One of the key aims of the Eurofleets+ project is to involve a wide range of stakeholders to inform on the development, operation and strategic direction of the European research vessel fleet. In particular, the aim of the work package “Stakeholder Engagement” is to involve relevant stakeholders to coordinate efforts for the use of technologies and platforms for marine research and to assess the progressing needs and perspectives of stakeholders and user communities. The relevant categories of stakeholders are: Industry, pan-European Research Infrastructures, Research and Education, Government, Media, Public.
Stakeholder dialogue has been fostered through the approaches:
- semi-structured interviews: focused on the identification of the stakeholder’s offer and need, on the overlaps between stakeholder and Eurofleets+ missions and strategy, on the mutual collaboration opportunities;
- a web-based discussion forum (https://www.eurofleets.eu/ forums/forum/stakeholder-forum/): a discussion platform will be established on the Eurofleets+ website to enable interested parties to interact with project participants; this will gather all relevant stakeholders and Research Vessels’ operators in one virtual place and will connect the work done for the interviews with those for the preparation of the international workshops.
Another further step for involving the stakeholders will be 1st Workshop Stakeholder International workshop discussing on “Combining fixed and mobile ocean observing systems and their link with satellite observations”. The workshop is scheduled in virtual mode on April 13th, 2021.
