ESFRI Environmental cluster

2011 EC Green paper consultation

ESFRI Environment cluster

This is a written response on

European Commission GREEN PAPER – COM (2011) 48

From Challenges to Opportunities: Towards a Common Strategic Framework for EU Research and Innovation funding1 from

ESFRI Environmental cluster - Environmental Research Infrastructures

on ESFRI Roadmap

1 http://ec.europa.eu/research/csfri/index_en.cfm?pg=documents

Many of the most complex and challenging questions facing human society, such as climate change, energy use, water availability, food supply, land degradation, hazards and risks, life in mega cities and human health are closely related to environment research and its supporting global-scale data delivery with analyses from observations, experiments and modelling (Fig 1.). Tackling environmental challenges is crucial for mankind and for life on Earth. Given the scale and complexity of the challenges, the focus area of the environmental research is our whole planet.

Landscape of Environmental sciences

The Earth system is highly complex and can be divided into many di�erent components, such as the atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere, all of which are embedded in the highly variable geospace environment. Each of these regions is a�ected by human activity, and thus form a part of the “anthroposphere”. All of these separate components are highly interlinked, with many concurrent processes operating on a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. Many natural processes are self-organizing, giving rise to a high degree of variety and complexity in the system. Understanding our environment, in order to address these critical challenges, is not possible by simply extrapolating a given process from the single units of which it is composed. A di�erent approachis needed – a system approach.

Figure 1. Landscape of environmental challenges

The main focus of Environmental science is to provide the knowledge needed for the sus-tainable management of the natural and human environment and the resources of our planet. The emphasis is to describe, understand and predict the complex Earth system and its functioning, and to develop the tools and technologies needed for the monitoring, pre-vention and mitigation of environmental risks and pressures.

For the Earth system, as for any system, our capacity to understand is predicated on our capability to describe various elements and their interactions. The intelligent control or mitigation of any environmental process is only possible if we have a �rm ability to predict how the whole system will respond to the combined e�ect of all the processes to which it is subjected, and it is impossible to achieve such predictive capabilities without scienti�c understanding. By carefully observing and studying the basic environmental processes and synthesizing our observations into an overall understanding, new scienti�c breakthroughs can be achieved and environmental challenges can be tackled. Environmental science requires long-term observations in order to identify and understand environmental changes (trends, thresholds and resilience, interactions and feedbacks). Only by continuously learning more about our planet we may hope to be prepared for predicting the e�ects a changing planet may bring.

Special characteristics of the modern Environmental sciences are:

• Addressing the crucial scientific questions for mankind• The global scale of the research (the planet is our laboratory)• The necessity of a systemic, large-scale approach• All environmental research questions are interconnected• Short- and long-term science questions are mutually dependent• The inherently multi-disciplinary nature of the subject• Distributed research infrastructures (as opposed to large single facilities) for sensing, analyzing and modeling the Earth system • Long-term observations (in many instances) are needed to track the perturbation• A need for a common e-infrastructure operations and services

Structural reality:

• Environmental research in Europe is currently based on short-term EU and national projects, national centres of excellence and network activities• Most of the European-level research observation networks are run by academia and funded by short-term national programmes • Low level of common strategic, long-term planning

To meet the societal grand challenges, urgent actions are needed. The main required actions are:

• The introduction of long-term policies to fund and support Environmental science• A restructuring of the scientific community to ensure that it is enabled to deliver results in the highest priority areas• The creation of mechanisms to enhance innovations and knowledge transformation for societal application

GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS

The research landscape is changing

The European Commission has set a high priority on the durable integration of European research. In recent years, activities directed toward integration and longer-term funding have mainly been undertaken through European Research Area (ERA) initiatives, such as Research Infrastructures (RI) and Joint Programming Initiatives (JPI). From the perspective of Environmental sciences, however, the experience has been that these ERA initiatives have been evolving in isolation - neither coordination initiatives, coherent trans-initiative activities nor common visions have been established. The overall development of the �eld, with respect to training and mobility, high-quality research and research infrastructures, has not yet been fully achieved within ERA initiatives. In summary, the present funding mechanisms have failed to deliver the degree of coherence, collaboration and long-term support which are vital for the success of European Environmental science, and a new approach and complemented policy measures are needed.

1) The European Commission should recognize the high priority of Environmental research

2) The Commission should institute a solid long-term European policy for developing and securing Environmental research infrastructures and research

3) Community support for integrative activities between the di�erent ERA initiatives in environmental science should be increased

Research infrastructures (RI)

The ESFRI (European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures) fostered a process to establish and develop more coherent and integrated infrastructures in the �eld of Environ-mental science. However, most of the selected ESFRI environmental RI’s are focused on particular thematic areas, so that the ESFRI environmental cluster covers only certain com-ponents of the Earth system. It is also acknowledged that many crucial components of the Earth system are still missing from the EFSRI roadmap. As quite some environmental obser-vation or measuring networks are run by academia and have initially been funded by the EC (as a short term FP I3 activity), so their future existence can, however, only be secured by a more sustainable funding structure, o�ering the prospect of long-term support.,

Due to the broad scope of Environmental science (whole planet) and the diversity of approaches involved (monitoring, experimental, modelling and theoretical), many aspects of Environmental research are best suited to distributed research infrastructures, rather than large single facilities. Several of the current European Environmental research infra-structures are distributed, long-term, remote controlled observational networks focused on understanding processes, trends, thresholds, interactions and feedbacks and increasing our predictive power to address future environmental challenges. Other Environmental infra-structures take the form of exploratory mobile platforms (such as vessels and aircrafts) that can be easily move to di�erent locations to explore and study speci�c environmental phe-nomena and/or processes. Because of these special characteristics, these distributed RIs require a di�erent type of coordination, management and maintenance than the traditional single sited RIs.

Environmental science is about to face a “data tsunami”. It is predicted that the total daily amount of environmental science data will increase from terabyte (1012)-level to Exabyte (1018)-level within the next �ve years. As the amount, variety and complexity of environ-mental data increases, it becomes more and more apparent that the construction of well-articulated information technology is needed to combine and assimilate environmental information from disparate sources (e.g. �eld observations, experiments, models and simu-lations). The data tsunami comes with the interoperability challenge - the processing, trans-port, storage and combining of variable datasets that represent di�erent aspects of our environment at di�erent scales and complexities. As is often the case, it is the comparison and integration of these variable datasets that gives scientists their most powerful tools for innovation, therefore signi�cant gains should be expected when existing data and compu-tation bottlenecks can be overcome. In this respect, environmental research infrastructures are very important nodes of innovations, since they serve as joint working environments for academia, industry and SMEs. For all these purposes, collaborative work towards innovation products, downstream services development and common e-infrastructure operations has been started among ESFRI environmental RIs, but require much more investments.

– response to Green paper consultation questionnaire number 25: “How should infrastructures (including EU-wide e-infrastructures) be supported at EU level?”

1. The EC should promote the coordinated construction of key ENV RIs (recognising the high priority of the ESFRI environmental panel). Community funding instruments for implementation and operation phase; target up to 25% of EU funding to cover the costs of the �rst 10 years of operations of key ESFRI ENV RI’s

2. The EC should promote the rapid introduction of needed Earth system components to foster the coverage of environmental RI’s. This requires the provision of funding instr uments to support planning, coordination and implementation initiatives between multi ple RI’s.

3. The EC should recognise the special characteristics of distributed RI’s, and support them accordingly. This should be done by: - Developing and applying new cost models e.g. for calculating access costs to distributed RI’s (most users bene�t from access data and/or analytical tools and remote instrumentation via dedicated portals and virtual labs). - Providing �nancial incentives for researchers to add functionality to RIs via the development of e-infrastructure applications - Supporting development of new and cheaper, automated sensor networks (e.g. AUV drones) - Providing policy and coordination actions to guarantee the long-term cura tion, access and distribution of data

4. The EC should work toward the development of the European environmental RIs into a fully interoperable system, leading to a European integrated environmental RI network (combination of e-RIs/single entry point for key environmental data, e.g. natural hazards; greenhouse gas and climate; environmental health). This can be done by: - providing community funding instruments for planning, implementing and operating environmental e-RIs

5. The EU should support the continuous upgrading and development of existing and new RI’s, recognising their importance as nodes for innovation. This could be done by: - providing Community support (up to 20%) for large-scale environmental RIs - making available new Community funding instruments to support innovation nodes and research ecosystems based around the environmental RI’s (e.g. for identifying the links between ENV RI’s and the needs of the rapidly growing industries, such as renewable energy sector)

RECOMMENDATIONS

Research

Recent years has shown that research organisations and groups with a critical mass of excellence and long-term funding have been most able to perform integrated, system-oriented environmental research and to explore new scienti�c breakthroughs in a manner which can lead to new innovations and commercialised ideas. International scienti�c com-petition is increasing as new countries enter into the global science arena. It is crucial that the EC should create and maintain a strong but �exible research landscape, which can keep Europe at the forefront of global science and innovation. Given the societal importance of solving the grand challenges in Environmental science, this European research landscape should be built on �ve key pillars:

Fundamental scienti�c studies – support for leading European research in curiosity-driven basic science (including observation and laboratory studies, process modelling, climate and Earth system modelling and interdisciplinary integration) to understand key processes in the Earth system and to provide integrated state-of-the-art knowledge for decision making processes.

Long-term observations (in situ and remote sensing) – long-term underpinning resources for recording environmental changes and trends, understanding thresholds and resilience, interactions and feedbacks of the systems and enabling predictions of future conditions.Integration of scienti�c results – support for utilizing results from process studies, long-term observations, modelling and theoretical work to provide scienti�c synthesis in key scienti�c areas.

High quality European level training – support for European training networks in Environ-mental sciences, based on top level research, top-quality facilities, within an innovative, supportive and collaborative international environment.

Liaisons with public and private stakeholders – support for liaisons with inter-governmental and public bodies such as IPCC, IPBES, ICSU etc, to provide high-level sce-nario developments and scienti�c evidence on the state of our planet.

Community initiatives such as Joint Programming are aiming at enhanced collaboration of national funding organisations towards joint European level strategic planning of research activities. The coming years will show the outcomes of JPIs and how well JPIs will enable the European level research integration and improve the long-term funding horizon.

RECOMMENDATIONS – response to Green paper consultation sections 4.1.(4), 4.2(9,10), 4.4.(22)

1. The EC should establish instruments to promote scienti�c productivity and innovation in Environmental sciences by recognising and supporting European scienti�c leadership and providing an organisational structure that fosters excellence

2. Community support for long-term curiosity-driven basic research (incl. high-risk/high- gain activities, development of novel hypotheses and technologies) directed to under standing basic processes in the Earth system and to providing the urgently needed inte grated state-of-the-art research for decision making processes

3. The EC should ensure community support for supradisciplinary environmental research

4. The EC should establish structures to coordinate research activities integrating long-term observations, short-term experiments and modelling activities

5. Community instruments to support implementation of strong nodes of excellence that have the capacity to integrate, up-scale and synthesize the observations and process- understanding in the global scale

6. Community support for long-term strategic planning and policy development

Advanced, transnational training is a core requirement for environmental research, since long-term scienti�c leadership can only be sustained by the constant training of talented young scientists and sta�. Both the operation of research infrastructures and the delivery of research require emphasis on high-quality training and human resource management. Day-to-day research requires high levels of professionalism and skill not only from scien-tists, but also from technicians and administrative sta�. To maintain a high and continu-ously evolving level of science and technology, European Environmental science requires up-to-date knowledge, creative thinking and risk tolerance. Currently, Community tools such as Marie Curie Fellowships enable both young and more experienced scientists to strengthen their knowledge. Community support for joint education in di�erent disciplines of the Environmental sciences would even be more favourable and e�cient for young scien-tists.

Training and mobility

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The EC should recognise that environmental research infrastructures are key Euro-pean partners in implementing global Earth System Observation network (e.g. GEO-GEOSS) activities and global initiatives (e.g. ICSU grand challenges)

2. The EC should provide support for European actors to participate in building and operating global observation systems

International research cooperation is crucial in Environmental sciences, given the fact that environmental challenges have international, regional and global dimensions. International

cooperation is further motivated by the fact that a critical mass is needed given the scale, scope and high level of complexity of research.

To meet our international needs in the �eld of observation systems (e.g. GEO-GEOSS or GCOS) and to link researchers their observational data (academia driven) more closely with

operational activities (e.g. GMES), it is vital to de�ne a strategic 10 years planning and imple-mentation of the overall chain of RIs, basic research, technical and non-technical innovations

up to operational products and services.

– response to Green paper consultation questionnaire number 23: “How should the role of Marie Curie Actions be strengthened in promoting research mobility and developing attrac-tive careers? “

1. The EC should remove obstacles (labour permits, pensions schemes, tax regulations) and provide incentives to promote the pan-European and international mobility of researchers

2. The EC should provide a combination of funding schemes (supporting RIs, research and mobility)

International collaboration

RECOMMENDATIONS

Bene�ts of European collaboration and implementation

Coordination of activities on Environmental sciences and careful implementation of harmo-nized cooperation would lead to:

• A harmonization of European and global visions, giving European scientists a leading role in studying and directing the research �eld

• A well structured and highly visible international activity, carrying out state-of-the-art research and providing outstanding training at multiple levels (for graduate students, post docs and visiting scientists)

• An excellent opportunity to raise questions important to Europe from the point of view of both research and international environmental politics

• Cutting-edge, internationally competitive technological development in which environ-mental challenges will be addressed by e�cient commercialization of ideas and innova-tions

• Intensive international research projects for studying ecosystems and processes important to Europe and the in�uence they have on the climate/Earth System