Observing and analysing the Bioeconomy in the EU – Adapting data and tools to new questions and challenges

Abstract. The concept of ‘bioeconomy ’ is receiving increased attention in policy and business circles. The European Commission (EC) has initiated the Bioeconomy Strat-egy which is a signal of intent that the EU seeks to meet the challenge of reconciling responsible-resource usage respecting sustainability criteria, with wealth-generation. To this aim, the EC’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has been entrusted to implement a Bioeconomy Information Systems Observatory within which the objective is to devel-op an ongoing coherent picture of the activities of this sector, whilst developing for-ward-looking tools of analysis to help respond to the aforementioned challenge. This paper provides a discussion on the research activities which are currently under devel-opment at the JRC. Whilst the scale of ambition of the Bioeconomy Observatory is significant, it is recognised that much of the research conducted so-far remains work-in-progress and is therefore only a starting point to fully capturing the nuances of this diverse and complex sector