We participate in many external projects which in turn help us to be a cutting-edge research infrastructure.
Ongoing projects
We are taking part in several European and international projects. Currently, ICOS ERIC is coordinating three projects: GEORGE, KADI and ICOS Cities, also known as PAUL. Read more about the projects below.
Website: www.icos-cp.eu/icos-cities-project
Communications contact: Katri Ahlgren, katri.ahlgren (at) icos-ri.eu
Read more about the other projects we are involved in:
The EU Horizon 2020 project “Solutions for Sustainable Access to Atmospheric Research Facilities” (ATMO-ACCESS) 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.ICOS ERIC leads one and contributes to three other work packages of the project. With ICOS ERIC’s lead, Work Package 5 aims to offer common interoperable cloud services across the atmospheric RIs. The goal is to build on the joint specific expertise of the different RIs and make use of the commonalities of requirements for data analysis and data needs identified for the users of 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 both at the national and European level, as well as contribute to providing a virtual access (VA) to new cross-RI online data, computing and training services that involve the leading European atmospheric RI data hubs. ICOS also contributes to communications activities by 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.
ICOS contact person: Laurent Chmiel and Karlina Ozolina communications (at) envri-fair.eu
The EU Horizon 2020 project “Copernicus evolution – Research activities in support of a European operational monitoring support capacity for fossil fuel CO2 emissions” (CoCO2) 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.
ICOS contact person: Sindu Raj Parampil, sindu.parampil (at) icos-ri.eu
Website: coco2-project.eu
The COINS, "Copernicus Observations In Situ", is a specific contract project coordinated by the European Economic Area (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.
ICOS contact person: Alex Vermeulen (alex.vermeulen at icos-ri.eu)
The "Data Infrastructure Capacities for EOSC" (DICE) 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.
ICOS contact person: Alex Vermeulen (alex.vermeulen at icos-ri.eu)
ENVRI-FAIR is an EU Horizon 2020 project. Its overarching goal is that at the end of this project, all participating ENVRI Research Infrastructures have built a set of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data services. Such development will enhance the efficiency and productivity of researchers, support innovation and connect the ENVRI Cluster to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Last but not least, it will enable data- and knowledge-based decisions to answer the challenges the Earth and our society are facing.
ICOS, represented by the ERIC and its several partner universities, coordinate project communications and community building activities, leads development of community standards and service catalogue, coordinates the FAIR training activities, and last but not least, co-lead the implementation of ecosystem & biodiversity subdomain working group.
ICOS contact persons: Laurent Chmiel and Karlina Ozolina (communications (at) envri-fair.eu)
Website: envri-fair.eu
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.
The special Science Clusters will commit to EOSC Future to enhance the participation of scientists in the implementation and exploitation of EOSC and to help them in the uptake of open science through EOSC. The Science Clusters in EOSC Future will provide examples of how shared projects can address major challenges for Europe's excellent science and societies and how research infrastructures can align to support Horizon Europe's missions within the EOSC. They will also serve as advocates for the advanced capabilities of EOSC when combining the IT technical power of the e-Infrastructures with the Science Cluster communities.
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 project 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.
ERIC Forum Implementation Project is an EU Horizon 2020 project that brings together 20 established European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs) and three ERICs in preparation to strengthen their coordination and enhance collaborations between the partners.
ICOS ERIC contributes to several work packages of the ERIC Forum project, where ICOS has tasked to publish an online toolbox to share the best practices, develop socio-economic impact assessment practises, and to support the work package on operations, administration, HR and finance of ERICs.
ICOS contact person: Evi-Carita Riikonen, evi-carita.riikonen (at) icos-ri.eu
Website: www.eric-forum.eu
E-shape is an initiative that brings together decades of public investment in Earth Observation and in cloud capabilities into services for the decision-makers, the citizens, the industry and the researchers.
The role of ICOS in e-shape project is to coordinate Climate pilot 1. Global Carbon and GHG Emissions (GCGE). The purpose of GCGE is to develop services based on Earth Observations and in-situ measurements for terrestrial and ocean domains.
ICOS contact person: Ville Kasurinen, ville.kasurinen (at) icos-ri.eu
Website: e-shape.eu
GEORGE (Next Generation Multiplatform Ocean Observing Technologies for Research Infrastructures) is a HORIZON-funded project that is aimed at improving marine observations in terms of quality, coverage and continuity, through developing novel technologies, particularly autonomous sensors.
The 4,5-year project brings together GEORGE brings together 28 leading partners from academia and industry alike, including three research infrastructures: EMSO ERIC, Euro-Argo ERIC and ICOS ERIC. It is coordinated by ICOS ERIC and EMSO ERIC.
Website: george-project.eu
KADI (Knowledge and climate services from an African observation and Data research Infrastructure) is a Horizon Europe funded project that aims to provide concepts for developing the best available science and science-based services in Africa. More specifically, it's objective is to improve the knowledge base on climate change in Africa and develop the tools to address the negative impacts of climate change. This basic objective will be achieved by a consortium of partners from Africa and Europe as well as diverse experiences, backgrounds and viewpoints.
KADI is a 3-year project that is coordinated by ICOS ERIC. It includes 15 other organisations from European and African countries as project partners.
Website: kadi-project.eu
The Research Infrastructure Training Plus (RItrainPlus) 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.
ICOS contact person: Katri Ahlgren, katri.ahlgren (at) icos-ri.eu
Website: ritrainplus.eu
SITES is a Swedish national infrastructure for terrestrial and limnological field research. It contributes to long-term, field-based ecosystem research by offering an infrastructure and competence to attract and support Swedish as well as international researchers. The data management system, which supports the collection and storing of field data, is developed in parallel with the ICOS data system.
ICOS contact person: Alex Vermeulen (alex.vermeulen at icos-ri.eu)
TraceRadon, "Radon metrology for use in climate change observation and radiation protection at the environmental level", is an 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.
ICOS contact persons: Ute Karstens (ute.karstens at nateko.lu.se) and Leo Rivier (leo.rivier at lsce.ipsl.fr)
Website: traceradon-empir.eu
VERIFY is an EU Horizon 2020 project that aims to provide a pre-operational, observation-based system for the monitoring and verification of greenhouse gases.
ICOS contributes to several work packages, e.g. through the Ecosystem Thematic Center for the development of verification methods for terrestrial CO2 sources, the Carbon Portal for the preparation of a prototype for an international GHG monitoring and verification system and sinks and carbon stocks, or through the Head Office to promote the input of VERIFY to international programs and society (like UNFCCC).
ICOS contact person: Emmanuel Salmon, emmanuel.salmon (at) icos-ri.eu
Website: verify.lsce.ipsl.fr
Past projects
The CO2 Human Emissions (CHE) EU H2020 project explored the development of a European system to monitor human activity related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions across the world. Such capacity is vital to support Europe’s leading role in worldwide action to address climate change.
Website: che-project.eu
COOP+ (Cooperation of Research Infrastructures to address global challenges in the environmental field) was an Horizon 2020 project whose general goal was to strengthen the links and coordination of the European RIs related to Marine Science (EMSO), Arctic and Atmospheric Research (EISCAT), Carbon Observation (ICOS) and Biodiversity (LifeWatch) with international counterparts (NEON, TERN, AMISR/SRI, CGSM, OOI, INPA/LBA, IMOS, OCN, AMERIFLUX, etc.) and to leverage international scientific cooperation and data exchange with non-EU countries.
ICOS, represented by University of Helsinki and Finnish Meteorological Institute, was active in several work packages addressing several important questions regarding RIs and their cooperation with US.
The project brought together the Europe’s major research infrastructures in environmental sciences; EISCAT, EPOS, LifeWATCH, EMSO, and ICOS, with parallel research infrastructure projects in the US; the NSF funded projects; AMISR, EARTHSCOPE, DataONE, OOI and NEON. The project developed measurements interoperability, reducing their uncertainty and stimulating future common EU-US research activities.
The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) provides consistent and quality-controlled information related to air pollution and health, solar energy, greenhouse gases and climate forcing, everywhere in the world.
Website: atmosphere.copernicus.eu
DANUBIUS-PP was an EU Horizon 2020 project to raise DANUBIUS-RI (the International Centre for Advanced Studies on River-Sea Systems) to the legal, financial and technical maturity required for successful implementation and development. ICOS ERIC contributed to project management and coordination, architecture, capacity building, as well as dissemination and communication work packages.
Website: danubius-pp.eu
ENVRI was a project focusing on the implementation of common solutions for a cluster of ESFRI infrastructures in the field of "Environmental Sciences".
ICOS was participating the ENVRI as one case study. ENVRIplus which started in 2015, builded up on the ENVRI project.
Website: envri.eu
ENVRIplus was an EU Horizon 2020 project bringing together Environmental and Earth System Research Infrastructures, projects and networks along with technical specialist partners to create a more coherent, interdisciplinary and interoperable cluster of Environmental Research Infrastructures across Europe. ENVRI-FAIR project (2019–2022) builds on the ENVRIplus project.
ICOS ERIC coordinated this 15M EUR project with 42 partners representing 22 RIs. ICOS ERIC, together with its partner universities also led several WPs and tasks in the project (e.g. development of the white paper proposing the integration of RIs in environmental field, coordination of ENVRIplus project and ENVRI community communications, work on research Infrastructure data identification and citation services, and last but not least, contributed to work on technical solutions for the environmental RIs.
Website: www.envriplus.eu
EOSC-hub was an EU H2020 project which contributed to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) implementation to enable seamless and open access to a system of research data and services provided across nations and multiple disciplines. Within the project, ICOS formed a competence center on the management of measurement station information together with the eLTER Research Infrastructure.
Website: www.eosc-hub.eu
EOSCpilot supported the first phase in the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The project will improve the ability to reuse data resources and provide an important step towards building a dependable open-data research environment where data from publicly funded research is always open and clear incentives and rewards for the sharing of data and resources exist.
ICOS contributed to the governance, policy and EOSC interoperability work packages.
Website: eoscpilot.eu
EUDAT2020 brought together a unique consortium of e-infrastructure providers, research infrastructure operators, and researchers from a wide range of scientific disciplines under several of the ESFRI themes, working together to address the new data challenge.
Website: www.eudat.eu
The project developed new tools to improve European and global monitoring of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations and fluxes. It has enabled the provision of GHG data by merging new, in-situ GHG observations and surface remote sensing to validate satellite retrievals and data assimilation results.
The 'Readiness of ICOS for Necessities of Integrated Global Observations’, RINGO project contributed significantly to the overall readiness and the long-term sustainability of ICOS research infrastructure. With its 43 partners in 19 countries, RINGO boosted ICOS research infrastructure’s scientific, geographical, technological, data, as well as political and administrative readiness. The project was coordinated by the ICOS European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC).
During the RINGO project, ICOS’ implementation or so called ‘Readiness Level’, a reference grid established by the European Commission to reflect the European research infrastructures’ stages of development along their lifecycles, matured from the Readiness Level 4 to the Level 5.
The project impacted strongly in the Copernicus Monitoring and Verification Support (MVS) and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). RINGO contributed to the development of ICOS’ capacity for fast-tracking ICOS knowledge transfer (e.g. the study on the 2018 drought), and contributed to ICOS’ readiness for European Union’s Green Deal goals that support the development of urban greenhouse gas (GHG) observatories. RINGO also provided a valuable approach for the five-year evaluation of ICOS.
Website: www.icos-cp.eu/ringo
European Research Infrastructures in the International Landscape (RISCAPE) was an EU Horizon 2020-funded project to map the international landscape of Research Infrastructures (RIs), in particular in respect to the major European RIs.
ICOS ERIC was in charge of the work package dedicated to environmental sciences. With the survey of the major infrastructures and initiatives outside of Europe, ICOS established a description of potential cooperation partners for the European. Some key features common to all RIs or specific to some of them were highlighted. The information gathered will be critical when ICOS engages in new international cooperation opportunities.
Website: riscape.eu
SEACRIFOG (Supporting EU-African Cooperation on Research Infrastructures for Food Security and Greenhouse Gas Observations) was an EU Horizon 2020 project that aimed to design a continental GHG observation network for Africa. By bridging Research Infrastructures in Europe and Africa, it also aimed to enhance technical competence, science awareness and lifelong learning in Africa.
ICOS was involved in many work packages related to the technical requirements of the network, the curation of the data and the costs of the whole Research Infrastructure. ICOS has set up a high-level dialog platform that gathered African and European major stakeholders contributing to the implementation and the sustainability of the observational network proposed in the project.
Website: www.seacrifog.eu