© ATMO-ACCESS

ATMO-ACCESS invites researchers, both from academia and industry, working in relevant fields to cooperate with us through our Associated Partnership programme.

ATMO-ACCESS provides coordinated open physical, remote and virtual access to state-of-the-art facilities and services in atmospheric research infrastructures (RI). ATMO-ACCESS addresses the needs for developing guidelines and recommendations for establishing a comprehensive and sustainable framework for access to distributed atmospheric RIs.

The project mobilizes resources in the different atmospheric RI communities (ACTRIS, ICOS, IAGOS) to engage facilities and national stakeholders into harmonizing access procedures in relation to policies, conditions for access and financial regulations. ATMO-ACCESS aims at enlarging the range of products, capabilities and accessibility of different research facilities to offer complementary and innovative services, including digital services, as part of a joint cross-RI effort.

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© ESS // photo Roger Eriksson

At the end of June 2021, ESS received the official BREEAM certificate acknowledging that the ESS Office has achieved an Outstanding level, the highest rating in the international sustainability assessment for buildings, with one of the highest scores worldwide (91.5%).

“Since the beginning, ESS has had a very strong sustainability focus, aiming to become one of the most environmentally sustainable research infrastructures worldwide,” says Kent Hedin, ESS Head of Conventional Facilities. “We decided even before the construction of the facility started in 2014 to use BREEAM as a backbone for our sustainability requirements. The Outstanding rating is proof that all our efforts and hard work, together with our partners, to build the facility in a sustainable way have been successful.”

BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) was the world’s first building assessment system when established in the UK in 1990. It is today the globally leading environmental assessment, with almost 600,000 buildings certified in 89 countries. BREEAM measures buildings against a wide range of variables, including energy efficiency, sustainable materials, water management and innovation initiatives.

The BREEAM certificate obtained is for the Office building, however ESS and construction partner Skanska have followed the same sustainability requirements for all the 26 buildings at the ESS site.

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© DARIAH-EU

DARIAH will participate in the Computational Literary Studies Infrastructure (CLS INFRA) project, which has been granted funding from the European Commission in the framework of Horizon 2020. The project kicked off in March 2021 and will run for a total of 48 months. It aims to build a shared resource focused on high-quality data, tools and services to undertake literary studies in the digital age.

The project brings together a Consortium of 13 partners, led by the Institute of Polish Language of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and composed of national knowledge and data infrastructures, high-profile international projects and pan-European research infrastructures. Their expertise will not only allow to develop new tools, services and datasets but also to bring in and harmonise existing resources.

“For years now it has become increasingly apparent that the community looking to data mine literary texts, an increasingly large and complementary subset of literary scholars, had unique and unmet infrastructural needs” said Jennifer Edmond, President of the Board of Directors in DARIAH-EU.

One of the main challenges that the project will face is the current landscape of literary data which is very heterogenous and fragmented. Often, the resources available are far from being standardised in terms of how they are constructed, accessed and the extent to which they are reusable. A wider array of strategies will be deployed in CLS INFRA to align these diverse resources with each other.

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© EU

A new Eurobarometer survey published today shows that European citizens believe climate change is the single most serious problem facing the world. More than nine out of ten people surveyed consider climate change to be a serious problem (93%), with almost eight out of ten (78%) considering it to be very serious. When asked to pick out the single most serious problem facing the world, over a quarter (29%) chose either climate change (18%), deterioration of nature (7%) or health problems due to pollution (4%).

In terms of policy response, nine out of ten Europeans (90%) agree that greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced to a minimum while offsetting remaining emissions to make the EU climate-neutral by 2050. Close to nine in ten Europeans (87%) think it is important that the EU sets ambitious targets to increase renewable energy use, and the same percentage believe that it is important that the EU provides support for improving energy efficiency.

Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal Frans Timmermans said: “Despite the pandemic and the economic hardship Europeans are facing, support for climate action remains high. Europeans recognize the long-term risks posed by the climate and biodiversity crises, and expect industry, governments and the European Union to take action. The numbers in this Eurobarometer survey serve as a rallying call for politicians and businesses. For the European Commission they provide added motivation to finalize the ‘Fit for 55′ legislation that we’ll present later this month to make sure we reach our climate targets.”

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© eLTER

Understanding the Earth is not possible without interdisciplinary science. We need a holistic approach where environmental data, research products and services produced by the different Research Infrastructures (RIs) are harmonized and easy to access and use for scientists from any field of environmental research. Such integration efforts are organized within the European environmental Research Infrastructures (ENVRI) community.

ENVRI is a cluster of terrestrial, solid earth, marine and atmospheric domains consisting of over 20 RIs working together to observe the Earth as one system. It collaborates to provide environmental data, tools, and other services that are Open and Fair, and can be used by anyone for free. eLTER is part of the ENVRI community.

The senior representatives of the RIs in the ENVRI community are part of the Board of European environmental research infrastructures (BEERi). BEERi meets twice a year to discuss joint strategies and communication efforts of the environmental RIs. Particularly the integration of the European environmental RI landscape, joint communication efforts in, for example, EGU meetings, and sharing of information has been valuable for the RIs of the ENVRI community.

The ENVRI community is currently fueled by the EU funded ENVRI-FAIR project. ENVRI-FAIR makes the environmental research infrastructure data and services FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable). eLTER’s role in the project is to participate in several Work Packages as task leads and contributors through EAA, UKCEH and BIOSENSE, and to contribute to all WPs where RI level contribution is needed, for example WP 11 Biodiversity and ecosystem subdomain implementation.

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