Masarykova Univerzita (Cz)

Submitted by Admin on Wed, 19/09/2012 - 09:58

Masaryk University (MU), located in Brno, is the second-largest public university in the Czech Republic and the leading higher education institution in Moravia. At present it comprises 9 faculties with more than 200 departments, institutes and clinics with more than 4000 employees and 41000 students. One of the top priorities for MU is scientific research. It has attained a leading position in competitions for research grants, is making considerable financial investments at its new university campus to enhance its research and teaching capacity and is developing tools for the transfer of knowledge and improved support for research and innovation. Two teams from MU will participate in the project solutions: The Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses (IBA) and the Research Centre of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology (RECETOX).

IBA is focused on research, teaching and realization of projects in the field of environmental information systems, human and ecological risk assessment. These are mainly systems for collection, aggregation, processing and visualisation of data and information about the environment, and systems of environmental management and communication. It is also concerned with modelling and prediction of environmental issues and their relation to other fields of human activity, such as industry, means of transport or health care. A significant part of research work is the analysis of environmental data and modelling of processes in this area, the diversity assessment of biological communities and a general analysis of data from environmental biomonitoring and the application of GIS in the ecological risk assessment. For more information, please visit the institute’s web site at http://www.iba.muni.cz/

RECETOX research is oriented to the solution of scientific projects and providing related services, especially in the field of environmental data analysis, software development and ICT applications. Its activities are primarily focused on organizational and expert services for large scientific projects and environmental research projects. RECETOX, together with the EU DG Research Centre of Excellence for Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology also coordinates the Central and Eastern European Centre for Persistent Organic Pollutants (CEEPOPsCTR) environment services: sensors (sources), data processing, data storage and operational management. The interconnection of their activities applies also to the solution of long-term research plan of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic, realized within the INCHEMBIOL project (Interactions among the Chemicals, Environment and Biological Systems and their Consequences on the Global, Regional and Local Scales) and many other projects solved for Ministry of Health and Ministry of Environment ot the Czech Republic. For more information, please visit the RECETOX’s web site at http://www.recetox.muni.cz/

Relevant experience

The following is a subset of initiatives of MU has been/is involved with that are more related to its role in TaToo project:

  • GS Soil: CIP project No. ECP 318004 “GS Soil”. Assessment and strategic development of INSPIRE compliant Geodata-Services for European Soil Data (2009-2011)
  • FEED: eParticipation project FEED No. EP-07-01-032 “Federated eParticipation Systems for Cross-Societal Deliberation on Environmental and Energy Issues” (2008-2009)
  • Euro-limpacs: FP6 project No. GOCE-CT-2003-505540. Euro-limpacs is a Integrated Project funded by the EU designed to assess the effects of future global change on Europe's freshwater ecosystems, (2004-2009).
  • ASSESS-HKH: FP6 project INCO-CT-2005-003659 ASSESS-HKH “Development of an Assessment System to Evaluate the Ecological Status of Rivers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan Region”. The aim of the ASSESS-HKH research is to develop scientifically-based, but applicable tools for the detection and evaluation of affected river reaches (2005-2008).
  • AQEM: FP5 project No: EVK1-CT1999-00027 AQEM “The Development and Testing of an Integrated Assessment System for the Ecological Quality of Streams and Rivers throughout Europe using Benthic Macroinvertebrates” (2000-2002)
  • APOPSBAL: FP5 project No: ICA2-CT-2002-10007 APOPSBAL "Assessment of the selected POPs (PCBs, PCDDs/Fs, OCPs) in the atmosphere and water ecosystems from waste materials generated by warfare in former Yugoslavia" (2002-2005)
  • STAR: FP5 project No: EVK1-CT 2001-00089 STAR “Standardisation of river classifications: Framework method for calibrating different biological survey results against ecological quality classifications to be developed for the Water Framework Directive”, (2002-2004)

Role in the consortium

MU will contribute to the project in the analysis of the requirements collected from the involved users/communities to identify existing gaps regarding information discovery, uncertainty propagation and data quality to the design of the TaToo framework reference architecture, and validate developed TaToo tools in Validation Scenario 3

  • WP5: Validation Scenarios

Interest of MU is mainly in the implementation and integration of services for analysis of anthropogenic impact and risk management systems, access and integration of human health and environmental data as well as in research on data quality and uncertainty propagation discovery and evaluation.

MU is well linked through the Central and Eastern European Centre for Persistent Organic Pollutants to the participation in other projects (e.g. Euro-limpacs, FEED, STAR) and is therefore interested in dissemination activities in this direction as well as in networking with other related communities.

Responsibilities in the project:

  • Contribute to WP2
  • Contribute to WP3
  • Contribute to WP5 / Leading the Validation Scenario 3 - Anthropogenic impact and global climate change