the first and exemplary implementation of a federated repository for the upcoming DIGILAB. KIK-IRPA’s existing documentary portal BALaT (http://balat.kikirpa.be) is used as a base layer to build upon. HESCIDA adds previously undisclosed data to BALaT with FAIR access to KIK-IRPA’s archives, including physicochemical analyses, scientific imaging and conservation data. The core aim of DIGILAB is to enable researchers and practitioners to access HS data from different sources, as well as to support the integration and harmonisation of data. Even in a small country as Belgium, HS is scattered. The primary goal of this proposal is to disclose and interlink scattered data on the Belgian level, rendering it more discoverable and offer it as a single entity to DIGILAB and its global community. BALaT will be used to centralise, integrate and interlink data from different sources, thus becoming an intersectional database. A researcher searching on BALaT by object or artist should be able to retrieve all Belgian HS datasets, instead of solely KIK-IRPA’s. Not all heritage institutions have the necessary technical know-how to make these specific datasets available as open science. From experience gathered during the HESCIDA project, advice and training is envisaged for E-RIHS.be partners to share HS datasets according to the FAIR principles. The outcome of the project is mutually beneficial for all stakeholders involved: researchers, having improved access to well-documented HS data, E-RIHS DIGILAB and the Belgian E-RIHS node, improving visibility and valorisation of their research.

ICOS-BE
Integrated Cabon Observation System (ICOS)

• ESFRI-RI: ICOS
• Durée du projet: 4 years
• Budget: 749 960 €
• Coordinateur: IASB-BIRA
• Partenaires financés: IRSNB-KBIN, UGent
• Partenaires non financés: -
• Mots-clés: Greenhouse gases (GHG), Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS), Atmospheric in-situ measurements, Atmospheric remote sensing measurements, Inorganic carbon parameters in seawater, Oceanic autonomous underway measurement

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Résumé

The ICOS-BE project gathers several Belgian ICOS actors including both FSI (BIRA-IASB and RBINS) involved in the European ICOS Research Infrastructure (RI). All partners together represent the three ICOS components: atmosphere, ocean and ecosystem, and are already contributing to the ICOS RI. The coordinator is also a major player in the targeted integration of the Total Carbon Observing Network (TCCON) in ICOS.
The implementation of the project will result in:

• Extended ICOS-compliant and TCCON data sets of greenhouse gas (GHG) near-surface concentrations and total column abundances, resp., at the ICOS class 2 atmospheric station of the Ile de La Réunion;
• Improved Autonomous Underway Measurement System (AUMS) fully operational onboard the new Research Vessel (RV) Belgica, complemented with additional ocean data;
• The RV Belgica labelled as an oceanic class 2 station;
• Innovative collocated GHG atmospheric concentration and GHG flux measurements, during a test campaign at a Belgian ecosystem site, and later at the Congoflux tower ecosystem site in Congo, with the perspective of long-term operations;
• The start of collaborative interdisciplinary work between the ICOS atmospheric and ecosystem communities in Belgium, and the perspective of also implementing atmospheric GHG measurements onboard the RV Belgica;
• Transmission of knowledge to the younger generation and to Congolese scientists, through training of young technicians and a (preferably African) PhD student in ICOS operations;
• Dissemination and valorisation of all gathered datasets via the Carbon Portal, Belgian Marine Data Centre and international datacenters, and communication of project results to the research community and stakeholders.

KBR Virtual Lab
KBR Virtual lab: e-infrastructure for facilitating access and research of KBR's collections as data

• ESFRI-RI: DARIAH
• Durée du projet: 3 years
• Budget: 399 660 €
• Coordinateur: KBR
• Partenaires financés: -
• Partenaires non financés: -
• Mots-clés: Collections as Data, FAIR Data, Virtual Laboratory, Digital Humanities, DARIA, Research Data Infrastructure

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Résumé

Belgium’s National Scientific Library- KBR, is responsible for preserving historical & cultural objects and for ensuring & providing access to the public. The proposed Virtual Lab allows KBR to develop an infrastructure to facilitate data-on-demand services for the public and researchers to generate data corpora from available KBR data. This includes the technical & practical development of authentication & authorisation for users, to implement APIs to query & export KBR’s data, with support from BELNET. Providing collections as data affords digital humanities research on cultural heritage collections, allowing us to pose different questions to understand our history. E-infrastructures provide opportunities for facilitating access & use of these collections. The KBR Virtual Lab is a contribution to DARIAH and the open data directive, by developing an infrastructure for Belgian & European researchers to access KBR’s collections as data. This infrastructure will contribute to the establishment of KBR’s Digital Data Strategy (2022-2024) and implement the feasibility studies of data.kbr.be & goals of the Digital Research Lab to facilitate text and data mining on the collections. It also contributes goals in the future Action Plan (2022- 2024) in supporting digitisation and facilitating KBR’s data as FAIR - findable, accessible, interoperable & reusable. The Virtual Lab can be used as a best practice for other federal science organizations in considering how to make collections as data available to users, and integrate data-on-demand services to automate the compiling of data corpora.

METROFOOD-FED.BE
Belgian federal components and national node development for the ESFRI research infrastructure, METROFOOD, for the promotion of metrology in food and nutrition

• ESFRI-RI: METROFOOD
• Durée du projet: 15/12/2023 - 15/03/2027
• Budget: 394 375 €
• Coordinateur: Sciensano
• Partenaires financés: -
• Partenaires non financés: -
• Mots-clés: Research infrastructure, food safety, services, metrology, food contact materials, nanoparticles

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Résumé

METROFOOD is an ESFRI-RI in which Sciensano acts as the Belgian national node and provides services in the direction of metrology in food and nutrition in alignment with the mission of the research infrastructure (RI). The scientific directorate (SD) of Chemical and Physical Health Risks at Sciensano has been a part of this ESFRI-RI since its design phase (PRO-METROFOOD), subsequently successfully contributing to the preparatory phase (METROFOOD-PP), and is currently in the process of kick-starting into the implementation phase (METROFOOD-EPI). Within the RI, Sciensano has introduced, developed, tested and established several relevant services in the domain of food safety. In the recently concluded preparatory phase, Sciensano services served as use cases for external target user groups, where the service provision on nanoparticles in the context of METROFOOD-RI was rigorously tested and streamlined in preparation for the implementation phase. These use cases further served in assessing user engagement, an indicator for the impacts, and elaborating the final services portfolio of the RI. In the upcoming implementation phase, Sciensano, along with its scientific components, will aim to position itself and its services in an integrated manner, where the RI will be developed with a renewed focus on catering to the diverse target groups and stakeholders via different access types, access modes, the service interface and with refined access procedures. The food safety components on nanoparticles and food contact materials, currently present within Sciensano, will be further enhanced with sustainability and efficiency and placed at the heart of the METROFOOD-FED.BE objectives. Efforts will specifically focus on the long-term sustainability of the Sciensano components, with a plan towards sustained service provision that is excellence-driven, integrated, state-of-the-art, competitive and lucrative for the target users. Also, efforts will be undertaken for users to identify and better understand the needs and demands, which will be tested within METROFOOD-FED.BE and METROFOOD-EPI.

RBINS-EMBRC
The contribution of the RBINS to the European Marine Biology Resource Centre

• ESFRI-RI: EMBRC
• Durée du projet: 4 years
• Budget: 398 110 €
• Coordinateur: IRSNB-KBIN
• Partenaires financés: -
• Partenaires non financés: EMBRC-be, EMBRC-ERIC
• Mots-clés: Marine, In situ test facility, Artificial hard substrate, Taxonomy, Scientific diving, EMBRC

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Résumé

The current proposal aims at developing the Artificial Hard Substrate Garden (AHSG), a modular and flexible in-situ test facility serving field-based experimental research on the effects of artificial hard substrates and supporting nature inclusive design of marine constructions. This service will be housed by the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC), a distributed Research Infrastructure supporting marine science and Blue Growth. RBINS is the only EMBRC operator focusing on the ecology of artificial hard substrates and therefore the AHSG will fill an important gap in the EMBRC service portfolio. The service offer will serve important research and the development of the Blue Economy and is very timely as (1) Blue Growth initiatives (including the installation of renewable energy devices) will result in very large amounts of artificial hard substrate in environments where such habitat was absent (the sandy offshore environment); (2) competition for space results in occupying deeper or more dynamic marine areas and (3) there is an emerging desire to combine offshore construction with reinforcing the marine environment through science-based nature inclusive design.
We will integrate and optimise existing project-based components in a centrally managed AHSG, develop procedures for cost-efficient maintenance, Standard Operational Protocols and Method Statements and firmly anchor the RBINS service offer in EMBRC in terms of administration, organization, and operations. Finally, a sustainability plan will pave the road towards a continued service offer beyond the lifetime of the project.

SERVE
Strengthening the provision of core services and data to the European Plate Observing System

• ESFRI-RI: EPOS
• Durée du projet: 3 years
• Budget: 398 475 €
• Coordinateur: ORB-KBS
• Partenaires financés: -
• Partenaires non financés: U. da Beira Interior
• Mots-clés: GNSS, EPOS, Data quality monitoring, Integrated data services, Pan-European services, E-infrastructure

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Résumé

The “European Plate Observing System” (EPOS) presently provides pre-operational access to a first set of Solid Earth data and services to measure how the ground moves and understand the underlying physical processes. EPOS is a very large and complex European e-infrastructure, integrating seismology, near-fault observatories, GNSS data and products, satellite data, geomagnetic observations, geological information and modelling… The Belgian federal component of EPOS includes data provision to EPOS, delivery of pre-operational EPOS Core Services as well as participation to the governance of the EPOS Core Services. KSB-ORB, one of the Belgian Federal Scientific Institutes (FSI), currently ensures all these activities.
This project will secure the delivery of the six pan-European GNSS services that KSB-ORB declared as potential future EPOS Core Services in the EPOS-GNSS Consortium Agreement (signed by KSB-ORB in 2019) by establishing a collaboration agreement with EPOS ERIC for the operation of these services in order to anchor them in EPOS. For this purpose, the project will further develop and take the necessary steps to facilitate the long-term maintenance of KSB-ORB’s two least mature services: the GNSS data node and the GNSS data quality monitoring services.
Additionally, this project will map the current Belgian federal data provision to EPOS and investigate if additional data or services can be provided to EPOS. To achieve this goal, it will ensure the necessary interface between potential Belgian federal stakeholders and the relevant EPOS components.

Event

• 24-11-2023 | Webinar "Meet EPOS-BE"
  In the frame of the ESFRI-FED project SERVE funded by BELSPO,
  the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) and EPOS (European Plate Observing System)
  are organising a webinar "Meet EPOS-BE" on November 24, 2023, @ 9:30 AM CET.
  EPOS is the first and only pan-European research infrastructure for solid Earth science, integrating data from different scientific subdisciplines (https://www.epos-eu.org ). Belgium is one of the founding members of EPOS ERIC and currently different research institutions and regional governments are providing services and data to EPOS (https://www.epos-be.eu ).
  The webinar is dedicated to researchers, students, and data professionals eager to explore a cutting-edge Pan-European Research Infrastructure designed to openly share solid earth science data and products.
  The programme will introduce the EPOS infrastructure, its mission, and its significant achievements, with a special focus on the value it provides to users and data providers. We will delve into some of the most relevant scientific use cases for the Belgian solid Earth science community, chosen from the fields of GNSS, satellite data, seismology and anthropogenic hazards, and offer a live walk-through of the EPOS data portal, which will offer insights on how to visualise and combine different types of data.
  More information...

TREE4FLUX
Monitoring trees in intensive, large-scale and long-term inventory plots for scaling eddy covariance carbon dioxide fluxes in Congo basin forests

• ESFRI-RI: ICOS
• Durée du projet: 4 years
• Budget: 719 540 €
• Coordinateur: MRAC-KMMA
• Partenaires financés: Ugent
• Partenaires non financés: -
• Mots-clés: Congo basin, Carbon balance, Rainforest, Vital rates, Eddy covariance flux tower, ICOS

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Résumé

The TREE4FLUX project will support the participation of the Wood Biology Service of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in the UGent-led eddy covariance (EC) CongoFlux tower located in Yangambi (D.R.Congo). The first ambition of TREE4FLUX is to complete the labelling process for CongoFlux and subsequently maintain the label of associated station in the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS), by generating the first continuous multi-annual series of greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes measured above African old-growth rainforest. A second ambition is to tackle the shortcomings inherent to the ‘top-down’ EC approach, by capitalizing on combined RMCA and UGent expertise to develop, consolidate and structurally organise ‘bottom-up’ tree monitoring infrastructures in and around the CongoFlux footprint (the area actually monitored by the EC equipment). These infrastructures will consist of three types of permanent forest inventory plots (intensive, large-scale and geographically dispersed) and the in situ RMCA-led Yangambi wood laboratory. The bottom-up data will be used to validate, complement and strengthen top-down CO2 flux data and will be uploaded as ancillary data to the ICOS carbon portal, which will firmly anchor the position of the combined infrastructures within ICOS. By clinging together RMCA and UGent-led infrastructures, TREE4FLUX will turn Yangambi into the first ‘supersite’ to measure CO2 fluxes in the African tropical rainforest. Combined data will enable robust upscaling of CO2 fluxes, providing benchmark estimates for (inter)national policy, which will further valorise the infrastructures. CongoFlux and its bottom-up infrastructures will complement the ICOS-labelled Guyaflux station in French Guyana. Together, these stations will enable ICOS to capture tropical forest ecosystem responses to climate change and contribute to a complete understanding of global GHG cycles.