Ecosystem Approach Community of Practice: VRE planning

Proposed VREVirtual Research Environment. Developments

Deliverable D6.1; Virtual Research Environments Plan, describes the identified Virtual Research Environments to be deployed in the iMarine Data e-InfrastructureAn operational combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data and services), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organizational structures needed to support research efforts and collaboration in the large. as requested by the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice.. At the due data of the Deliverable, the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice. was not yet equipped with a functioning requirements collecting and assessment support; that will be provided by the iMarine Board.

However, since the drafting of the iMarine project started, strong impulses from both the technology suppliers as the intended CoPCommunity of Practice. already outlined a set of services and resources to be made available through a high-performance infrastructure such as D4S.

This deliverable has to be prepared by the CoPCommunity of Practice., but requires a carefull assessment before being submitted to the other Consortium members. This review will see the iMarine Board involved in assessing the technological and functional 'added value' that will be provided by any proposed VREVirtual Research Environment.. This review procedure applies to all types of VREVirtual Research Environment.'s, services and resources identified in the project that will be exposed to the CoPCommunity of Practice..

The VREVirtual Research Environment. proposal review process is organized in 3 main phases: Preparation and Board review, Consortium review, and PEB review and approval.

Proposed VREs

Currently, a set of functional VREVirtual Research Environment.'s is it the CoPCommunity of Practice. disposal, but these will need various modifications before they will be adopted by new consortium members.

1. FCPPS The reporting tool;
2. ICIS The Timeseries management environment;
3. AquaMaps The species predictive modeling envrionment;
4. VTI The Vessel Transmitted Information management and modeling envrionment;

Already in an advanced state of progress, or planned extensions to the above are:

1. SPREAD Building on a subset of ICIS capabilities, SPREAD will add geospatial reallocation features ;
2. Codelistmanager The management of Codelists requires the further development of the facility in ICIS;
3. CodelistMapper The generation of persitent mappings between codes, code lists, and data using those codes requires that similar functionality developed in ICIS be made available as a separate VREVirtual Research Environment.;
4. VME DB The Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem database will contain VME Factsheets. These factsheets rely on services provided in FCPPS for document workflow and content management, and will be published using the FiMES schema;
5. VME Mapper based on VTI/ AquaMaps modelling and aggregation functions; access to geospatial data related to VME's;

In addition, a range of new VREVirtual Research Environment.'s that answer to specific data manipulation needs has been identified to support other VREVirtual Research Environment.'s; they provide functionality that other VREs may need to increse their uptake, or that open new data sources to existing VREVirtual Research Environment.'s

1. SpeciesModeller The AquaMaps VREVirtual Research Environment. with added algorithms;
2. OBIS The functionality required by OBIS;
3. Taxon Support for all VREVirtual Research Environment.'s in need of Taxonomy data; a Species Finder, based on GBIF and other repositories, supporting DarwinCore;
4. Semantic Annotator The FLOD service to annotate a document;
5. Environmental Explorer The Thredds data finder, schedule the finder, publish results;
6. Environmental Processor Invoke an internal or external process on a geospatial product, such as an aggregation over space and time, sample an image, filter on a bandwidth, transform into another format, etc.;
7. FishFrame The support for the IRD / EU FishFrame format and COST model with R integration;

VREVirtual Research Environment. Profiles

The many opportunities provided by the infrastructure at times may be overwhelming and difficult to grasp by representatives from e.g. the Communities of Practice behind the Business Cases.

In order to facilitate the collection of and negotiations on specific desiderata, a template that captures first the CoPCommunity of Practice. 'wishlist', and then discusses these with Board representatives, WP3 members, and PEB delegates.

A proposal for such template could be:

Problem: Describe the CoPCommunity of Practice. issue to be addressed by the Componenent (VREVirtual Research Environment. / service / resource / etc)

Product: Describe the proposed solution in maximum 3 sentences:

Priority to CoPCommunity of Practice.: List proposed solution priority following the iMarine Board priority setting criteria:

• Identified community: Users now:
• Potential for co-funding:
• Structural allocation of resources:
• Referred in DoW:
• Business Cases:
• How does the proposed action generally support sustainability aspects
• How consistent it is with EC regulations/strategies (eg INSPIRE, ... ):
• Re-usability – benefits – compatibility

Parentage: Relation to CoPCommunity of Practice. Software Relation to D4S technologies

Does the proposed solution solve other problems associated with EA-CoPCommunity of Practice. Business Cases?

If the proposed solution can be used in another SW scenario (not users!) please describe.

Public: How big is the expected user community after delivery?

Productivity: Are the proposed measures effective?

Does it reduce a known workload?

Price: Is the proposed solution cheap?

Expected effort in PM:

Presentation: How is the component delivered to users? (Design / on-line help / training material / support).

Privacy: Are they safe? Need the proposed solution to manage confidential info at data / dataset / organizational level? Describe security and privacy issues:

Policy: Are there any policies available that describe data access and sharing? Are these really needed? Copyright / attribution / metadata / legal

Pericolo: Do they introduce moral hazard? (A hazard here is the risk that users will behave more recklessly if they are insulated from the effects of the software, or if they do noit understand what it produces, where data come from, what they represent etc. .)