The project “Strategy and actions for preparing the national participation in the DANUBIUS-RI project”, with DANS acronym, represents the Romanian contribution to the DANUBIUS-RI project as assumed by the Memorandum issued by the Romanian Government on “The Romanian Government’s approval of preparatory actions regarding building in Romania the International Center for Advanced Studies for River – Danube – Sea Systems (DANUBIUS-RI), within the framework of the Europe 2020 Strategy and the EU Strategy for the Danube Region, and declaring this project as a “strategic project of national importance” in the scientific research field.
In the context of the recommendations of the European Strategy for the Danube Region (SUERD) on the development of high-quality scientific research infrastructures, Romania has proposed a priority project of national and European interest, which aims the creation of an International Center for Advanced Studies on River – Delta – Sea Systems (DANUBIUS -RI), with the Hub located in the Danube Delta, at Murighiol, on the Tulcea County, DANUBIUS-RI. The project was designated Fanion Project in SUERD (EU Strategy for the Danube Region – Action PA 7 – Knowledge Based Society).
The project was included in 2016 on the list of major ESFRI research infrastructures (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures). The proposed infrastructure is of a great scale, comprising of four nodes located in major research centers in Europe and 12 supersites located at the confluence of the deltaic systems (delta, estuary, and lagoon) of some of the major rivers in Europe and the marine system.
The project “Strategy and actions for preparing the national participation in the DANUBIUS-RI project ” is coordinated by the National Institute for Research and Development of Biological Sciences, a national excellence research pol in Life Sciences field, and which has participated since 1996 in the first discussions on valorization of the Danube Delta as a Natural Laboratory and then in the various stages of development of the project. The project partners are: the National Institute of Research and Development for Marine Geology and Geoecology – GeoEcoMar, the National Institute for Research and Development „Danube Delta” – Tulcea, the “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, the Geodynamic Institute “Sabba Ștefanescu” of the Romanian Academy.
The project will develop in close connection with” DANUBIUS – Preparatory Phase”, a three – years project funded by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 program with the goal to bring DANUBIUS-RI to the legal, financial and technical maturity necessary for its successful implementation and development.
As the implementation of the activities plan of the project “Strategy and actions for preparation of the national participation in the DANUBIUS-RI project” develops, the specific information obtained will be integrated in the process of defining and developing the DANUBIUS-RI infrastructure, which together with the results of the specialized studies, analyses, sweepers and specific modelling, will allow the founding of the development of DANUBIUS-RI objective in Romania as a major project. For this purpose, there will be elaborated: feasibility studies for the DANUBIUS RI objective, which comprises the three Romanian components: the Murighiol Hub, the Danube Delta Supersite, the Data Center, as well as the documentation for the European Commission for the recognition of DANUBIUS-RI as a major project in Romania, that includes the input data of the scientific strategy for the distributed pan-European infrastructure DANUBIUS-RI.
