Monitoring of nature infrastructure - Skill acquisition fOr NATure-bAsed solutions

Modelling, Mapping, and Monitoring Nature Infrastructure (3M NI) is an evolving land use and management strategy using digital technologies & biodiversity knowledge to achieve sustainable use of resources and promote Nature-Based Solutions (NbS). 3M NI methods, harnessing data from in-situ observations, satellites, Internet of Things (IoT), and technologies such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence, can potentially increase the quantity and quality of data products while planning biodiversity and climate actions through NBS.

One of the main challenges for NBS in Southeastern Europe is the low adoption rate of 3M NI technologies and practices, especially concerning ""big data in natural resources"" partly due to the lack of efficient communication skills as well as scientific and technological (S&T) skills for executing multi/cross/interdisciplinary analytics on multi-scale/source environmental data, addressing regional and site level issues, to extract more accurate and impactful actionable information by combining these data with specific user´s needs.

SONATA capacity-building strategy builds on the complementary expertise of VITO (Belgium), FIHAC (Spain), NINA (Norway) and UNIOVI (Spain), that will transfer knowledge and skills to BIOS (Serbia) to enhance 1) researchers' S&T capacity for performing multi-scale/source data analyses, 2) researchers and administrative staff’s capability to communicate practical environmental data-related knowledge for NBS planning to stakeholders across the sustainable landscape value chain and to non-scientific local communities and 3) lower the development gap between European regions and create lasting partnerships.

IT and Biosystems BIOS centers will be enhanced through SONATA into a NBS Team (NbS-T) concentrating on cross/multi/interdisciplinary innovation-driven R&D within a co-creation environment.

Post SONATA BIOS' NBS-T will be nationally competent in the 3M NI and NBS sector and a qualified partner at the European level.