NIVA is a partner in two new Horizon Europe projects from the European Commission.

• The Observing and Mapping Marine Ecosystems – Next Generation Tools (OBAMA-NEXT) project
  1 December 2022- 30 November 2026

OBAMA-NEXT aims to develop a toolbox for generating accurate, precise and relevant information characterising marine ecosystems and their biodiversity. This will be achieved by integrating new/emerging technologies, including remote sensing, eDNA, optical instruments and citizen science, with existing marine monitoring techniques for improving our capacity to describe ecosystem function and biodiversity with higher spatial and temporal resolution. The project will contribute to shaping next generation monitoring programs and defining Essential Ocean/Biodiversity Variables (EOVs/EBVs). ​​​​​​​

Participants from NIVA/NIVA Denmark are Jesper Harbo Andersen (Leader, NIVA-DK), Hege Gundersen (NIVA), Ciaran Murray (NIVA-DK), Therese Harvey (NIVA-DK), Steen Wilhelm Knudsen (NIVA-DK and Kasper Hancke (NIVA).

• Infrastructure for Marine and Inland Water Research (AquaINFRA) project
  1 January 2023- 31 December 2026

Restoring and protecting our marine and inland waters is one of the urgent tasks of our time and addressed by the EU Mission Restore our oceans and waters by 2030. The aim is to reduce human pressure on marine and freshwater environments, restore degraded ecosystems, and sustainably make use of the services they provide. This requires up-to-date high-quality data available under FAIR principles covering the whole water continuum from inland water, over coastal waters to the oceans, and addressing all elements in the DPSIR (Drivers – Pressures – States – Impacts – Response), which is the causal framework for describing the interactions between society and the environment adopted by the European Environment Agency (Dahl et al, 2015).  

The AquaINFRA project aims to develop a virtual environment equipped with FAIR multi-disciplinary data and services to support marine and freshwater scientists and stakeholders restoring healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters. The AquaINFRA virtual environment will enable the target stakeholders to store, share, access, analyse and process research data and other research digital objects from their own discipline, across research infrastructures, disciplines and national borders leveraging on EOSC and the other existing operational dataspaces. Besides supporting the ongoing development of the EOSC as an overarching research infrastructure, AquaINFRA is addressing the specific need for enabling researchers from the marine and freshwater communities to work and collaborate across those two domains.

Participants from NIVA/NIVA Denmark are Therese Harvey (leader, NIVA-DK), Helene Frigstad (NIVA), Elizaveta Protsenko (NIVA), Zofia Rudjord (NIVA), Leah Jackson-Blake (NIVA) and James Edward Sample (NIVA).

Fur further information regarding the projects go to:
OBAMA-NEXT
AquaINFRA

You can also read the press release from the European Comissions here.