DANUBIUS‐PP Deliverable 5.10 Final report on the role and operation of Supersites. Rules for selection and development of Supersite Hosting Institutions and associated facilities Deliverable 5.10 DANUBIUS-PP Deliverable 5.10 Preparatory Phase for the pan-European Research Project Full title Infrastructure DANUBIUS–RI “The International Centre for advanced studies on river-sea systems” Project Acronym DANUBIUS-PP Grant Agreement No. 739562 Coordinator Dr. Adrian Stanica Project start date 1st December 2016, 36 months and duration Project website www.danubius-pp.eu Deliverable Nr. 5.10 Deliverable Date M18 Work Package No. WP5 Work Package Title Architecture Responsible GeoEcoMar ROMANIA GeoEcoMar Nicolae Panin, Adrian Stanica, Michael Schultz, Maria Ionescu, Adriana Maria Constantinescu AUSTRIA WCL Author & Institute Acronyms Eva Feldbacher, Thomas Hein, Gabriele Weigelhofer, Wolfram Graf, Stefan Schmutz GERMANY BaFG Lars Duester, Katharina Schuetze, Axel Winterscheid, Carmen Kleisinger, Andreas Schöl, Elmar Fuchs HZG 2 DANUBIUS-PP Deliverable 5.10 Jana Friedrich, Justus van Beusekom, Sina Bold BAW Ingrid Holzwarth, Elisabeth Rudolph, Marcus Boehlich GREECE HCMR Panagiotis Michalopoulos DUTH Gyorgios Sylaios HUNGARY SZE Balasz Trasy, Miklós Bulla, István Fórizs, István Gábor Hatvani, Imre Jánosi, Tibor Németh, Csaba Szabó, András Torma, Erika Tóth, Balázs Trásy, Gábor Várbíró, József Kovács ITALY ISMAR CNR Debora Bellafiore, Francesca de Pascalis, Georg Umgiesser, Andrea Barbanti CORILA Caterina Dabala, Pierpaolo Campostrini THE NETHERLANDS Deltares Jos Brils, Tom Buijse, Henriette Otter, Jasperien de Weert, Harm Duel Rijkswaterstaat, Ralph Schielen SPAIN UPC 3 DANUBIUS-PP Deliverable 5.10 Vicente Gracia, Daniel Gonzalez Marco, Agustin Sanchez Arcilla POS Antonio Torralba Silgado, Manuel Alberto Moreno García, Antonio Bejarano Moreno, Jose Carlos García Gómez UNITED KINGDOM USTIR Andrew Tyler, Claire Neil CEH Mike Bowes, Gareth H. Old FRANCE UL Davide Vignati Final (F) Status: Draft (D) Revised draft (RV) Public (PU) Restricted to other program participants (PP) Restricted to a group specified by the Dissemination level: consortium (RE) Confidential, only for members of the consortium (CO) 4 DANUBIUS-PP Deliverable 5.10 This report is on the role and operation of Supersites, and the rules for selection and development of their Hosting Institutions and associated facilities. 1. General description of Supersites 1.1. Introduction to river-sea systems and the concept of Supersites Freshwater and marine systems are central to societal wellbeing, yet they face multiple and confounding pressures from climate change, eutrophication and other natural and anthropogenic perturbations of varying intensities at local and global scales (MEA, 2005; IPCC, 2007). The International Centre for Advanced Studies on River-Sea Systems (DANUBIUS-RI) will be a distributed research infrastructure (RI) that brings together world leading expertise and provide access to a range of river-sea (RS) systems, facilities and expertise, to provide a ‘one-stop shop’ for knowledge exchange, access to harmonised data, a platform for interdisciplinary research, education and training and hence provide answers to questions regarding sustainable management and environmental protection of the RS continuum. There is a widely recognised need to consider the RS system as a single continuum, spanning traditional disciplinary silos (including JPI Water and JPI Oceans) and overcoming the gaps between the existing European environmental policies (e.g. Water Framework Directive 2000; Floods Directive 2007; Marine Strategy Framework Directive 2008; Natura 2000). DANUBIUS-RI will have the capability of providing the evidence base required for a more comprehensive framework for future European environmental policy making. 1.1.1. What are the Supersites? As presented in the ESFRI application and the DANUBIUS-PP Ontology Reference Document, Supersites are the components of the DANUBIUS-RI distributed Research Infrastructure which will be the test beds of the DANUBIUS-RI scientifically excellent ideas, areas where the developed concepts will be refined and verified. A Supersite: Is a defined area of water/land and a site for research and observation activities. However, it is not a local network of institutions nor a research site only for DANUBIUS-RI components Is a site for access by researchers, students and professionals across Europe and elsewhere. May be the national focus for DANUBIUS research community in the host country Supersites will provide natural laboratories for observation, research, modelling and innovation at locations of high scientific importance and opportunity, covering RS systems from river source to transitional waters and coastal seas. Ranging from the near pristine to the heavily impacted, the Supersites will be selected to provide contrasting systems across environmental, 5 DANUBIUS-PP Deliverable 5.10 social and economic gradients that have been impacted, to varying degrees either directly or indirectly, by industrialisation, urbanisation, population expansion, land use change and farming. They will provide interdisciplinary research platforms and identify, model and define system states and conditions for naturally and anthropogenically triggered transitions in the physical, biogeochemical and biological states. They will provide excellent opportunities to undertake social and economic investigations in contrasting settings. Furthermore, Supersites: Provide access to a unique RS system – or part of a RS system - where unique scientific interesting/relevant aspects can be studied Do not duplicate existing monitoring/analysis efforts, but where offered, DANUBIUS- RI will make use of already generated data (e.g. from routine monitoring) that are/or can be made available to the DANUBIUS-RI community Build on / make use of existing infrastructure (incl. governance) and willingness to operate according the DANUBIUS Commons and to do extra analyses (i.e. additional sensors, measurements etc.) Will involve many field sites/observatories/spots where the actual data gathering takes place Cover a geographical determined area, but not with pre-defined size (i.e. minimum or maximum defined m2): scientific arguments define the actual size of the area. This area can cover an entire (small) RS system (like Nestos) or in a large RS system there maybe more than one Supersite (like the Danube river basin, where we have selected three) Are open for all researchers and students, both from research institutions in DANUBIUS-RI member countries and from research institutions in other European countries and globally. Are/provide ‘gateways’ i.e. facilitate access for research in specific parts of RS system: ‘from the mountains to the sea’. This includes helping to acquire any necessary permits/authorization for visiting the sampling sites, taking samples and doing experiments. There is willingness to store physical samples and/or to prepare such samples and then either store them locally or send them to a central storage facility at the Hub. Supersites list DANUBE DELTA (Romania), MIDDLE DANUBE - SZIGETKÖZ (Hungary), UPPER DANUBE (Austria), ELBE-NORTH SEA (Germany), EBRO-LLOBREGAT DELTAIC SYSTEM (Spain), NESTOS (Greece), PO DELTA AND NORTH ADRIATIC LAGOONS (Italy), THAMES ESTUARY (United Kingdom). Another four proposals for Supersites were made and recently accepted by electronic voting of the General Assembly partners: TAY CATCHMENT (United Kingdom), MIDDLE RHINE (Germany), RHINE-MEUSE DELTA (the Netherlands) and GUADALQUIVIR ESTUARY (Spain). Descriptions of the twelve are included in the Annex. 6 DANUBIUS-PP Deliverable 5.10 1.1.2. Connectivity with the other components of the RI Hub The Hub, besides its role as Headquarters (management and coordination of the RI), will also be: ‐ Accredited Service Provider for the Observation, Analysis and Impact Nodes, covering tthe major gap existing in advanced research capabilities in SE Europe in general, and in the Lower Danube – Danube Delta – Black Sea area in particular. ‐ Hosting Institution for the Danube Delta Supersite ‐ Repository of digital and non-digital data (of use to Danube Delta Supersite, but also for other areas of interest, including other Supersites, by request). Information communication between Hub (in particular the DANUBIUS-RI Headquarters and the Executive Team) and Supersites: a. Scientific data: i. Data collected at the Supersites are made available to the Hub via the Data Centre. The Hub will provide storage for non-digital data, to be developed with the support of the Analysis and Observation Nodes (by default for the Danube Delta Supersite, by request for others). ii. A special case is the Danube Delta Supersite, for which the Hub is the Hosting Institution – providing storage for both digital and non-digital data b. Flux of information for the DANUBIUS-RI Executive Team i. Supersite management teams are to provide the Headquarters with periodical management reports, containing information on the technical state of the Supersite facilities, level of access provided to users, DANUBIUS-RI users, education and communication exercises, potential cooperation offers from territory, dynamics of the relations with the local stakeholders. ii. These reports will be grouped into periodic Supersites management reports, to be made available in throughout the entire RI in a transparent way. iii. The Executive Team and / or Supersites management teams bidirectionally communicate in an effective manner