The iMarineBoard Virtual Research Environment

Description

The iMarineBoardVRE is designed to provide the members of the iMarine Board with collaboration tools and a demonstration of infrastructure facilities.

The iMarine Board Members are involved in the decision making process for the implementation of a robust digital framework to support the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries and Natural resources Management. The iMarine e-infrastructure offer a several high-capacity facilities for accessing, sharing, managing and analyzing data, deploying entire applications and services, and this VREVirtual Research Environment. is intended to assist with real-life facilities this decision making process.

It is a responsibility of the Ecosystem Approach Communities of Practice (EA-CoPCommunity of Practice.) to help develop a sustainable governance model, and the guidelines and policies regulating the management and operation of the e-infrastructure. This VREVirtual Research Environment. therefore includes those services that put into effect iMarine governance models and policies, such as (i) the collaboration suite including a shared workspace and messaging system, (ii) services for accessing biodiversity data from several major databases, and (iii) services for managing tabular data (e.g. catch statistics) and code lists.

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

Functionality

The main facilities this VREVirtual Research Environment. offers are:

• Time Series Management: to enable users to import, curate and manage time series. This is a comprehensive and feature-rich environment that support data managers during the whole life cycle of data management from capture to publishing and visualisation. In enable data managers to import and transform CSV files in time series, i.e. tabular data having proper types associated with columns eventually referring to code lists – reference datasets representing recognized value instances of the elements the dataset is about, e.g., species, zones, countries. The environment guarantees that the time series are compliant with the defined types and code lists. Besides the curation, the environment supports the analysis of the data by enabling a user to (i) perform operations like grouping and filtering, (ii) producing charts and GIS maps (if the data have geographic features) and (iii) analysing the data via an R environment. Finally, the environment supports the publishing of time series in the infrastructure by equipping them with rich metadata so that such resources can be used in other application contexts;

• Code Lists Management: to enable the users to import and manage code lists, i.e. reference datasets representing recognised value instances of the elements the dataset is about. Such environment enable users to import CSV files or existing code lists from SDMX repositories, curate them when needed, inspect the current values, and produce and publish new versions that can be used during the curation phase of a time series. Code lists are annotated with rich metadata capturing attribution and lineage;

• 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.

Software

• (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);