Sister Projects
B-USEFUL
User-oriented Solutions for Improved Monitoring and Management of Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in vulnerable European Seas
Europe’s marine biodiversity is under pressure. Putting it on a path to recovery by 2030 requires informed science advice and operational decision-support tools. In this context, the EU-funded B USEFUL project will develop user-oriented tools and solutions to monitor, assess and protect marine biodiversity. Specifically, it will improve existing European data infrastructures and governance frameworks. To do so, it will first identify end-user needs and work with experts to co-develop biodiversity indicators, targets and scenarios. The project will also carry out model forecasts of changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services. The support tools will assist end users in prioritizing conservation efforts in biodiversity hotspots, or other high-risk areas requiring a stricter degree of protection.
To identify end user-needs, a serious game was designed: iBLUE. The primary purpose of a serious game is to communicate, collect information, educate or gain insight, apart from pure entertainment. Thus, the iBLUE-game is developed to inform policy makers and area managers on biodiversity indicators. By playing it, we also collect information on the needs and barriers of end-users in marine biodiversity management, in specific regarding the use of biodiversity indicators and the realization of management measures to realize an improved biodiversity.
Then thanks to this iBLUE, the B-UESEFUL initiative set up interactive end-user forums ensuring the co-development of project outcomes fit for decision-making within existing frameworks for marine governance and ecosystem-based advice. The goal is also to maximize the uptake and harmonization of available European data infrastructure for monitoring and assessing marine biodiversity to understand better cumulative impacts and risks acting on marine biodiversity and provide new model infrastructure and capacity to make projections of future biodiversity and ecosystem services.
The envisioned main result of B-USEFUL will be to co-develop a user-oriented decision-support tool hosted within an existing infrastructure for science advice and ocean governance.
MAMBO
Modern Approaches to the Monitoring of BiOdiversity
Monitoring wildlife is spatially and temporally fragmented, taxonomically biased, and lacks European integration. All this prevents the implementation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the Birds and Habitats Directives. The EU-funded MAMBO project will develop, test, and implement new tools for the cost-effective monitoring of conservation status and ecological requirements of protected species and habitats. MAMBO will combine the technical expertise of computer science, remote sensing, social science expertise on human-technology interactions, environmental economy, citizen science, and biological expertise on species, ecology, and conservation biology. The project will engage stakeholders in identifying biodiversity monitoring needs and investigate the establishment of a virtual lab to automate workflow deployment and efficient computing of the vast data streams
To this end, MAMBO Develops recognition-based AI solutions for EU biodiversity monitoring from species to habitats by evaluating and integrating image and sound inputs and observations. The objective will also be to create high spatial resolution regional EU habitat maps and site-specific habitat condition metrics.
These tools, both developed in MAMBO or adapted from previous work, will enable easier ecological monitoring by researchers, policymakers, citizens, and other stakeholders, also allowing a simplified evaluation of the costs and benefits of their actions.
B3 EU Project
Biodiversity Building Blocks for policy
Climate change, pollution, natural resource exploitation, and land use change are global threats to biodiversity and ecosystems. Quantifying their impact, however, is not easy. Rapid, reliable, and repeatable monitoring of biodiversity data is needed at all scales, from local to global. In this context, the EU-funded B3 project will simplify and standardize access to biodiversity data using the essential biodiversity variables framework. The overall goal of the project is to facilitate access to tools in a cloud computing environment, in real-time and on demand. B3 will pave the way for a future where primary biodiversity data are seamlessly integrated into monitoring and forecasting. This way, policy, and management can proactively respond to problems.
The project works closely with existing biodiversity initiatives to identify and address policy needs. It leverages the concept of data cubes to standardize access to biodiversity data using the Essential Biodiversity Variables framework. These cubes are the basis for models and indicators of past, current and future biodiversity. The models will be accessible to users in real-time and on-demand in a cloud computing environment, delivering information on biodiversity status and change. To ensure its results can be reused, the project creates exemplary automated workflows for modeling using biodiversity data cubes and for the calculation of change indicators. The effectiveness of B-Cubed’s solutions is demonstrated in four case studies located in Europe and South Africa.
GreenInCities
Participatory and sustainable greening solutions for all
In neglected urban areas, persistent issues such as pollution, social disparities, and inadequate infrastructure pose major problems for communities. Residents endure low-quality built environments and lack access to essential services and green spaces, impacting their well-being and quality of life. Meanwhile, conventional regeneration strategies and smart technologies have primarily benefited affluent districts, exacerbating the urban divide. In this context, the EU-funded GreenInCities project aims to address disparities by prioritising societal awareness, advancing beyond conventional greening methods, and integrating cutting-edge tech. The overall goal is to enhance liveability, functionality, and resilience in vulnerable communities. Embracing nature as a stakeholder, GreenInCities pioneers a holistic approach to climate adaptation, fostering inclusive and sustainable urban environments for all.
The project is currently experimenting solutions in 11 cities across Europe, from Spain to Lithuania, by implementing solutions for the well-being of their inhabitants based on the New European Bauhaus principles. A crucial approach to integrating biodiversity protection and regeneration is at the heart of this project and GUARDEN is taking an active part in the pilot project set in Barcelona thanks to the tools it developed over the last few years.
Eco2Adapt
Ecosystem-based Adaptation and Changemaking to Shape, Protect and Maintain the Resilience of Tomorrow’s Forests
Forests can be destroyed through climatic events such as storms or drought, or attacked by pests and pathogens, leaving a devastated landscape and despairing local populations. The EU-funded eco2adapt project will develop the ecosystem-based adaptation framework derived from nature-based solutions and work in Living Labs located in climate hotspots in Europe and China. It will use an advanced Decision Theatre approach to investigate how to integrate disturbance and vulnerability into forest management by developing changemaking scenarios. Furthermore, it will create innovative technical, economic and governance mechanisms at a regional level, apply semantic technology to establish a knowledge base for hosting FAIR data, create a smartphone application (OneForest ToolBox) to enable users to add data on climate-resilient forests, and provide cutting-edge tools to monitor vulnerability and resilience.
ICARIA
Improving ClimAte Resilience of crItical Assets
The frequency and severity of climate-related disasters have been increasing over the past 20 years. According to climate change projections, this will worsen in the coming decades. The EU-funded ICARIA project will use asset-level modeling to understand climate-related direct and indirect impacts provoked by complex, compound, and cascading disasters and the risk reduction that suitable, sustainable, and cost-effective adaptation solutions provide. The project focuses on critical assets and infrastructures not designed to consider potential changes to climate, as well as on housing and natural land areas. ICARIA will implement and replicate innovative methods and multi-risk assessment approaches in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, the South Aegean archipelago, and the Salzburg region in Austria. The project will assist risk owners in assessing adaptation solutions’ costs and benefits.
The development of project ICARIA involves the development of a large number of datasets related to various fields: historical meteorological data, climate projections, historic economic losses associated with past extreme weather events, or inventories of vulnerable assets. As a result of ICARIA’s novel risk assessment methods, a set of maps is produced. According to the risk assessment framework, these maps can represent the geographical distribution of either hazard, vulnerability, or risk against specific climate hazards. A detailed list of adaptation measures and multi-risk assessment models enables the users to assess the cost and effects of both the scenarios they are facing and the solutions they might be implementing. All of this is the result of the 4 case studies of ICARIA. Finally, ICARIA is designing a toolbox that proposes a set of Decision Support Systems (DSS) so that users can improve climate planning on critical infrastructures.
Biodiversity Meets Data (BMD)
Description as follow and logo in attachment
Biodiversity Meets Data – BMD – is a Single Access Point that provides managers of natural resources and policy makers with access to high-throughput biodiversity monitoring tools and AI driven taxon identification services, services to mobilise historical baseline and legacy data to FAIR data repositories, a data catalogue to all available biodiversity information, a suite of Virtual Research Environments (VREs) for data analyses for the terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms, and a web-GIS data viewer to explore the data and VRE results. All data are harmonised across space-time-taxonomy and transformed into multi-dimensional data cubes that are analysed by the VREs. The VREs are co-designed with the stakeholder representatives to ensure that the VREs meet all requirements. The VREs include tools for a) biodiversity monitoring, b) identification and analysis of drivers of change, and c) projections of land cover and climate change on the distribution of species and habitats. The VRE results are presented as comprehensive products to the end users so that they can effectively be used to monitor biodiversity, address drivers of biodiversity loss, and plan, manage and expand protected areas, improve the conservation status of species and habitats, and comply to the reporting obligations under the EU nature directives based on up-to-date knowledge and solutions. BMD builds on a consortium of partners that are involved in the development of European research infrastructures and biodiversity monitoring projects, including eLTER (Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem, critical zone and socio-ecological Research), LifeWatch ERIC, MAMBO (Modern Approaches to the Monitoring of BiOdiversity), BGE (Biodiversity Genomics Europe), B3 (Biodiversity Building Blocks for Policy, GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), and ARISE (Authoritative and Rapid Identification System for Essential biodiversity information) among others.