Vortragender: Alberto Basset (LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre)

LifeWatch is the European Infrastructure supplying eScience biodiversity and ecosystem research services to scientists and other stakeholder target communities through the coordination of its central and distributed components, i.e. the common facilities and the national distributed centres. One of the goals of the LifeWatch infrastructure is the construction of virtual “workbenches” with e-services that allow its user communities to find, access, organise, integrate, harmonize, make interoperable, analyse and model biodiversity data building present time and future change scenarios. In this process, user activities are supported also by getting access to training, communication, networking and capacity building e-services. Here, we present these services and their delivery and organization through: 1. the coordination of the common facilities, mainly focusing on all issues dealing with prioritising, designing, delivery and keeping operational the virtual “workbenches” with all related e-services; and 2. a major role of the national distributed centres in their development and implementation - national distributed centres are also responsible of data collection and storage in their data portals. Key challenges and already defined plans of future developments will be also presented and discussed.