Title: JERICO-NEXT – Towards a Joint European Research Infrastructure Network for Coastal Observation
Start date: 1 January 2015
End date: 31 August 2019
Coordinator: Prof. Aldo Drago
JERICO-NEXT was a Horizon 2020 project. The overall aim of this project was to improve the cooperation between coastal observatories in Europe, thereby providing better information services to the research community and society in general.
The Oceanography Malta Research group (ex-Physical Oceanography Research Group) led two project activities. The major task concerned the coordination of a high profile User Panel intended to create a 2-way channel of communication with groups of operational oceanography data users. These user groups include public, policy, research, education and operational communities, including industry. This channel will serve to understand the requirements of each group and, hence, to devise better communication strategies.
The other task aimed to enhance European human capacity building in operational marine sciences. To this end, two summer schools were held, one about Operational tools for biogeochemical and ecological measurements and one about Virtual environmental coastal observatory: from virtual access to knowledge creation”. Furthermore, a tertiary level online course on operational oceanography was developed to aid the further introduction of the subject in undergraduate programmes of universities worldwide.
