9  First Tranche (May to Nov 2026)

The first tranche focuses on establishing a minimum viable ecosystem workflow framework that demonstrates adaptability, reproducibility, FAIR compliance and practical applicability across multiple ecosystem indicator use cases. It delivers the foundation required for future workflow expansion while supporting the project’s first reporting milestone and initial workflow deployment activities.

The first objective is to use existing indicator examples as a foundation for developing FAIR reproducible indicator workflows (UC01). Second objective is to use the proposed framework to develop new workflows (UC02).

The modular workflow architecture will have documented swap points for ecosystem type, assessment purpose, indicator variables, and data sources allowing initial exploration of adaptation options (UC03 and UC04).

Special attention will be given to initial implementation of FAIR principles and alignment with PID and FAIR4RS implementation plans whenever practicable, aiming at publication of reproducible workflows (UC05).

Integration of workflows into ongoing or planned assessments will be explored (UC06). It is expected that ongoing asssessments will be the main drivers and motivation for selecting specific ecosystems and purposes for UC02, UC03 and UC04.

This stage will require an initial exploration of options for discoverability (UC07), coupled with requirement gathering steps for Work Package 5.

The development of this tranche will allow initial opportunities for training (UC08) and involvement of early career researchers and students, with a focus on documentation (introductory workflow documentation), development of training material (beginner-friendly quick-start guide), example workflow notebooks and potentially one community event with published workshop outputs.