The EuroGOOS Coastal working group examines the entire coastal value chain from coastal observations to services for coastal users. The main objective of the working group is to review the status quo, identify gaps and future steps needed to secure and improve the sustainability of the European coastal service provision. Within this framework, our white paper defines a EuroGOOS roadmap for sustained “community coastal downstream service” provision, provided by a broad EuroGOOS community with focus on the national and local scale services. After defining the coastal services in this context, we describe the main components of coastal service provision and explore community benefits and requirements through sectoral examples (aquaculture, coastal tourism, renewable energy, port, cross-sectoral) together with the main challenges and barriers to user uptake. Technology integration challenges are outlined with respect to multiparameter observations, multi-platform observations, the land-coast-ocean continuum, and multidisciplinary data integration. Finally, the technological, financial, and institutional sustainability of coastal observing and coastal service provision are discussed. The paper gives special attention to the delineation of upstream and downstream services, public-private partnerships and the important role of Copernicus in better covering the coastal zone. Therefore, our white paper is a policy and practice review providing a comprehensive overview, in-depth discussion and actionable recommendations (according to key short-term or medium-term priorities) on the envisaged elements of a roadmap for sustained coastal service provision. EuroGOOS, as an entity that unites European national operational oceanography centres, research institutes and scientists across various domains within the broader field of operational oceanography, offers to be the engine and intermediary for the knowledge transfer and communication of experiences, best practices and information, not only amongst its members, but also amongst the different (research) infrastructures, institutes and agencies that have interests in coastal oceanography in Europe
Located in
Library
/
RBINS Staff Publications 2023
Natural history collections are invaluable reference collections. Digitizing these collections is a transformative process that improves the accessibility, preservation, and exploitation of specimens and associated data in the long term. Arthropods make up the majority of zoological collections. However, arthropods are small, have detailed color textures and share small, complex and shiny structures, which poses a challenge to conventional digitization methods. Sphaeroptica is a multi-images viewer that uses a sphere of oriented images. It allows the visualization of insects including their tiniest features, the positioning of landmarks, and the extraction of 3D coordinates for measuring linear distances or for use in geometric morphometrics analysis. The quantitative comparisons show that the measures obtained with Sphaeroptica are similar to the measurements derived from 3D μCT models with an average difference inferior to 1\%, while featuring the high resolution of color stacked pictures with all details like setae, chaetae, scales, and other small and/or complex structures. Shaeroptica was developed for the digitization of small arthropods but it can be used with any sphere of aligned images resulting from the digitization of objects or specimens with complex surface and shining, black, or translucent texture which cannot easily be digitized using structured light scanner or Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry.
Located in
Library
/
RBINS Staff Publications 2024 OA