The MINKE project, an initiative to improve collaboration between the ocean community and metrology research by supporting starting community infrastructure, is nearing its end in March 2025
The MINKE project (Metrology for Integrated marine MaNagement and Knowledge-transfer nEtwork), a Horizon Europe INFRAIA initiative led by Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC), is entering its final stages and preparing to conclude in March2025. This project integrated European marine metrology research infrastructures to establish new data quality standards in marine ecosystem monitoring.
In October, members of the MINKE project convened for the last in-person meeting at the Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche (CNR) in Rome. Partners focused on strategies to consolidate the project’s achievements, ensuring its legacy and, therefore, contributing to future projects, including Advance Marine Research Infrastructures Together (AMRIT). With this in mind, special attention was given to developing an exploitation roadmap for MINKE’s core outputs, which include the following main elements:
Inventory. An inventory of marine observing research infrastructures (RIs) and a list of stakeholders of interest
Templates. Such as the Trans-National Access and Virtual Access calls promotion package.
Best practices and Common guidelines. For instance, the guidelines and standards for experimental protocols, vocabulary and ontologies for marine dataflow.
Educational resources aimed at school teachers and communities of practice.
These outputs facilitate dialogue and foster consistency between ocean and metrological communities.
MINKE proposed a model emphasising accuracy and completeness in monitoring networks, combining high-precision of the equipment to the validation and control of data in the whole data lifecycle despite monitoring programs and initiatives from oceanographic observation systems regularly monitored to low-cost DIY or citizen science initiatives platforms- This approach, developed within the “quintuple helix” innovation model, brings together environmental, academic, governmental, industrial, and civil society perspectives to enhance data acquisition in marine monitoring.
The project’s commitment to bringing together diverse research domains aligns closely with AMRIT’s objectives of enhancing collaboration among stakeholders. As AMRIT further continues this work, MINKE’s contributions could facilitate a more integrated dialogue and consistent data standards across ocean observing systems, promoting seamless data acquisition and interoperability across European infrastructures.