Alike to the importance of the breakthrough of meteorology for the accuracy of the daily weather forecast, LifeWatch will allow a precise follow-up of life on earth and in the oceans. With revolutionary techniques and computational systems Flanders will contribute to Europe’s high technological future of continuous monitoring of the status and the evolution of biodiversity and the ecosystem services that are of major importance for the European society.

LifeWatch: e-Science and Technology Infrastructure for Biodiversity Data and Ecosystem Research

LifeWatch will construct and bring into operation the facilities, hardware, software and governance structures for all aspects of biodiversity research. It will increase our understanding of the living world, the biological diversity of ecosystems, species and their genetic composition, the ecosystem functions and ecosystem services. LifeWatch will provide the research infrastructure to support advanced analysis and modeling of biodiversity data in an integrated system with virtual working environments for scientific and policy user groups. The innovative design of LifeWatch will support scientists to enter new research areas with large-scale data resources, advanced analytical and modeling capabilities with computational power. Computer simulations for example, will be able to make predictions on short and long term and from micro to pan-European scale. These predictions will support the organization of transport, fisheries, agriculture, tourism, etc. and will contribute to an optimal use of the ecosystem services. VLIZ together with INBO coordinates the Flemish contribution to LifeWatch. The project starts in 2012. The construction phase will take five years, and the operational phase will last at least 20 years. Already in 2013 a part of the system will be operational. Three components are central: (1) the coupling and integration of existing databases to the LifeWatch infrastructure for which ‘old data’ will be searched actively and digitalized; (2) the set-up of regional marine, freshwater and terrestrial observatories with sensor networks and semi-automatic monitoring systems to generate real time data; (3) a substantial contribution to the central processing of European data, e.g. run computer simulations, deliver species databases essential for the integration of data streams, etc.

More information on info@vliz.be or tel. 059 34 21 30.