SYMBIOSIS is heading to Bristol this September, where the project will play a prominent role at the IENE 2026 International Conference, taking place from 21 to 25 September 2026 at the University of the West of England (UWE). During the Conference, SYMBIOSIS partners will lead an interactive workshop and present three further contributions, reflecting the project’s growing body of work on integrating biodiversity into the lifecycle of linear transport infrastructure.
The centrepiece of SYMBIOSIS’s participation is an interactive workshop on Tuesday 22 September (11:00-13:00): “Integrating Biodiversity into Climate-Resilient Infrastructure: Insights from the SYMBIOSIS Project”. Bringing together partners ICSI, Minuartia, UKCEH and CERTH, the session will follow the infrastructure lifecycle in three parts, moving from identifying priority areas for nature-based solutions, to biodiversity monitoring and data integration, and finally to governance and decision-making. Through short presentations and practical group exercises, the workshop will offer participants a hands-on opportunity to engage with SYMBIOSIS’s emerging approaches. It is of particular interest to those working across transport ecology, infrastructure planning and biodiversity monitoring.
Beyond the workshop, SYMBIOSIS will be represented in three further conference sessions. On 22 September (14:30-16:30), the project will deliver a presentation on “Cumulative Impact Assessment in Pairing Transport Infrastructure”. On 24 September, two additional sessions will follow: “From Grey to Blue and Green Infrastructure: Upscaling Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in Railway Networks” (11:00-13:00), and “Towards Defining Key Performance Indicators for Mainstreaming Biodiversity in Corporate Sustainability Reporting” (14:30-16:00). A poster contribution, “Operationalising biodiversity monitoring on railway networks through passive acoustics, earth observation, and integrated data workflows”, led by Reto Schmucki, will also be presented on 24 September.
Together, these sessions cover the full breadth of SYMBIOSIS’s work, from data and monitoring to governance and cumulative impact assessment, and offer multiple entry points for the wider biodiversity and infrastructure community to engage with the project.
SYMBIOSIS looks forward to welcoming the Advisory Board and Technical Stakeholder Group members, as well as the broader IENE community, to Bristol to exchange perspectives and gather input that will feed into the project’s next activities.
Read the full IENE 2026 Programme here: https://virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/e/IENE-2026/program
Register for the conference here: https://www.iene2026.info/registration