Professor Øystein Aas has been awarded an MSCA Doctoral network. The total size of the project is approximately NOK 33 million.
The European Commission recently announced who will be allocated funds through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) scheme.
The MSCA-scheme ispart of the EU's framework program for research and innovation, and will, among other things, promote researcher mobility. MINA and project coordinator Øystein Aas have been awarded an MSCA Doctoral network of 2.9 million euros, approximately NOK 33 millions.
Digital data and visitor management
The project has the title “Visitor monitoring and management in protected and recreational areas: new challenges, novel solutions for the Anthropocene”.
"The plan is to strengthen our knowledge for a more sustainable management of people's use of nature and protected areas," says Aas.
He points out that there is a large, unrealized potential for effective visitor monitoring in nature, protected and recreational areas. The researchers will use data from secondary data sources (such as apps and social media) to contribute to knowledge-based and sustainable management.
"There is an opportunity to obtain large amounts of data in a cheap and efficient way," he says.
There are high expectations: The researchers are expected to contribute to world-leading, innovative knowledge about visitor monitoring and how this can be done in the digital age.
In the project, the visitor data will be used to limit the loss of biological diversity and the deterioration of recreational and protected areas. The researchers will also develop strategies to enhance and strengthen the social, economic and environmental benefits for society from these resources through nature-based tourism.
Nordic-Baltic network
MSCA-project is a collaboration between six universities in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and Latvia. It is a Nordic-Baltic network with partners who have been working together for almost 20 years. In total, ten PhD candidates will be employed in the four-year project.
He goes on to say that he had good experiences with the IMPRESS project which NMBU's Faculty of Veterinary Medicine led in the latter half of the 2010s. Such applications are arduous processes. Aas says that they started planning already in early spring 2022, while the application deadline was 15 November of the same year.
"I have to admit I didn't expect the application to be accepted at the first attempt," he concludes.