Objective
SmartCow integrates key European cattle research infrastructures, to promote their coordinated use and development and thereby help the European cattle sector face the challenge of sustainable production. Covering all the relevant scientific fields and the diversity of cattle types and production systems, SmartCow will provide the academic and private research communities with easy access to 11 major research infrastructures from 7 countries (18 installations) of high quality services and resources. These are needed to develop innovative and ethical solutions for efficient use of animal and feed resources that promote animal welfare and healthy livestock, as well as sustainable competitiveness.
SmartCow combines strong scientific and technical skills in animal nutrition (in vivo methods for nutrient utilisation and emissions measurements), genetics (genotyped animals, phenotyping capabilities), health and welfare (sensors and automatic recordings of physiological and behavioural traits) and ethics in animal experimentation. A central promotion and management of transnational access to the research infrastructures will provide access to around 10,000 cow.weeks and facilitate up to 33 research projects involving 59 users. Networking activities will harmonise and standardise procedures especially in animal care and measurements, design of experiments, data recording and analysis thanks to a cloud-based data-platform specifically developed in the project. Joint research activities will produce refined methods and proxies to evaluate feed efficiency and emissions, develop new protocols to reduce the use of animals and produce new methods to exploit sensor data for cattle husbandry. Promotion of transnational access and dissemination of SmartCow outcomes and innovations for maximum impact will be supported by a Stakeholder Platform composed of pre- and post-farm gate industry, farmer organisations, NGOs, policy makers at national and EU levels.
Fields of science
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changesnorth atlantic oscillation
- humanitiesphilosophy, ethics and religionphilosophymetaphysicsontology
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistryaliphatic compounds
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencescomputer securityaccess control
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutrition
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- agricultural sciencesanimal and dairy science
Call for proposal
H2020-INFRAIA-2017-1-two-stage
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
75007 Paris Cedex 07
France
Participants (13)
EH9 3JG Edinburgh
6708 PB Wageningen
6708 PB Wageningen
RG6 6AH Reading
18196 Dummerstorf
R93 Carlow
8000 Aarhus C
08140 Caldes De Montbui Barcelona
5030 Gembloux
75012 Paris
00161 Roma
AL5 2JQ Harpenden
75015 Paris