AQUARIUS is a new Horizon Europe project aimed at combining diverse research infrastructures to provide access, training and deliver data collected according to European best practices to facilitate the work of researchers and key stakeholders in marine and freshwater systems. Coordinated by the Marine Institute, with involvement from different key partners among which EMSO ERIC, the project will provide an impressive range of 57 research infrastructure services including research vessels, mobile marine observation platforms, aircraft, drones, satellites, sensors, fixed freshwater and marine observatories and test sites, experimental facilities, and sophisticated data infrastructures. 

Specifically, AQUARIUS will offer transnational access across Europe allowing researchers and users to tap into a wide array of resources, through a centralised user-friendly access portal, and ensuring a robust and transparent system for funding projects.

AQUARIUS’s transnational Calls will emphasize thematic and geographic integration, with a specific focus on Lighthouse Regions such as the Baltic and the North Sea Basins, the Black Sea, the Atlantic/Arctic, and the Mediterranean Sea, along with their associated rivers. Projects selected for access must demonstrate their ability to integrate multiple infrastructures and contribute to the core objectives of Mission Ocean, including protecting and restoring marine and freshwater ecosystems, preventing and eliminating pollution, and promoting a sustainable, carbon-neutral, and circular blue economy.

The specific objectives of the AQUARIUS are to:

  1. Coordinate the enhancement and integration of a diverse range of top-level infrastructure services.

 

  1. To provide efficient, single-point, transnational access to a broad range of integrated research infrastructure

 

  1. To design, develop, and manage Transnational Access Calls to the research infrastructure

 

  1. Facilitate efficient and timely access to the distributed research infrastructure portfolio, for selected projects, according to the needs of the selected user communities

 

  1. Deliver highly effective training and scientific and technical support for users of the research infrastructures

 

  1. Ensure advanced data management, interoperability, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g., data services) to the European Open Science Cloud.

 

  1. Maximise the impact of the project through dynamic dissemination, exploitation and communication activities, ensuring that the projects using the integrated research infrastructures can support the Mission ‘Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030’.

 

Learn more about AQUARIUS and EMSO’s role in the project