Black Sea Catchment Observation and Assessment System supporting Sustainable Development

enviroGRIDS is an FP7 project, co-funded by the European Commission (2009 - 2013, http://www.envirogrids.net/).

The enviroGRIDS is a 4-years project funded under the EC Seventh Framework Programme, aiming to develop a SDI targeting the Black Sea Catchment area and to use new international standards to store, analyze, process, and visualize important information regarding this area and perform distributed spatially-explicit simulations of environmental changes.

The Black Sea Catchment is internationally recognized for its ecologically unsustainable development and inadequate resource management leading to severe environmental, social and economical problems.

enviroGRIDS aims at developing a Black Sea Catchment Observation System that will store, analyze, visualize and disseminate information on past, present and future states of the region to assess and predict its sustainability and vulnerability. A gap analysis will identify specific areas where most efforts are needed. As climatic and hydrological changes are of concern, their impacts on several societal benefits areas of the Group on Earth Observation will be evaluated, namely on environment and health, energy, water, ecosystems, agriculture, biodiversity and environmental risks. EnviroGRIDS will rely on ultra-modern technology using the largest gridded computing infrastructure in the world. It will serve as a benchmark for the development of the European directive on Infrastructure for Spatial Information and for the Global Earth Observation System of Systems.

Spatially-explicit scenarios of drivers of changes such as climate, demography and land cover will be created. EnviroGRIDS will be validated through several thematic implementations within the Black Sea basin. Finally, a web-based observation system including attractive visualisation tools will warn target populations about environmental risks and help regional/governmental agencies to prepare the most adequate responses.

Capacity building will be based on a networking platforms supported by state-of-the-art e-learning courses on the internet and on DVD. The aim is to raise public and decision makers’ awareness on key environmental issues and observation system technologies by organizing live and virtual trainings. Through the combination of all these activities, EnviroGRIDS will improve data access and use in the Black Sea basin, and build regional capacity on Observation Systems to favour its sustainable development.

Video presentation of the enviroGRIDS project at EuroNews (see video).

Partners

• UNIGE(UniGe/GRID, UniGE/enviroSPACE)
• CCSS (Czech Centre for Science and Society, Republic Czech)
• CERN (European Organization for Nuclear research, Switzerland)
• EAWAG (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology)
• Geographic (Geographic GIS&RS Consulting Center)
• UNESCO/IHE (UNESCO: Institute for Water Education)
• UAB (European Topic Centre Land Use and Spatial Information supported by the European Environment Agency (EEA))
• USRIEP (Ukrainian Scientific and Research Institute of Ecological Problems)
• SORESMA (Soresma)
• SPSU (St. Petersburg State University)
• ITU (Istanbul Technical University)
• AZBOS (Melitopol State Pedagogical University - Azov-Black Sea Ornithological Station)
• Arx iT (Arx iT)
• BSREC (Black Sea Regional Energy Centre)
• DDNI (Danube delta National Research Institute for Research and Development)
• DHMO (Danube Hydrometeorological Observatory)
• IBSS (Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas, Ukraine)
• IGAR (Institute of Geography, Romanian Academy)
• INHGA (National Institute of Hydrology and Water Management, Romania)
• ONU (Odessa National I.I. Mechnikov University)
• UTC (Technical University of Cluj-Napoca)
• VITUKI (VITUKI)
• BSC PS (The Commission on the Protection of the Black Sea Against Pollution)
• CRS4 (Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia, Italy)
• ICPDR (International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River)
• NIMH (National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
• TNU (Tavrida National University)