Flemish contribution to LifeWatch launched
On Tuesday 8 May 2012 the Flemish Minister of Innovation Ingrid Lieten launched the Flemish contribution to Life Watch, which will be coordinated by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) and the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO).
The construction phase of the Flemish contribution to LifeWatch will take five years and the operational phase will last at least 20 years. In 2013 a part of the system will already be operational. Three components are central:
- The coupling and integration of existing databases to the LifeWatch infrastructure for which ‘old data’ will actively be searched and digitalized;
- The set-up of regional marine, freshwater and terrestrial observatories with sensor networks and semi-automatic monitoring systems to generate real time data;
- A substantial contribution to the central processing of European data, e.g. run computer simulations, deliver species databases essential for the integration of data streams, etc.
