The Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) is a center for marine and coastal research. As a partner in various projects and networks it promotes and supports the international image of Flemish marine scientific research and international marine education. VLIZ is involved in European projects which align closely with PacMAN, for example Assembly+, EMBRC, LifeWatch, GEANS and EMODNet. VLIZ also welcomes the plan to streamline and build on existing bioinformatics pipelines in order to improve the availability of omics data to global data infrastructures (OBIS) as well as the plan to ensure the provenance trace with links to other repositories where standardized metadata (GEOME), sequence data (INSDC), and taxonomic information (WoRMS, Marine Regions) is properly stored.
The objectives of PacMAN align with the strategic science vision of VLIZ and therefore will also participate in the advisory board of the PacMAN project to advise in the design of the monitoring plan as well as the decision-support tool.