Country: Croatia

Brief Description of Organisation:

The Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI) is the largest Croatian research center for basic sciences, participating also in science applications and higher education. It covers natural and life sciences and offers a rich environment for interdisciplinary research. Today the RBI consists of eleven research divisions, three centers for scientific support and sections for maintenance, technical services and administration. The RBI has an organized infrastructure, which includes the largest library in natural sciences in Croatia, computing centers, animal facilities and large number of valuable experimental devices and infrastructures. The IRB contracted 20 FP6 projects worth more than 3 mil €, 33 FP7 projects worth more than 11.2 mil € as well as 11 Horizon 2020 projects worth more than 7 mil €, as well as 7 ESF projects and 1 ERDF worth more than 1.8 mil €. RBI has a dedicated Department for Projects and Knowledge Transfer who actively participates in the administrative and financial preparation and implementation of all proposed and contracted projects and coordinate the implementation of all the preparatory and implementation activities with professional services of the Institute Its Center for Marine Research (CMR) is located in Rovinj at the Adriatic coast. The CMR specializes in marine research, ecological analyses and long-term monitoring of the northern Adriatic. The CMR hosts a northern Adriatic long term dataset on ecological, biological, oceanographic and plankton parameters that reaches over 40 years back. The most relevant capital infrastructures for this project are the computing centers for ecosystem modelling and forecasting, three research vessels, oceanographic buoys and the CMR which is dedicated to the investigation and monitoring of the northern Adriatic Sea. The IRB was directly involved in the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive in Croatia and is to date responsible for the respective operational monitoring in the northern Adriatic.

JERICO-S3: Main tasks attributed under Work Packages:

WP3, co lead, Collaboration in WP3 Task 2.

WP5, Task 5.2, ST6 Automatic sampling for DNA analysis

WP7, Task 2.2.2 (Metabarcoding for genetic Biodiversity analysis and methodological poc of automated sampling.

JERICO-DS: Main tasks attributed under Work Packages:

WP6 co lead, lead of tasks 6.1 and 6.5, collaboration on tasks 6.2-4. Collaboration in WP1-6 as nation representative for HR. Collaboration on tasks 1.1 as well as on tasks 2.1 and 2.2.

Relevant Projects- previous and existing:

Services of systematic testing of quality of transitional and coastal waters 2013-2019 financed by the Croatian Waters agency. In recent years the CIM was leading the Croatian national monitoring program for the Adriatic (Projekt Jadran). Next to that, CIM was involved in numerous national and international marine research and managements programs and projects like e.g.: WICOS (Interreg Implementation of the water quality monitoring in the Western Istrian Coastal Sea), BALMAS (AdriaticIPA, Balast water management for Adriatic Sea Protection). CIM (coordinator Mirta Smodlaka) was involved in the EU project MARELITT. One major output were the toolkits for marine litter retention and derelict fishing gear retrieval. CIM (coordinator Mirta Smodlaka) was involved in the EU project PERSEUS testing of the AMP toolbox.

COASTAL CITIES WATER POLLUTION CONTROL PROJECT 2
Consulting services for the definition of the monitoring and observation system for ongoing assessment of the adriatic sea under the adriatic sea monitoring programme, phase II