ICOS participates to seven new projects since the beginning of this year. We look forward to cooperating with other research infrastructures, institutes and universities in the European innovation and research field and bringing our skill set to the table.
The new projects that ICOS participates are:
- Solutions for Sustainable Access to Atmospheric Research Facilities ATMO-ACCESS
- Copernicus evolution – Research activities in support of a European operational monitoring support capacity for fossil fuel CO2 emissions CoCO2
- Copernicus Observations In Situ COINS
- Data Infrastructure Capacities for EOSC DICE
- European Open Science Cloud EOSC Future
- Research Infrastructure Training Plus RItrainPlus
- Radon metrology for use in climate change observation and radiation protection at the environmental level traceRadon
Read more about our ongoing and past projects here
ATMO-ACCESS: Better access to distributed atmospheric research infrastructures
The ATMO-ACCESS (2021–2025) is the organised response of distributed atmospheric research facilities for developing a pilot for a new model of Integrating Activities. The project will deliver a series of recommendations for establishing a comprehensive and sustainable framework for access to distributed atmospheric Research Infrastructures (RIs), ensuring integrated access to and optimised use of the services they provide.
With ICOS ERIC’s lead, the project aims to offer common interoperable cloud services across the atmospheric RIs. ICOS will also contribute to delivering an effective Trans-National Virtual Access (TNA-VA) Programme, developing a sustainable future framework for access to atmospheric RIs, providing a virtual access to new cross-RI online data, computing and training services, as well as supporting the dissemination of project results and leading the delivery of the recommendations and best practices on the communications strategies implemented for the pilot access calls.
CoCO2: Developing a European capacity for monitoring anthropogenic CO2 emissions
The CoCO2 (2021–2023) continues the work of the “CO2 Human Emissions” (CHE) project. The main objective of the project is to perform Research and Development (R&D) activities identified as a need in the CHE project. The project will sustain the development of a European capacity for monitoring human-caused (anthropogenic) carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
ICOS is in charge of the work package on Observations and contributes to several other work packages. The Observations work package will further elaborate on the content of the EU’s “Green Report” to provide more detailed information on the in-situ requirements of the Copernicus anthropogenic CO2 emissions Monitoring and Verification Support (CO2MVS) versus current capabilities. The work package will also come with recommendations for the technical requirements for a data pipeline to connect the relevant data streams with the operational data assimilation system and implement a protype. Finally, ICOS will lead the investigation of the potential new measurement techniques and instruments to fill current gaps.
COINS: Supporting the development of the Copernicus in situ component
The COINS is a specific contract project coordinated by the European Environment Agency (EEA) to support the development of the Copernicus in situ component.
ICOS Carbon Portal, through the Lund University, is responsible for the work package 6. The work package will perform two surveys to index and stimulate the development of a monitoring and verification system for the carbon dioxide fluxes from the urban environment. The first survey will explore the current status and expert opinion on the development path for such a system. The second phase will use the information gathered to inform stakeholders in cities, regions and states, and maps their interests and thoughts on the implementation of such a system on their city and/or cities of interest. This helps to validate the implementation progress of the emission reductions as agreed on the basis of the Paris Agreement, and feeds into the so-called stocktake process that will start in 2028.
DICE: Building a European storage and data management infrastructure for the EOSC
The DICE (2021–2023) EU Horizon 2020 project brings together a network of computing and data centres, research infrastructures, and data repositories which propose to enable a European storage and data management infrastructure for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), providing generic services and building blocks to store, find, access, and process data in a consistent and persistent way.
ICOS Carbon Portal contributes to the integration of DICE-offered data services, such as B2SAFE, B2ACCESS and B2FIND, with its community platforms and the community inversion benchmarking tool for atmospheric inversion of ICOS data to reduce uncertainties in greenhouse gas emission data.
EOSC Future: Optimising and exploiting the outputs of the EOSC projects
The EOSC Future project will aggregate services provided by research infrastructures, e-infrastructures, science clusters and research organisations to leverage, enhance, expand, integrate and optimise the outputs of past and current European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) projects: these include EOSC-hub, OpenAIRE-Advance, EOSC-Enhance, Science Cluster projects, and the INFRAEOSC-07 projects.
ICOS, together with other environmental European research infrastructures LifeWatch and SeaDataNet, will represent the Environmental Research Infrastructure (ENVRI) community of the ENVRI-FAIR cluster project to setup two Test Science Projects. One of the projects will concentrate on biodiversity and the other one aims to develop a dashboard on the State of the Environment that will link and bridge from EOSC to all relevant information from the Cluster’s infrastructures.
RItrainPlus: Designing a training programme for managers of European research infrastructures & core facilities
The RItrainPlus (2021–2024) is an EU Horizon 2020 project which will design and deliver a training programme to fulfill the competency requirements for the current and future managers of European Research Infrastructures and Core Facilities.
ICOS contributes to all the work packages and leads the communications and outreach of the project. This includes external communication, as well as linking the project to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) data clusters for dissemination and exchange of needs. Overall, the project aims to communicate for a wide range of stakeholders to share the wealth of knowledge and best practices for the mutual benefit of the European Research Infrastructures and Core Facilities.
traceRadon: Tracing low-level outdoor radon concentrations
TraceRadon is a European Metrology Programme for Innovation and Research (EMPIR) project that will provide the necessary measurement infrastructure and use the data that it generates to apply the Radon Tracer Method (RTM). RTM is important for greenhouse gas emission estimates that support national reporting under the Paris Agreement on climate change. The main goal of the project is to establish metrological traceability for low-level outdoor radon activity concentrations measurements, which is also a recommended measurement parameter at the ICOS atmosphere stations, and radon flux measurements.
ICOS Carbon Portal contributes to the project together with national metrological institutes and other scientific partners by updating the process-based radon flux map for geographical Europe to cover more recent time periods and to increase the temporal resolution from monthly to daily fluxes.