| I-AMICA (Infrastruttura di Alta tecnologia per il Monitoraggio Climatico Ambientale - Infrastructure of High Technology for Environmental and Climate Monitoring -) is a three years Italian National Operative Program (PON) project co-founded by the European Regional Development Fund. The project is devoted to strengthen the environmental monitoring in Southern Italy with the aim to support the integration among research, high training, and innovation also providing synergies among public and private research organizations. The activities are focused on actions addressed to strengthen the observational infrastructures for atmosphere, forest and coastal areas in the regions of Southern Italy, whose economic growth and social well-being are strongly related to the environment quality. In such Convergence Regions (Campania, Apulia, Calabria and Sicily), instrumental networks (e.g. advanced sensors, software tools, integrated platforms and mobile laboratory and stations) dedicated to the environmental and climatic monitoring in the Mediterranean area, in terms of air quality, forest and agriculture, coastal marine ecosystems are promoted and developed.
In order to increase the competitive capacity at national and international level, four “pillar” activities are aimed to (1) strengthen observing infrastructures for climate and environment and data processing systems, (2) promote innovation, technological development and industrial transfer, (3) integrate these observational activities into international programs (i.e. GAW-WMO, ACTRIS, EARLINET, GMOS, ICOS, FLUXNET, SHARE, NEXT DATA) that will allow I-AMICA to effectively be integrated with important networks. Finally, (4) through the implementation of observations, networking, technological applications and territorial services in the Convergence Regions, I-AMICA provides an important support to the local and regional communities. |