The International Centre for Advanced Studies on River-Sea Systems (DANUBIUS-RI) is a distributed Research Infrastructure to enable excellent interdisciplinary research and innovation on River-Sea Systems (RSS). Building on existing expertise spanning the environmental, social and economic sciences, it aims to provide an integrated Research Infrastructure for remote and in situ observation systems, experimental facilities, laboratories, modelling tools and resources for knowledge exchange along freshwater-seawater continua throughout Europe, from river source to coastal sea. DANUBIUS-RI will provide solutions to societal risks and challenges arising from global and climate change, and extreme events, offering a source to sea perspective to resolve the problems of adverse human impacts.

The DANUBIUS project dates back in early 1990s when the Romanian Government with the support of the National Institute for Marine Geology and Geoecology (GeoEcoMar) and the National Institute Research & Development for Biological Sciences (INSB) had proposed the creation of an International Centre for advanced studies on the Danube River-Danube Delta-Black Sea System. Over the years, the necessity of studying not just the Danube Delta ecosystem, but an integrated River-Sea System became clearer. In the ESFRI Roadmap since 2016, DANUBIUS-RI has recently submitted the Step1 application for the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). Currently in the Implementation Phase, DANUBIUS-RI is setting new services with the introduction of individual components in a number of partners countries.