4th European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON) Stakeholder Roundtable: Pathways to sustainability for EU BONs network of collaborators and technical infrastructure
EU BON - Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network (www.eubon.eu) is a project funded under the EU FP7 framework. It presents an innovative approach towards the integration of biodiversity data and information systems, both from in-situ and remote sensing data sources. The aim is to address policy and information needs in a timely manner, customized for various stakeholders on different levels - from local test sites to European and international policy. The Stakeholder Roundtables are a specific task and part of a Work Package in the project (WP6) that focuses on the stakeholder engagement and the science-policy dialogue. The main aim of the Stakeholder Roundtables is to carry out regular engagement with relevant political authorities and other stakeholders at European and national level in support of the delivery of the EU BON project. Furthermore, the Roundtables seek to build up a stakeholder dialogue with exemplar sector-specific user communities to incorporate feedback loops for the products of EU BON (data, tools and models) as well as to develop improvements of existing biodiversity data workflows and to discuss sustainability issues. The 4th EU BON Stakeholder Roundtable aimed to present current achievements and products of the project EU BON, which can be assigned to three categories: firstly to tools and infrastructure, secondly to the consortium and its network of collaborators and thirdly to (biodiversity) monitoring and scientific forecasting. The last Stakeholder Roundtable - in contrast to the former Roundtables which addressed European policy (Wetzel et al. 2016), citizen science and the EU BON citizen science gateway (Vohland et al. 2016, Runnel et al. 2016) and local research networks (Vohland et al. 2016b) – focused on sustainability issues of the different components of the European biodiversity observation network. The guiding question of the Roundtable was how to achieve sustainability for the products of EU BON after the project will end. It was also discussed what - among ...