Vai al contenuto

Objectives

Home » Objectives
The project aims to develop products with high technological content for classifying and monitoring the state of health of aquatic transitional and marine-coastal ecosystems, combining innovation in eco-technologies with innovation in information technologies.

The purpose of the project is to develop a certification protocol for monitoring the state of health of aquatic coastal ecosystems, based on the analysis of the characteristics of the dimensional structure (a rough descriptor of the bodily dimensions of the individuals and the relative abundance of individuals of different bodily dimensions) of phytoplankton corporations, which, in terms of information content, technological potential and simplicity of use, are increasingly becoming the object of research all over the world.

To this end, the project has four main objectives:

  1. the production of a system of image analysis that significantly upgrades the existing systems in terms of the accuracy of cellular bio-volume quantification; in particular, a two-dimensional version which, by providing the usual system of detection made up of an inverted microscope with two-dimensional vision, automatically creates a key for the initial recognition of the forms and consequently a guide to the measurements necessary for the application of the most appropriate three-dimensional model for calculating the bio-volumes;
  2. methodological standardization and certification of ecological descriptors of the state of health of aquatic ecosystems based on the analysis of the dimensional structure of the phytoplankton communities;
  3. the production of data analysis software, linked to image analysis software, that produces a classification of the ecological status of the ecosystems from which the samples were taken, in accordance with the methodology set out in current Italian laws (Legislative Decree 152/99 and subsequent modifications) and the EU Water Framework Directive (60/2000/EC), in the process of being implemented on the national level;
  4. transfer of the results acquired to interested parties by means of the implementation of a training course specializing in two fields:
    1. improving our knowledge of the descriptors of the ecological status of aquatic ecosystems so as to be able to apply the technological product in monitoring programmes;
    2. advanced study of the tools for analysing the biometric data and the dimensional structures of the phytoplankton, and the programming tools for the development of software for monitoring the state of health of ecosystems.

 

To fulfil each of the above-mentioned objectives, the project includes a series of activities, described in detail in the corresponding section of this document, each of which is organised into six-monthly stages.

At each stage and for each activity a verifiable milestone and a product are given, a list of which is shown in tabular form in the section describing the project activities. The achievement of the milestones is monitored in the project by the Committee Responsible for the Workpackages and is verified in the six-monthly project workshops established by the Project management.

The organisation of the project activities is thus designed to make the stages of development of the project’s products verifiable.

The products constitute the tangible and verifiable result of each of the main objectives.

The fulfilment of the first three objectives entails the production of due software prototypes, whose industrial competitiveness is estimated in the present project and will be assessed experimentally in the final year of the project when the prototypes will be made available for experimentation by a group of final users involved in the training programme at the end of the second year of the project.

As regard the upgrades of the existing image analysis systems, it is forecast the implementation of existing software for image analysis with software specific application for the calculus of biometric features of phytoplankton cell. Nikon Instruments SpA will be the final beneficiary, of these applications.

These software will be available for use by all operators working on this taxonomic/functional grouping in the main Eco-Regions of the biosphere; for the software for classifying the ecological status of ecosystems, it will be available for use by all operators involved on a European level in the monitoring plans in accordance with the recent Water Directive (60/2000/EC) and will represent an opportunity for the development of entrepreneurship in the field of environmental software at the local level.

The final product of the fourth objective of the project is also easily quantifiable and verifiable in that it consists of a training course, described in detail in Workpackage 4 of the project.

From the scientific point of view, the project aims to acquire innovative knowledge in the fields of aquatic ecosystem ecology and the monitoring and conservation of their state of health, necessary for achieving the results desired. The main scientific objectives of the project in the field of ecology are:

  1. creation of an atlas of the phytoplankton genera of coastal transitional ecosystems;
  2. optimisation and validation of the models for calculating the bio-volume of the phytoplankton genera selected for the atlas of aquatic transitional ecosystems and marine-coastal ecosystems;
  3. cataloguing of the models of variation of the biometric characteristics of the phytoplankton species in relation to the main physiographical, hydrological, climatic and sedimentary characteristics of the transitional ecosystems;
  4. comparative cataloguing of the levels of variability of the taxonomic descriptors and the dimensional structure of the phytoplankton in conditions of reference on different levels of spatial scale;
  5. methodological standardization and validation of the descriptors of the state of health of transitional and marine-coastal ecosystems derived from the characteristics of the dimensional structure of phytoplankton corporations.

The process of verification of the scientific objectives of the project is analogous to the process already described for the general objectives of the project and constitutes one of the milestones of the Project management.

The scientific objectives are functionally linked to each other regarding the fulfilment of the first and third of the general objectives and the expected products.

The creation of an atlas of the phytoplankton genera dominant in transitional and marine-coastal ecosystems and the optimisation of the models for calculating the volumes, which in themselves constitute original products of knowledge in the field of transitional ecosystems, also constitute the innovative component of the image analysis system, making it user-friendly, fundamentally improving the standard of measurement and enabling processes of calibration, inter-calibration and validation of the data, indispensable for certification of the procedures and the results obtained.

The cataloguing of the models of variation of the biometric characteristics and the levels of variability in the conditions of reference are indispensable steps for the comparative evaluation of accuracy and the suitability of the characteristics of the phytoplankton corporations for describing the state of health of ecosystems, facilitating the selection, standardization and validation of the descriptors.