DTO-BioFlow

Brief description

In terms of observing, charting, and monitoring biodiversity, marine environments provide specific and unique challenges. Existing data collection activities on marine biodiversity vary in regional and temporal scales, and are frequently for specific and short-term objectives.
While significant progress has been made in Europe to collect, harmonise, and make available marine biodiversity data - particularly through the work of European research infrastructure (such as EMODnet, Copernicus Marine, and other related European and international initiatives (MBON, OBIS, GOOS) - much of the data currently being collected remains unavailable and inaccessible, the so-called "sleeping data." 

The primary objective of the DTO-BioFlow project is to awaken sleeping biodiversity data, enabling a smooth integration of both existing and new data into the EU Digital Twin Ocean. DTO-BioFlow aims to provide innovative and sustainable solutions for making previously unavailable or hard-to-access biodiversity data accessible. Additionally, it aims to pilot cost-effective and scalable technologies for monitoring species on a large scale. DTO BioFlow aims to improve the European biodiversity data environment by streamlining the flow of FAIR data from various sources into digital twin repositories, optimizing and enhancing the functionality and societal value of DTO. 

Our Role

Trust-It, as one of the core partners of DTO-BioFlow, is coordinating the Communication, Dissemination, and Exploitation (CD&E) activities (WP6). These operations are organized into four significant campaigns, enabling a flexible execution and evaluation of initiatives aimed at important target audiences. Through these campaigns, in fact, Trust-It coordinates the promotion of the project and its results to all stakeholders and maximise the engagement of key target audiences throughout the project and beyond. 

Trust-IT drives project branding, communications, website construction and content update, story-telling, and social media outreach to identify and link important target audiences for targeted distribution, exploitation, and communication while stressing the project's social impact.

Furthermore, Trust-it is coordinating partners’ efforts in three other targeted communication campaigns, each with a specific goal, that will be launched to support key project activities and maximize exploitation of project results to create influence beyond the project: one dedicated to the Onboarding of Data Providers, raising awareness of the formats, standards, and practices required to make data usable by the DTO; a second one focusing on the uptake of DTO-BioFlow Outputs; and  last but not least, a series of international Community Building activities to Support the EU Mission “EU Mission "Restore our Ocean and Waters"  and the Ocean Decade related actions.

Impact

By the end of the DTO-Bioflow project, the following impacts are expected:

• Europe has an advanced biodiversity/ecosystem monitoring capacity and infrastructure enabling comprehensive biodiversity mapping and monitoring of all Europe’s regional seas;
• Significant progress towards an operational DTO with a fit-for-purpose DTO biodiversity component;
• Mobilised and empowered European marine biodiversity monitoring community;
• Increased knowledge of biodiversity and pressures monitoring and forecasting capacity to assess & measure the progress of EU ocean policies.

Results

• Increased European capacity in biodiversity monitoring & generation of FAIR data amongst diverse monitoring stakeholders     
• Comprehensive biodiversity data, products, tools & services available as part of the Mission’s precursor digital ocean and water knowledge system to support policy and usable by diverse stakeholders    
• Sustained & connected FAIR data-flows on marine biodiversity
• A series of Demonstrator use cases.

Funding

The DTO-BioFlow has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON) under grant agreement no. 101112823.