Research Infrastructures

EISCAT Scientific Association is an international research association operating three high power large aperture radars. These instruments were designed primarily for probing the ionosphere to obtain electron density and temperature, and ion temperature and drift speed. The instruments are also used for other scientific objectives such as middle-atmospheric turbulence, meteors and space debris. Two of the EISCAT radars have transmitters/receivers located near Tromsø in northern Norway, with one of the systems having additional receivers in Kiruna (Sweden) and Sodankylä (Finland) allowing for measurements of the full ion drift velocity vectors. The third EISCAT radar system is located on Svalbard. The locations of the sites are chosen so that EISCAT is well suited for studies of the coupling of the polar upper atmosphere to space and to the lower atmosphere.

The EISCAT members are research councils and institutes in China, Finland, Japan, Norway, Sweden and United Kingdom. In addition, EISCAT also has affiliate members in France, Russia, South Korea and Ukraine.

The oldest EISCAT systems have been in operation since 1981. They will be replaced by a new system called EISCAT_3D. This system will use antenna arrays instead of the large dish antennas of the present systems. This will allow transmission and reception of multiple simultaneous radio beams, and continuous monitoring of plasma parameters and velocities in three dimensions in a large volume over Northern Scandinavia.

More info in: https://www.eiscat.se/

The European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory (EMSO) is a large scale, distributed, marine Research Infrastructure (RI).

EMSO consists of ocean observation systems for long-term, high-resolution, (near) real-time monitoring of environmental processes including natural hazards, climate change and marine ecosystems. EMSO observatory nodes have been deployed at key sites around Europe, from the Arctic to the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean, to the Black Sea.

Continuous monitoring of the ocean is a highly challenging objective that can be compared only with the exploration of outer space. One must be able to accommodate a multitude of scientific objectives in a single infrastructure, and address a very large and diverse user community including biologists, geoscientists, chemists, and engineers.

Understanding processes in the marine environment is key to addressing complex present-day challenges, such as impacts of climate change, preservation of marine ecosystems,
and mitigation of natural hazards. The establishment of fixed point, open ocean observatories is essential to investigate global earth-ocean processes. EMSO will provide reliable, science-based information to decision makers which will allow them to develop appropriate evidence-based policies in the face of these challenges.

http://www.emso-eu.org/

https://www.icos-ri.eu/

The mission of LifeWatch is to advance biodiversity research and to provide major contributions to addressing the big environmental challenges, including knowledge-based solutions to environmental managers for its preservation. This mission is achieved by providing access through a single infrastructure to a multitude of sets of data, services and tools enabling the construction and operation of Virtual Research Environments (VREs) linked to LifeWatch, and where specific issues related with biodiversity research and preservation are addressed.

LifeWatch was included in the Roadmap of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), the body that identifies the new research infrastructures (RIs) of pan-European interest with the goal of promoting the long-term competitiveness of European Research and Innovation. The concepts behind this European e-Infrastructure were developed in the 1990s and early 2000s, with the support of EU Networks of Excellence related to biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics and functioning. They initiated the design plan for LifeWatch with their understanding that breakthroughs in biodiversity science require a sufficient large European-scale research infrastructure capable of providing the advanced capabilities for data integration, analysis and simulations to complement reductionist experimentation.

http://www.lifewatch.eu/