Access to Infrastructures
The 8th Call for Access to Infrastructures is now CLOSED
A number of research infrastructures (research aircraft, laboratory facilities, advanced analytical instrumentation and/or monitoring stations) are currently operational in Europe for atmospheric studies. New methodologies for the investigation of atmospheric mechanisms, generation of original and high quality data for modelling purposes have emphasised the need for advanced facilities over Europe. Except for a few co-ordinated international projects or already established European large-scale facilities, there is a clear lack of a co-ordination programme that would permit and simplify the access of all scientists to any research facilities within an extended European research area. For that purpose, a co-ordinated effort to establish a large-scale synergy allowing access to research infrastructures, diffusion of information and use of generated databases from a certain number of facilities would be extremely beneficial.
The primary aim of this task is therefore to enhance accessibility to European research infrastructures, promote the generation of high quality data for modelling purposes at the Regional, and provide information on current research activities performed at national and/or international scales. In order to fulfil this primary aims a series of co-ordinating activities will be undertaken in order to enhance accessibility to European laboratories and analytical instrumentation, ground-based and aircraft facilities. This will be achieved through the provision of information for the web meta-portal to increase accessibility to research infrastructures (ground sites, laboratories and instrumented aircraft) and information on availability of data from specialised facilities. In addition, promotion of standardised data protocols and QA/QC compliance for transfer of data, in co-ordination with the ACCENT "Quality assurance" task, will ensure the high quality of generated data sets from EU facilities. Concurrently, training programmes at EU facilities and specialised workshops on the development of new instrumentation, quality control procedures, harmonisation of experimental procedures, data processing, validation and distribution will be implemented: this will favour both young scientists from EU member countries as well as scientists from candidate EU countries.
Access to field stations is primarily aimed at facilitating access to selected sites but also at promoting efficient and reliable sampling and analysis strategies as well as rapid diffusion of generated data. Scientific findings over the last decades clearly highlighted the need for a more comprehensive approach to atmospheric change processes. The research infrastructures involved in this task are therefore ground research stations European Super-Sites specifically selected in representative environments of the European continent.
Access to laboratory facilities is crucially required by the instrumental needs for these studies ranging from commonly available analytical instruments to highly specialised and often costly facilities such as large simulation chambers or advanced measurement techniques, e.g., for radical determination or aerosol characterisation. In addition to the chambers there is a range of other special facilities (unique or at least not commonly available) in Europe that will be useful for implementing the ACCENT scientific programme. ACCENT will implement a co-ordinated effort to make specialised laboratory facilities accessible to the scientists that may need them within the framework of the ACCENT scientific programme.
Access to research aircraft aims at establishing a close link between ACCENT and the EUFAR European Fleet for Airborne Research, an integrated infrastructure initiative for the research aircraft in environmental and geosciences. The activity within this task will be aimed at favouring the inclusion of the ACCENT scientific community in the Expert EUFAR Working Groups that are directly concerned with the thematic areas of ACCENT: gas phase chemistry, aerosol physics and aerosol chemistry.
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Project coordinator: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. coordinator@accent-network.org Project Office: Università di Urbino. project.office@accent-network.org Web-coordinator: Norwegian Institute for Air Research. mail@accent-network.org ACCENT Disclaimer |