News & Events
- February 02, 2023
eBOS Participates in the BIOTRAILS Kick-off Meeting!



On January 25th, the project BIOTRAILS ‘Nexus framework for biodiversity-relevant transformative change’ held its physical kick off meeting in Bari, Italy. This 36-month EU-funded Research and Innovation Action funded under the HORIZON Europe programme, officially started on the 1st of December 2022.
Our colleagues Mr. Philippos Philippou, R&D Senior Project Manager, Dr. Konstantina Panagiotou, Programme Manager/Researcher and Ms. Frini Lazarou, R&D Project Manager participated in the physical kick-off-meeting, which was chaired by Dr Raffaele Giordano, representing Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche (CNR), as the Coordinator of BIOTRAILS. The meeting was attended by the project’s 11 partners and included partners’ presentations of the vision and objectives of the project as well as of an overview of the overall project expectations and guidelines by the European Commission.
BIOTRAILS aims to generate knowledge and develop tools that will inspire and accelerate biodiversity-relevant transformative change in our society. BIOTRAILS will use Participatory Systems Dynamics Modelling to take into account the complex interrelations between the indirect drivers of change in four value chains of traded products (cocoa produced in Peru; forest-based cultural products created by indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon; fisheries and aquaculture products supplied by the Mediterranean basin and consumed within the Mediterranean countries; and gold mined in Ghana), in an integrated manner alongside the climate and social justice agendas.
Based on this knowledge and tools, BIOTRAILS will bring together stakeholders across different stages of product/material global value chains to collaboratively design pathways that can lead to a sustainable future, proposing interventions in policy, urban consumption patterns and corporate policies. BIOTRAILS will set up Learning and Action Alliances: groups of organisations and individuals with a common interest to address the multiple challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and people’s good quality of life, across different spatial and administrative scales and stages of global value chains. Environmentally Extended Multi-Regional Input–Output analysis and Life Cycle Assessment methods will be used to trace the environmental pressures arising from extraction / production, trade, and consumption activities, and behaviour patterns along global supply chains in the target sectors.
The project will assess, besides the economic values, the biophysical, social and relational values emerging across different steps of value chain. Behavioural studies will be conducted based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, which considers psychological and behavioural patterns. Structural Equation Models will be used to identify the most significant factors that drive behavioural change.
Within BIOTRAILS project, eBOS will create the BIOTRAILS data repository managing all data collected within the case studies and existing various sources, following a data collection and integration protocol to enable seamless access to the required datasets. In addition, eBOS will design and implement the graphical Human Machine Interface of the system by selecting the appropriate type of user interface components for the visualisation of the different scenarios.
Apart from designing and maintaining the project’s website, eBOS will also leverage its wide experience in the market by leading the exploitation activities and sustainability plan, as well as acting as the project’s Quality Assurance Manager, ensuring the impact maximisation and outreach of the project’s results, and the high quality of the work produced.
More information about the project can be obtained from the CORDIS website