AQUARIUS

**ABOUT AQUARIUS**  AQUARIUS provides access to a comprehensive and diverse suite of integrated research infrastructures to address challenges and explore opportunities for the long-term sustainability of our marine and freshwater ecosystems. Through a robust and transparent system of transnational access funding calls, this four-year Horizon Europe-funded project, comprising 45 partners, will target and support research and innovation activities that contribute to the objectives, regional scope and implementation of the EU Mission ‘Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030.’ The Mission Implementation Plan has informed the thematic (Mission objectives) and geographic (Mission Lighthouse regions) scope of AQUARIUS, meaning that projects responding to the transnational calls for access will be required to demonstrate how they will contribute to at least one of the Mission objectives in the relevant region: - - To protect and restore marine and freshwater ecosystems (Atlantic/Arctic and Danube river system lighthouse). - Prevent and eliminate pollution of our ocean, seas and waters (Mediterranean sea basin lighthouse). - Make the sustainable blue economy carbon-neutral and circular (Baltic and North sea basin lighthouse). As such, AQUARIUS will cover the Baltic and the North Sea Basins, Black Sea, Atlantic/Arctic, and Mediterranean Sea along with their associated major rivers, to include the Danube, and also the Elbe, Ebro, as well as the Burrishoole Catchment. **OBJECTIVES** To achieve its ambitions AQUARIUS has the following objectives:  1. To ensure that the **enhancement and integration of a diverse range of top-level infrastructure services will help to address challenges for marine and freshwater ecosystems**, contributing to the objectives of the Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030”, and related EU and international policy targets. 2. To provide **efficient, single-point, transnational access** to a diverse array of 57 integrated research infrastructures, supplying a range of services covering marine and freshwater ecosystems. 3. To **design, develop, and manage the ‘Calls for Access’** to the research infrastructures through stakeholder engagement and a robust scientific and logistical evaluation process that frames and prioritises the challenges to ensure that the selected projects address the Mission Ocean objectives for marine and freshwater ecosystems, and easy access through a customised user-friendly platform. 4. To **facilitate smooth and timely access to the** **distributed** **research** **infrastructure portfolio. For selected projects,** ensuring that the logistics of integrating access to different types of research infrastructures can be addressed, and that users of the infrastructure are fully supported in implementing their research and innovation projects. 5. To guarantee that customised and highly **effective training and scientific and technical support will be provided for users of the research infrastructures**, and to prepare the new generations of researchers to properly exploit leading-edge infrastructure services. 6. To ensure **advanced data management** **and** **interoperability**, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g., data services) to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), with a focus on data stewardship and open science practices, equipping users of the research infrastructures with the necessary skills and competences in best-practice research data management, to make data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reproducible), according to open, global standards. 7. To **maximise the impact of the project** through dynamic dissemination, exploitation and communication activities, ensuring that the outputs of the selected projects utilise the integrated research infrastructures to support the Mission, delivering on clear targets for Europe’s marine and freshwater ecosystems, to protect and restore ecosystems and biodiversity, to reduce and eliminate pollution, and to make the sustainable blue economy carbon-neutral and circular.