FUTURE-OBS : Developing a new generation of augmented observatories to ensure sustainable and equitable management of coastal socio-ecosystems

The livelihoods of more than 3 billion people depend on marine coastal socio-ecosystems. Yet, local anthropogenic stressors and global human-driven climate change increasingly threaten the sustainability and resilience of the tightly interdependent socio-economic and environmental systems. Long-term observation of coastal environments including biodiversity and associated socio-economic activities is absolutely critical for an holistic understanding of the functioning and dynamics of such socio-ecosystems, risk management, and for evaluating the relevance of public policies.

Despite significant progress in observation efforts over recent decades, particularly for physical, chemical and biogeochemical variables, sectorial fragmentation has precluded the development of the systemic-thinking and holistic analysis that is essential to fully understanding the complexity of coastal socio-ecosystems. Complementing traditional approaches, innovative technologies such as environmental genomics and in situ imaging for biodiversity monitoring, as well as the crowd-sourcing potential of social media for human activities, are leading to the implementation of more agile “augmented observatories”. The roll-out of this more socially responsive and integrative approach will lead to development of new indicators to track and understand the healthy functioning and change trajectories of coastal ecosystems, and will greatly facilitate the implementation of eco-responsible sustainable development initiatives designed to address major environmental issues.

In this context, the key-goal of the current FUTURE-OBS project (2022-2028) is to develop systems-thinking based targeted strategies for multi-scale and multidisciplinary observation of coastal socio-ecosystems in France. Work focus on environmentally sensitive areas, such as vulnerable maritime façades (English Channel and north-western Mediterranean Sea), marine protected areas and aquaculture zones, which act as demonstrators and use cases. The holistic socio-ecosystemic approach driven by FUTURE-OBS brings together scientific experts from distinct fields such as oceanography, ecology, economics and social sciences, along with public and private sector stakeholders, decision-makers and bodies representing citizens, to identify priorities and ensure a broader uptake of the solutions produced. The development and deployment of data-intensive approaches for observing biodiversity and societal uses produce a massive quantity of new and heterogeneous data which implies an in-depth strategic reflection on how best to structure, make accessible, and maintain new and existing data in-line with the FAIR principles. This conceptual design phase is essential to guarantee the optimal exploitation of multi-scale and multi-source marine data and serve as a basis for developing new thematic and integrated indicators. The routine use of interoperable, data-intensive approaches enable the introduction of new artificial intelligence tools and machine learning capabilities in the ocean observation. These new generation of augmented observatories can provide new data and insights for a sustainable management of coastal socio-ecosystems in the changing environments.