Metadata, Vocabularies & Ontologies

On 12 & 13 November, the LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre organised the first working meeting on “Metadata, Controlled Vocabularies and Ontologies” in Lecce, Italy.

The aim of the meeting was to set a roadmap for a common strategy to be adopted on metadata, controlled vocabularies and ontologies within the LifeWatch ERIC community and in accordance with the FAIR principles.

The meeting witnessed the participation of 13 experts, with both scientific and technical backgrounds, from Coomon Facilities and national nodes of LifeWatch ERIC (Belgium, Greece, Italy, Slovenia,  Spain, The Netherlands). Three sessions were held on 1) Metadata, 2) Controlled Vocabularies, and 3) Ontologies, each one including a tour de table on existing approaches in the national nodes and a discussion to define common best practices for the implementation and curation of metadata, standardized controlled vocabularies and ontologies.

Presentations, foreseen for each session, outlined previous work and set the current landscape of models, tools and technologies that are available to support metadata, controlled vocabularies and ontologies within national nodes of LifeWatch ERIC. They also provided material for following discussions, where the main technical and scientific approaches about the semantic issues in the Research Infrastructures have been also considered in order to identify a common strategy to be adopted by LifeWatch ERIC.   

Interim Executive Board Meeting

Form 26 – 29 June 2017, the Interim Executive Board of LifeWatch ERIC took place in Melpignano, Lecce, in the magnificent and recently renovated Palazzo Marchesale.

The meeting, hosted by the LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre, thanks to the support of the Town of Melpignano, was the first operative session of the infrastructure, after the I General Assembly held in Seville. Representatives from Spain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Greece and, obviously, Italy, had been meeting for four days to draft the strategical lines of the operative construction of the infrastructure, based on the valorisation of what already produced in the course of the preparatory phase.

Welcome, LifeWatch ERIC!

Deepening biodiversity and ecosystem related issues has become a crucial value in contemporary society, which is tackling global scale challenges on capital elements, such as resource supply, economic development, environmental security and human well-being. The European Commission recognises research in this area as a priority, moving further from the punctual programmes funding the many fixed-term projects, to the institution of a European Research Infrastructure Consortium, as a long term strategy to ensure sustainability of research. Welcome, LifeWatch ERIC!

LifeWatch ERIC is the 14th European research infrastructure to be granted this important status, and it is composed by eight founding member states and three common facilities. Through the use of the ICT, the infrastructure guarantees the access to big sets of data on biodiversity, ensuring their standardisation and interoperability, and providing researchers and institutions with tools and services allowing the creation of customised virtual research environments, supporting policy making.

Italy, through its Ministry for Education, University and Research (MIUR) and its National Research Council (CNR), plays a key role in LifeWatch ERIC, hosting its Service Centre, one of the three common facilities, at the University of Salento, and contributing with its e-Biodiversity Research Institute, powered by a Joint Research Unit counting more than 30 among top level universities, national institutes, regional agencies and academies of the country.

On 8 and 9  May 2017, the first General Assembly of LifeWatch ERIC took place in Seville (Spain), and elected the interim members of the statutory bodies which will manage the Consortium until the formal ones will be appointed. Prof. Alberto Basset has been named interim Director of the Service Centre and interim Member of the Executive Board.

On 23 May 2017, European Commission Director-General for Research & Innovation, Robert Jan-Smits, awarded the LifeWatch ERIC Plate to the Spanish Secretary of State for Research, Development & Innovation, Carmen Vela, who received it on behalf of the entire LifeWatch ERIC community.

Welcome, LifeWatch ERIC!

To see the LifeWatch ERIC statutes, please click here.

You can find the Communication of the European Commission here.

Outcomes of the Crete Technical Meeting

A LifeWatch marine technical meeting was held in the Hellenic Centre of Marine Research (Crete, Greece) from 3–5 June. The meeting was attended by participants of national LifeWatch projects from Spain, Italy, Greece, Sweden, Belgium and the EU funded projects BIOVEL, MicroB3, VIBRANT and EMODNet.