GFAR joined efforts with FAO in the H2020 project "Big Data Europe: Integrating Big Data, Software & Communities for Addressing Europe's Societal Challenges" (BDE).

The project is funded under the H2020 Work Programme Strategic Objective ICT 15 - 2014: Big data and Open Data Innovation and take-up and addresses the Target Outcome (b.3) Coordination & Support Actions: Data Aggregator.

BDE will provide support mechanisms for all the major aspects of a data value chain, in terms of the employed data and technology assets, the participating roles and the established or evolving processes. The effectiveness of the provided support mechanisms will be assessed in different domains pertaining to Europe's major societal challenges with respect to the needs and requirements of the related communities.

The project kick-off event will take place in Brussels on 25-27 Fabruary 2015.

One of the core data challenges addressed by the project is food and agriculture ("Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research, and the Bioeconomy"). FAO/GFAR will be responsible for the project's outreach to the communities relevant for this societal challenge..

Responsibilities of partners representing the societal challenges are: engaging the community, understanding data and technologies used and needed, selecting use cases (it has to be "big data", even not huge but complex, heterogeneous). The project will help communities develop the necessary back-end services based on requirements set forward by the stakeholders.