Virtual Research Environments Deployment and Operation: Plan

The iMarine project is expected to deploy and operate a number of Virtual Research Environments (VREs) to satisfy the needs of its community.

The set of Virtual Research Environments (VREs) iMarine operates as well as their evolution in terms of resources involved and services offered is a consequence of the analysis of the requirements captured by the Ecosystem Approach Community of Practice. In addition to that, others scenarios are expected to spring up and be analysed during the project lifetime as a consequence of the expression of interests coming from external communities, i.e. communities that are not part of the iMarine consortium. The analysis phase is followed by a deployment phase, i.e. the activity leading to the development and evolution of the identified VOs and VREs.

Analysis Phase

The analysis phase is expected to be continuous, i.e. VREVirtual Research Environment. "managers" (both users playing the role of VRE Designer or VRE Manager), have to deal with novel scenario specifications with no planned schedule as well as with revised versions of existing scenario specifications resulting from the exploitation of the released services with no fixed schedule. The result of the analysis phase is documented in a per scenario analysis report and leads to the identification of Virtual Research Environments to be deployed as well as actions governing the evolution of the deployed VREs, e.g. deploy a new function, add a new data source.