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The Annual Conference of LifeWatch Italy 2018 took place in Rome, from June 25th to 27th, and was open to the national scientific community, presenting the latest developments of the national node, welcoming also external contributions on case studies and technological solutions, creating new opportunities for interaction and cooperation with the Infrastructure.
The Scientific Conference was held in the Department Environmental Biology University of Rome – La Sapienza. It was articulated in plenary and parallel thematic sessions addressing key topics at the heart of LifeWatch Italy activities in the last two years, focusing on “Data & Metadata”, “ICT Services & Semantics Resources” and “Citizen Science, Communication of Science & Education” with 6 plenary talks and 5 oral sessions, comprising 37 contributions (including 4 digital posters).
In the session “Data & Metadata“, experiences, models and case studies on the use of data and metadata in the study of ecosystems and biodiversity were gathered. Actually, it is increasingly demanded to host data resources in public accessible archives ensuring transparency, reproducibility and sustainability of scientific research and its results. It is of great importance that in this process, data are described in a rigorous manner, completed by metadata, essential to deeply understand data and make them accessible, interpretable and reusable over time.
In the three parallel sessions dedicated to the “ICT Services & Semantic Resources“, researchers brought the experience of a number of projects and infrastructures in the development of web services and Virtual Research Environments for the study of biodiversity and ecosystems and in the implementation of semantic resources, such as controlled vocabularies and ontologies, to support interoperability among different data infrastructures.
Finally, in the session dedicated to “Citizen Science, Communication of Science & Education” ICT tools and resources to collect and analyse citizens’ observations, as well as the possibility to access training programs were presented. Presentations focused on the development of both web services, applications and ICT platforms to facilitate citizens’ involvement, from data collection to result analysis and of learning environments and gaming resources, essential to provide students the key competences to understand the context surrounding them.
All presentations are available here. Abstract book is available on the conference website.
Plenary talks:
PT1 – Alberto Basset: The HUB of LifeWatch Italy for data resources on biodiversity and ecosystems
PT2 – Fabio Attorre: The thematic node on plant biodiversity
PT3 – Nicola Fiore: Semantics for research on biodiversity and ecosystems
PT4 – Palma Blonda: A Community Modeling Platform
PT5 – Stefano Martellos: A Citizen Science Platform
PT6 – Antonello Provenzale: Protecting Natural Ecosystems: from Earth Observation to Virtual Museums