The EcologicalModelling Virtual Research Environment

Description

The EcologicalModelling Virtual Research EnvironmentA ''system'' with the following distinguishing features: ''(i)'' it is a Web-based working environment; ''(ii)'' it is tailored to serve the needs of a Community of Practice; ''(iii)'' it is expected to provide a community of practice with the whole array of commodities needed to accomplish the community’s goal(s); ''(iv)'' it is open and flexible with respect to the overall service offering and lifetime; and ''(v)'' it promotes fine-grained controlled sharing of both intermediate and final research results by guaranteeing ownership, provenance, and attribution. is conceived to provide its users with a working environment focused on the gCube facilities for producing species distribution maps resulting from the processing of data on species characteristics and environmental observations. The resulting maps are actually rich information objects containing PNG images, GIS layers as well as metadata.

URI: https://portal.i-marine.d4science.org/group/ecologicalmodelling

Functionality

The main facilities this VREVirtual Research Environment. offers are:

• AquaMaps Data Administration: to enable VREVirtual Research Environment. Data Managers to produce new versions of the AquaMaps datasets (the datasets exploited by the AquaMaps service to produce species distribution maps). Such datasets include HSPEC (an estimation of species occurrence by species and cell), HSPEN (an envelop representing the tolerance of species wrt environmental parameters), and HCAF (environmental parameters by cell) while the algorithms that can be used to produce new versions of them include Linear or Parabolic Interpolations, Native and Suitable Range, Native 2050 and Suitable 2050 Range;

• AquaMaps Maps Generation: to enable users to produce species and biodiversity predictive distribution maps. The portlet make it possible to select the set of species to analysed, to define the data to use and to submit massive generation tasks leading to the production of AquaMaps objects representing the maps eventually including their GIS version;

• Species View: to enable users to discover and browse species products (namely distribution maps) produced via the AquaMaps Maps Generation facility in an innovative way. This facility supports discovery mechanisms ranging from simple search based on species names to very specific search criterion and it offers a comprehensive set of products visualisation approaches;

• Species Maps Discovery: to enable users to discover and visualize GIS layers corresponding to species distribution maps that have been generated and published in the iMarine infrastructure. This facilities relies on the GeoExplorer portlet and make it possible to effectively exploit the generated maps and perform comparisons and analysis of the diverse distributions by enabling maps overlay, transects production and values inspection;

• Workspace: to enable every user to store and organise the information objects he/she is interested to work with. In addition to that, the user is allowed to collaborate with other users by sharing objects and messages;

• VREVirtual Research Environment. Management: to enable authorised users (i.e. VREVirtual Research Environment. Managers) to manage other users using or willing to access the VREVirtual Research Environment.. VREVirtual Research Environment. Managers are enabled to (i) authorise users in accessing the VREVirtual Research Environment., (ii) assign or withdraw roles to users, (iii) remove users, and (iv) send a communication to the current users.

Data

The main datasets that are available via the services hosted by this VREVirtual Research Environment. include datasets needed to the AquaMaps algorithm (i.e. HSPEC, an estimation of species occurrence by species and cell; HSPEN, an envelop representing the tolerance of species wrt environmental parameters; and HCAF, environmental parameters by cell).

Software

• (DONE) gCube 2.7.2 (December '11);
• (DONE) gCube 2.7.3 (February '12);
• (DONE) gCube 2.8.0 (March '12);
• (DONE) gCube 2.8.1 (April '12);
• (DONE) gCube 2.9.0 (June '12);
• (DONE) gCube 2.9.1 (August '12);
• (DONE) gCube 2.11.0 (October '12);
• (DONE) gCube 2.12.0 (February '13);
• (DONE) gCube 2.13.0 (March '13);
• (DONE) gCube 2.14.0 (May '13);
• (DONE) gCube 2.15.0 (June '13);
• (DONE) gCube 2.16.0 (July '13);
• (DONE) gCube 2.17.0 (December '13);
• (DONE) gCube 2.17.1 (December '13);
• (DONE) gCube 3.0.0 (March '14);