Communications as a strategic function for the management and success of a large multidisciplinary project - ENVRIplus case
Abstract
ENVRIplus is the European Union-funded Horizon 2020 project gathering 27 Environmental and Earth System Research Infrastructures, projects and networks together with the technical specialist partners to create a more coherent, interdisciplinary and interoperable cluster of Environmental Research Infrastructures across Europe. Collaboration within the ENVRIplus enables the multidisciplinary Earth system science across the traditional scientific fields, which is so important in order to address today's global challenges. ENVRIplus is a large and ambitious project. Having a 15-million-euro budget, 19 Work Packages (WP) and 37 partners representing 27 Research Infrastructures make its coordination and management challenging. Good communication practices are necessary to enable the project to truly utilise its opportunities and to maximise its impact. Multidisciplinarity in Geosciences means bridging the gap between different disciplines that often have very different traditions and cultures. This is particularly challenging for a project in terms of specific organization of different communities, their modes of working, different methodologies, certain habits, differences in ontology, etc. Another important challenge of a huge project like ENVRIplus is that work is divided into many tasks and packages and it can easily happen one WP get isolated from another. Good internal communication helps to see the links that were not seen before and possibilities for a cross-WP collaboration can be discovered, which improves the ability of the project to further achieve its targets or discover new breakthroughs. External communication is a must for every EU funded project. European Commission specifically requires each project has its own dissemination strategy to optimize the exploitation of the results. Indeed, most of the projects are focusing on the dissemination. How does dissemination, however, differs from the communications? How could we optimize the dissemination strategies to increase the impact of our projects? In conclusion, both internal and external Communication must be understood as a strategic function that helps to bridge the gaps between different themes, scientific fields and cultures and greatly contributes to a management and success of every multidisciplinary project.
- Publication:
-
EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- April 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018EGUGA..20.9617B