LifeWatch ERIC
LifeWatch ERIC is Europe’s only e-Science infrastructure, offering FAIR-compliant data and analytical services dedicated to research in both biodiversity and ecosystem. Covering a specific and unique niche in the European and international landscape, LifeWatch ERIC’s vision is to become the Research Infrastructure providing one-click access to the world’s content, communities, and services in biodiversity and ecosystem.
Through LifeWatch ERIC, researchers can discover, access, harmonise, standardise, integrate, and analyse data, enabling advanced modelling of biodiversity and ecosystems.
These concepts are multidimensional and even cross-domain: biodiversity is studied across the many levels of biological organisation, as well as scales of observation. Ecosystems are recognised across multiple scales, components and interactions.
To allow the investigation of this complexity, LifeWatch ERIC deploys cutting-edge e-infrastructure technology which federates FAIR-compliant data, reproducible analytical services and mobilised research communities, generating knowledge and innovation.
Virtual Research Environments (VREs) provide resources (technological push) for researchers to test their hypotheses and derive evidence-based knowledge (scientific pull), ultimately producing knowledge stemming from multiple disciplines or domains (synthetic knowledge).
The results of this have contributed to advancing various research fields at national, European and global levels, such as macroecology, agroecology, aquatic ecology, invasive taxa, marine ecology, semantic, blockchain, and text mining.
The infrastructure consists of four basic interconnected layers:
Core (vertical) services, (e.g., AAI, HPC, could services);
Integration (horizontal) services (e.g., Metadata Catalogue, EcoPortal);
Ecosystem of analytics, composed of hundreds of web services;
Services for converting research results into knowledge.
Learn more: www.lifewatch.eu
The International Association for Biological Oceanography
The International Association for Biological Oceanography (IABO) is a global organization dedicated to promoting the advancement of knowledge of marine life and the biology of the sea by providing opportunities for communication and collaboration between biological oceanographers, marine biologists, and scientists of diverse disciplines. IABO serves as a network of scientists, researchers, and stakeholders advancing biological oceanography by fostering international collaboration and interdisciplinary research efforts.
IABO provides a platform for the dissemination of knowledge, hosting conferences, publishing research findings, supporting capacity-building initiatives for early-career scientists, and highlighting and awarding outstanding accomplishments in marine biodiversity science. The Association recognizes scientists demonstrating exceptional leadership in marine biodiversity science with the Carlo Heip Award, named in recognition of Carlo Heip's pioneering contributions to marine biodiversity research and the establishment of the World Conference of Marine Biodiversity (WCMB).
In partnership with research institutions around the world, IABO has supported the organization of six WCMB conferences hosted in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Oceania since 2008. IABO acts under the umbrella of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS) of the International Science Council (ISC), and serves as ex-officio member of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR). The Association is proud to serve as a sponsor of the WCMB 2026 in Bruges organized by the Flanders Marine Institute.
