Call for marine biodiversity (monitoring) data (CLOSED)

The ocean and its biodiversity are essential to life on this planet. Comprehensive data on biodiversity, and related human and environmental pressures are crucial to understand its current state and how this may change. Protecting and restoring biodiversity is one of three objectives of the Horizon Europe Mission to restore our oceans and waters by 2030, enabling the EU to reach its Green Deal and Biodiversity 2030 targets. Identified as one of the Mission "enablers", the EU will build on “a digital knowledge system” to include a  Digital Twin of the Ocean (DTO) allowing simulation of ‘what if’ scenarios, advancing ocean knowledge, informing evidence-based policy and offering a range of societal applications.

The DTO-BioFlow project

To effectively replicate the ocean’s ecology, the DTO requires sustained flows of data on biodiversity and associated pressures. While biodiversity data are being collected by myriad actors, using a wide variety of methods (including novel cost-effective monitoring technologies), not all these data become publicly available in a standardized format. DTO-BioFlow will activate these "sleeping" marine biodiversity data and enable the sustainable integration of data flows from various sources to EMODnet and into the EDITO infrastructure serving the EU DTO.

Combining sustained data flows, models and new algorithms, DTO-BioFlow will develop and integrate the biological component of the DTO, including new digital tools and services. Policy-relevant use cases, will demonstrate the benefit for marine ecosystems of continuous data streams flowing through EMODnet and usable by the EU DTO infrastructures and ultimate end-users. For more information on the DTO-BioFlow project, click here.

Who can apply

Eligible beneficiaries for this call are data holders (international networks, citizen science networks, research institutes, universities, NGOs, etc.) who can facilitate sustained and long-term ingestion to the EU DTO of previously inaccessible data. Entities subject to EU restrictive measures under Article 29 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and Article 215 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU) are not eligible to participate as recipients of this FSTP. Please note that beneficiaries or affiliated partners of the DTO-BioFlow project cannot receive funding through this call.

Applicants should have a good command of English, must be eligible for participation in the EC Horizon Europe Framework Programme (see list of participating countries) and must ensure to follow the following obligations of the Grant Agreement: Articles 12 (conflict of interest), 13 (confidentiality and security), 14 (ethics), 17.2 (visibility), 18 (specific rules for carrying out action), 19 (information) and 20 (recordkeeping). The DTO-BioFlow project coordinator will also ensure that the bodies mentioned in Article 25 (e.g. granting authority, OLAF, Court of Auditors (ECA), etc.) can exercise their rights also towards the recipients.

Applicants need to have the rights and permissions to work with the data, and bring these into the public domain under an open license.

The selected beneficiaries commit to carry out the following activities:

• Participate in the workshop which will provide training on how to reformat and quality control data conform international standards (see further) and make these available to EMODnet Biology, held in April 2024 in Paris or Ostend in week 15 or 17. In person attendance of at least one representative per selected beneficiary is required. It will also be possible to attend the training workshop online, in case multiple people per beneficiary want to attend the workshop but cannot all attend in person.
• Contribute to the flow of marine biodiversity data into the DTO, through developing data flow pipelines to EMODnet Biology. Setting up a data flow through intermediate data systems that already have or will in the near future have a direct data flow pipeline to EMODnet Biology (e.g. ICES, ETN) is also eligible.
• Ensure the data is formatted, standardized, and quality-controlled conforming to the relevant international standards (as demonstrated in the workshop) (e.g. using the Darwin Core standard for biodiversity data, OBIS-ENV-DATA as the preferred format, World Register of Marine Species, Marine Regions and BODC NERC Vocabulary Server (NVS) to standardize taxonomic names, location names and parameter names respectively, EMODnet Biology QC Check tool to perform quality checks).
• Ensure the data complies to Open Access, preferably under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. If applicants plan to use any other license, this needs to be detailed in their application.
• Ensure that metadata and data will become available through EMODnet Biology. 
• Provide short intermediary reports on their progress every four months, and a final report on the results at the end of the 12-month project. 
  

Funding & eligibility

The maximum amount of financial support for each third party is 60.000 EUR.

Half of the funding (50%) will be granted at the start of the project, the other half (50%) will be granted at the end of the project, which corresponds to a successful realization of the proposed activities.

List of costs that qualify for financial support:

• Personnel costs to execute the following types of activities:
  • Development of pipelines for data processing, reformatting, standardisation, transfer and publication
  • Development of data access API’s (Application Programming Interface)
  • Data quality control
  • Data documentation and management (in accordance with FAIR principles)
• Travel costs to attend the data training workshop in April 2024, held in Paris (France) or Ostend (Belgium). At least one person and at most 2 persons per selected beneficiary should attend the workshop in person. 

To be eligible to receive this grant, applications need to meet the following criteria: