DANUBIUS-IP is a 36-month Coordination and Support Action to support the ongoing development of DANUBIUS-RI – an environmental research infrastructure linking rivers and seas – as it proceeds towards its Operational Phase. The project proposes 7 work packages, in two parallel workstreams, that together will: • deliver a new governance structure for the RI as it transitions to DANUBIUS-ERIC; • enhance the ICT potential of the RI to enable virtual delivery of key services; • implement the Science and Innovation Agenda supported by agile and quality assured scientific services; • demonstrate the value of the RI through examples of the unique services that the RI can offer to end-users across Europe and internationally; • expand the DANUBIUS-RI community and enhance its standing in the wider European and International environmental RI landscape; and • ensure that the potential of DANUBIUS-RI to have significant social and economic impact is widely communicated. DANUBIUS-IP is coordinated by GeoEcoMar (Romania) and brings together 25 experienced partners from 14 countries from across Europe in a consortium with complimentary areas of multi-disciplinary expertise across the freshwater and marine research fields. The project specifically seeks to address recommendations from the recent ESFRI and High-Level Expert Group reports (on DANUBIUS-RI) and make a significant contribution to the expected outcomes and wider impacts of the Horizon Europe Programme. As such the project considers the importance of sustainability of financial commitments, the need to test the funding model and to enhance the visibility of the RI. DANUBIUS-IP will further demonstrate the efficacy of an integrated and interdisciplinary approach embracing a 'river-sea continuum' perspective to fill current gaps in the Research and Innovation landscape to address key societal challenges in these environments impacted by anthropogenic pressures and climate change.

MARCO-BOLO (MBO) aims to structure and strengthen European coastal and marine biodiversity observation capabilities, linking them to global efforts to understand and restore ocean health, hence ensuring that outputs respond to explicit stakeholder needs from policy, planning and industry. To this end MBO will establish and engage with a Community of Practice (CoP) to determine end-user needs with the aim of optimising marine data flows, knowledge uptake, and improving governance based on biodiversity observations. By exploiting synergies with concurrent projects MBO will develop and demonstrate new autonomous technology for biodiversity mapping and monitoring, and data streams from remote sensing, eDNA, robotics, optical and acoustic observations. Protocols for eDNA-based biodiversity observations are established and validated across applications, taxa and ecosystems. The sequence of the analytical and technical processes for the different use cases will be incorporated into operational Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) and Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) and included into online reusable workflows, contributing to the free and open access of EU and global biodiversity information facilities, and to support major EU biodiversity directives and global initiatives. The project partnership will leverage its international activities (MBON, GOOS, OBIS) and participation in UN Ocean Decade Programmes (Marine Life 2030, OBON, ODIS, Ocean Practices for the Decade) to align the MBO work programme to global CoP, ensuring European participation and leadership in global biodiversity monitoring and global science. MBO results will be designed to build upon existing capability and infrastructures, and to be relevant to existing frameworks so that outputs can be easily integrated into national, regional (EU and adjacent sea basins), and global observation systems, with no delay ensuring the reusability of the investments Europe is already making in data generation.

SAFARI’s project aims to develop a generic digital platform for resilient port infrastructure, connected to large port communities, facing extreme weather events, with emergency management modules fed by operational, maintenance and analytical modules. The implementation of the SAFARI project will allow to: Maintain the port operation at 80% of capacity during the disruption periods; Optimize the allocation of multi-modal transport assets before and after the disrupting event to reach 20% of modal cargo shift with less environmental footprint and to minimize the downtime during extreme weather events; Develop resilience measures to strengthen existing port infrastructure against extreme weather events. Ensure the safety of personnel, vessels and protect the biodiversity; Build a governance model and guidelines to address climate risks and hazards for port infrastructure. The SAFARI consortium aims to deploy new measures reaching a TRL 7 by the end of the project in different maritime and inland infrastructures of port partners, from North Sea, Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, that can minimize the impacts of the disturbances issued from the extreme weather events. Three pilot demonstrators are selected from the littorals of Europe, namely Port of Dunkirk (FR), Port of Seville (ES) and Port of Lisbon (PT).

DANUBIUS-PP is a three-year project to raise DANUBIUS-RI (International Centre for Advanced Studies on River-Sea Systems) to the legal, financial and technical maturity required for successful implementation and development. DANUBIUS-RI is a pan-European distributed research infrastructure (RI) building on existing expertise to support interdisciplinary research on river-sea (RS) systems, spanning the environmental, social and economic sciences. It will provide access to a range of RS systems, facilities and expertise, a ‘one-stop shop’ for knowledge exchange, access to harmonised data, and a platform for interdisciplinary research, education and training. DANUBIUS-PP will bring together key stakeholders at different levels, and strengthen the consortium through a process of wide engagement. Individual work packages will refine, inter alia, the scientific and innovation agenda, the legal framework, governance and management, and policies for access and data management. The financial requirements of the RI will be refined to assist funding agencies as they consider future spending priorities. Key deliverables of DANUBIUS-PP include development of the legal and financial agreements for the components of the RI (including Hub, Nodes and Supersites), their governance, and internal organisation which will be confirmed via a Memorandum of Understanding. This preparatory phase project will develop the structures and processes to ensure that the RI strengthens scientific performance by providing a sustainable basis for future operation, delivering key services to the different user communities.