The first CERTO progress meeting was held online, 30-31 July 2020, due to current travel restrictions. The online platform worked well and it enabled more participants to be able to attend than might have otherwise been possible, with representatives from all the workpackages and over 20 people in attendance.
The meeting started with an introduction from project coordinator Prof Steve Groom. He reported that 11 deliverables had already been reviewed by the management workpackage and submitted to the EU. However, there were some minor delays with some aspects of the projects work due to COVID-19. He led a discussion on the most effective means of communication within the project at the current time and the possible future impact of any COVID-related restrictions.
This was followed by an update from each of the workpackages. Dawn Ashby reported that all four deliverables from the Communications workpackage had been submitted on time, which included the Communications Plan, project website, contacts database and overview leaflet.
The first version of the Dissemination Plan has been produced by Eirini Politi and she gave an overview of dissemination activities that have been able to take place over the past few months. There was a discussion on how the Climate-KIC can help with dissemination and how CERTO could contribute to the KIC Deep Demonstrations.
Federico Falcini reported on community requirements, he had found that users required detailed and varied data. It was discussed that CERTO was constructed to focus on water quality and cannot offer everything. Users should be directed to other services which are beyond the scope of the programme.
It was reported by Andrew Tyler that fieldwork had been able to take place in the Venice Lagoon in February and that some data collection has taken place in the Plymouth Sound. Some other fieldwork has been delayed until next year, however there is still a risk of travel not being allowed.
Tom Jackson said that so far COVID-19 hadn’t had a big impact on the optical water type classification work, but it may play a role in what in situ data is available in the future. He hopes to have the first test cases available by the end of the year.
Francois Steinmetz and Didier Ramon reported on the land-sea interface and atmospheric correction workpackage. It was agreed that a local approach is needed to understand the variation in optical water types, and that careful planning is need for sampling to ensure the in situ data collected covers all areas of interest. Data collected from Venice and Plymouth will be used to validate the optical water type approach.
There were further discussions regarding potential delays to deliverables, mostly due to the difficulty in performing fieldwork with current travel restrictions. A plan was put in place for continued online meetings and to assess dependencies between different aspects of the project to ensure any delays are kept to a minimum.