Project Title – DANUBIUS-RO
SMIS CODE 304273
Funding Contract registered with MCID no. 390004/23.10.2024
The general objective of the DANUBIUS-RO project is the construction, equipping and operationalization of the Romanian components of the pan-European distributed research infrastructure DANUBIUS-RI dedicated to river-sea systems in order to transfer knowledge to interested parties. In 2016, the DANUBIUS-RI project was evaluated by ESFRI (European Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructures) and was accepted on the ESFRI 2016 Roadmap. The DANUBIUS-RI project is the only ESFRI project introduced on the Roadmap by Romania and coordinated by our country. This was possible thanks to the Letter of Commitment of the Government of Romania signed by Prime Minister Victor Ponta. In accordance with ESFRI rules, projects admitted to the Roadmap must achieve Landmark status (operational research infrastructure) within 10 years.
For DANUBIUS-RI, this means establishing the ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium), which is the legal form of association of states, which manages the infrastructure, and reaching the operational stage at the end of 2026. At this time, Romania’s participation in the ERIC as a coordinating country was approved by the Memorandum of the Government of Romania 20D/581/25.08.2020. The ERIC will become operational during 2024, its documents being under evaluation by ESFRI. We emphasize that DANUBIUS-RI and implicitly its components in Romania that will be built, equipped and operationalized through the DANUBIUS-RO project, are addressed to the entire international research community and will bring multiple benefits to Romanian research and the socio-economic environment in our country. Thus, the national hub for innovation and transfer of advanced knowledge and technologies in the priority field of research on the effects of global changes on sea-river systems, with a focus on transition areas, is created.
The DANUBIUS-RO project transfers research results to the economic environment through a partnership with 10 SMEs in order to develop viable innovative economic solutions.
Justification of the need for project implementation: THE INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDIES FOR RIVER-SEA SYSTEMS “DANUBIUS-RI” is an international project coordinated by Romania, a distributed pan-European infrastructure, a research and education platform, which will bring a complex approach to the specific problems of river-sea systems and will make a major contribution to the understanding of these systems and the interface (transition) areas. At the moment, there is no research infrastructure in Romania dedicated to studying the Danube–Black Sea continuum that would cover the needs and complexity of DANUBIUS-RI. Thus, at the national level, the decision was made to build from scratch an infrastructure that meets the requirements of the ESFRI DANUBIUS-RI project. This includes two essential components for DANUBIUS-RI: the Hub and the Danube Delta Supersite. The present project, DANUBIUS-RO, will support the implementation of the Romanian components of the infrastructure to which Romania committed through memorandum no. 17926 / 14.08.2020 and the letters of support signed by the Government of Romania: the Prime Minister’s Letter of 2015 for the ESFRI Application and the MCDI Letter no. 9266/24.11.2021 for the European Application for the major project, through which the Completion Note prepared by JASPERS was obtained.
Intervention logic: The Romanian idea of establishing an advanced studies center dedicated to the Danube–Danube Delta–Black Sea macrosystem, initially appearing in 1996, developed into a European opening to address the entire variety of river-sea transition systems, given that nowhere in Europe does there exist a center dedicated to this topic. The idea had international support and evolved into the ESFRI DANUBIUS-RI project introduced on the ESFRI roadmap in 2016. Through this project, the structure, role and functionalities of all components, including the Romanian ones, were defined. The construction of the Romanian components of DANUBIUS-RI cannot be fully financed from national funds.