About

The overall goals of WP1 is to ensure effective project coordination (including internal communication and interaction with the European Commission/Research Executive Agency and advisory board) and steering, and to develop a data management plan that adheres to the FAIR principles. The specific objectives include:

• Ensure overall project management and coordination, and that tasks, deliverables and milestones, internal as well as official reports, are successfully completed.
• Ensure quality management and provide legal, financial, administrative and technical control.
• Ensure and coordinate interaction and communication among consortium members and mitigate potential conflicts.
• Provide a state-of-the-art data management plan and monitor the adherence to FAIR data principles.

The overall goal of WP2 is to create, test and refine a blueprint for an end-to-end co-designed ocean observing for biology and ecosystems, which enables science-based decision-making for climate, operational services, and ocean health applications. The following objectives are set to reach this goal:

• Review and strengthen the guidance on essential ocean, climate and biodiversity measurements and their capacity to deliver ocean forecasts and early warnings, climate projections and assessments and protect ocean health and its benefits.
• Establish an effective and iterative communication and co-creation process for guiding the design and review of an integrated and adaptive BioEco observing, forecasting and reporting system with key stakeholders from local to global scales.

WP3 addresses the research-gaps that hamper the ability of current Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) to quantify and predict ecosystem services and their non-linear changes, as well as the emerging technologies that are becoming available for ocean observations. The specific objectives of WP3 are to:

• Identify critical processes in mechanistic understanding and/or parameterization in the present modelling approaches to decrease model uncertainty and improve the monitoring and data.
• Critically evaluate and validate novel technologies (such as camera systems, eDNA, acoustics) and their potential to complement, enrich or even replace traditional biodiversity monitoring.
• Evaluate the power of EOVs under scenarios of (non-linear) biodiversity change induced by multiple climatic and non-climatic stressors.
• Better understand the links between ocean biogeochemical and biodiversity variability over time and enable integration of biological and biogeochemical data for advanced climate and ecosystem modelling. 

• Test the capacity of the Blueprint to enable effective co-design, and demonstrate increased Technical Readiness Level (TLR) of the ocean observing and forecasting system for biology and ecosystems
• Enhance the capacity for multidisciplinary analysis and reporting through integrated ocean observations and modelling, including early-warning systems for regime shift and tipping points detection
• Co-create new biological data products and demonstrate their value for addressing knowledge gaps and advancing capacity for ecosystem and climate forecasts
• Develop and test protocols for the scientific validation of marine ecosystem projections and their application to resource management
• Assess the impact and feasibility of integrating innovative biological and ecological modelling frameworks into the next generation of Earth System Models (ESMs)

WP5 aims to enhance technical readiness and capacity for implementing the Blueprint at regional and global scales by:

• Developing and organising clear and comprehensive training courses that will enable "train the trainers" to use and implement the Blueprint.
• Incorporating interactive, student-focused training sessions/workshops to encourage collaboration and reflection among participants/stakeholders from different focuses of ocean observation, from data collectors to policy makers.
• Increasing knowledge and use of standardizations and quality control for ocean observations, including the use of Ocean Best Practices and interoperable and comparable methodology, vocabulary, and formats for data collection and reporting.
• Improving technical readiness and capacity for data collection and reporting by publishing generated data and metadata to open access data and information systems such as OBIS, GBIF and the GOOS BioEco portal.
• Encouraging holistic thinking of ocean observation for integration into Blueprint components by considering and including all ocean variables, including BioEco, physical, and biogeochemical variables. 

WP6 is responsible for timely and efficient communication, dissemination and explotation of project results. Specific objectives of WP6 are to:

• Plan, implement and monitor efficient Dissemination, Exploitation and Communication (DEC) activities to maximise impact and visibility to all target audiences.
• Identify key actors and strengthen multi/sectoral cooperation.
• Implement activities towards increased ocean literacy, proactive awareness and co-ownership.
• Engage and cooperate with similar (twin) projects, ongoing initiatives and missions to foster the sustainability of the project results and contribute to the building of a CoPF.
• Monitoring the scientific and societal impact of BioEcoOcean results.