Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Blue-Cloud 2026 (A federated European FAIR and Open Research Ecosystem for oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters)
Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2023-12-31
Over the past decades, Europe developed an impressive capability for aquatic environmental observation, data-handling and sharing, modelling and forecasting, second to none in the world. This builds upon national environmental observation and monitoring networks and programs, complemented with EU infrastructures such as the Copernicus satellite observation programme and related thematic services, the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet), and a range of environmental European Research Infrastructures and major R&D projects.
Within this framework, since October 2019, the pilot Blue-Cloud project (www.blue-cloud.org) combined both the interests of the European Open Science Cloud, aiming to provide a virtual environment with open and seamless access to services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and disciplines, and the blue research communities by developing a collaborative web-based environment providing simplified access to an unprecedented wealth of o multi-disciplinary datasets from observations, analytical services, and computing facilities essential for blue science.
Blue-Cloud 2026 aims to further evolve this pilot ecosystem into a Federated European Ecosystem to deliver FAIR & Open data and analytical services instrumental for deepening research of oceans, EU seas, and coastal & inland waters. It develops a thematic marine extension to EOSC for open web-based science, serving the needs of the EU Blue Economy, Marine Environment and Marine Knowledge agendas.
Over the course of 42 months, Blue-Cloud will evolve the Blue-Cloud core services, integrating more blue analytical services, configuring more Virtual Labs, and improving services for the uptake of new data sets from a multitude of data originators (such as SeaDataNet, EurOBIS, Euro-Argo, ELIXIR-ENA, SOCAT, EcoTaxa, and ICOS-Ocean), and major e-infrastructures, namely EUDAT, D4Science, and WEkEO (CMEMS DIAS) and for discovery and access to their structured data collections.
Blue-Cloud 2026’s overall Objective is to expand the federated approach of Blue-Cloud, involving more aquatic data stakeholders, and interacting with EOSC developments in support of the EU Green Deal, UN SDG, EU Destination Earth, and the EU Mission Starfish on healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters, ultimately to provide a core data service for the Digital Twin of the Ocean.
Blue-Cloud 2026 is co-ordinated by Trust-IT, CNR & MARIS, counting on a core team of partners such as VLIZ, Ifremer, MOI, and Seascape Belgium. Overall it mobilises a solid, multidisciplinary, committed team of 40 partners from 13 EU countries.
Within this framework, since October 2019, the pilot Blue-Cloud project (www.blue-cloud.org) combined both the interests of the European Open Science Cloud, aiming to provide a virtual environment with open and seamless access to services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and disciplines, and the blue research communities by developing a collaborative web-based environment providing simplified access to an unprecedented wealth of o multi-disciplinary datasets from observations, analytical services, and computing facilities essential for blue science.
Blue-Cloud 2026 aims to further evolve this pilot ecosystem into a Federated European Ecosystem to deliver FAIR & Open data and analytical services instrumental for deepening research of oceans, EU seas, and coastal & inland waters. It develops a thematic marine extension to EOSC for open web-based science, serving the needs of the EU Blue Economy, Marine Environment and Marine Knowledge agendas.
Over the course of 42 months, Blue-Cloud will evolve the Blue-Cloud core services, integrating more blue analytical services, configuring more Virtual Labs, and improving services for the uptake of new data sets from a multitude of data originators (such as SeaDataNet, EurOBIS, Euro-Argo, ELIXIR-ENA, SOCAT, EcoTaxa, and ICOS-Ocean), and major e-infrastructures, namely EUDAT, D4Science, and WEkEO (CMEMS DIAS) and for discovery and access to their structured data collections.
Blue-Cloud 2026’s overall Objective is to expand the federated approach of Blue-Cloud, involving more aquatic data stakeholders, and interacting with EOSC developments in support of the EU Green Deal, UN SDG, EU Destination Earth, and the EU Mission Starfish on healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters, ultimately to provide a core data service for the Digital Twin of the Ocean.
Blue-Cloud 2026 is co-ordinated by Trust-IT, CNR & MARIS, counting on a core team of partners such as VLIZ, Ifremer, MOI, and Seascape Belgium. Overall it mobilises a solid, multidisciplinary, committed team of 40 partners from 13 EU countries.
Over the course of 42 months starting in January 2023, the consortium is going to integrate more blue analytical services in the Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment, configure new thematic Virtual Labs, improving services for uptake of new data sets from a multitude of data originators and major e-infrastructures, and for discovery and access to their structured data collections.
In particular, the consortium is going to develop, test, validate, and document new Blue-Cloud analytical Big Data WorkBenches generating harmonised and validated data collections of Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) in physics (temperature and salinity), chemistry (nutrients, chlorophyll, oxygen) and biology (plankton taxonomy, functions and biomass). Such EOV collections are highly relevant for analysing the state of the environment. Resulting Workbenches are destined to be adopted by EMODnet and CMEMS for producing these EOV collections at regular intervals. This way, Blue-Cloud 2026 will provide a core data service for the Digital Twin of the Ocean, that will use the EOV collections for analysing the state of the environment and forecasting both its evolution and possible impacts of measures.
In particular, the consortium is going to develop, test, validate, and document new Blue-Cloud analytical Big Data WorkBenches generating harmonised and validated data collections of Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) in physics (temperature and salinity), chemistry (nutrients, chlorophyll, oxygen) and biology (plankton taxonomy, functions and biomass). Such EOV collections are highly relevant for analysing the state of the environment. Resulting Workbenches are destined to be adopted by EMODnet and CMEMS for producing these EOV collections at regular intervals. This way, Blue-Cloud 2026 will provide a core data service for the Digital Twin of the Ocean, that will use the EOV collections for analysing the state of the environment and forecasting both its evolution and possible impacts of measures.
All Blue-Cloud 2026 results aim to tackle identified problems and respond to existing demands in the Blue economy area. The pilot Blue-Cloud Key Exploitable Results were developed to contribute to society at large for societal, political and commercial purposes so that different society members can make good use of them: authorities, industrial authorities, policy makers, industry and civil society.
The architecture of the Blue-Cloud Virtual research environment proved to be scalable and sustainable, being fit for connecting additional e-infrastructures, implementing and integrating more advanced blue analytical services, configuring more dedicated VLabs, and targeting broader (groups of) users. The Blue-Cloud 2026 follow-up initiative will introduce new ways for adopting additional cloud storage, cloud computing, deep learning and neural networks for supporting big data processes for validation, extraction, interpolation and product generation. A number of data-intensive WorkBenches for selected Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) will be developed and validated. Data scientists will be empowered with new classes of algorithms for execution in the collaborative cloud environment offered by the Blue-Cloud VRE. The final aim of evolving the service offer and enlarging the number and type of users, giving additional value to the impact of Blue-Cloud Open Science services.
The architecture of the Blue-Cloud Virtual research environment proved to be scalable and sustainable, being fit for connecting additional e-infrastructures, implementing and integrating more advanced blue analytical services, configuring more dedicated VLabs, and targeting broader (groups of) users. The Blue-Cloud 2026 follow-up initiative will introduce new ways for adopting additional cloud storage, cloud computing, deep learning and neural networks for supporting big data processes for validation, extraction, interpolation and product generation. A number of data-intensive WorkBenches for selected Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) will be developed and validated. Data scientists will be empowered with new classes of algorithms for execution in the collaborative cloud environment offered by the Blue-Cloud VRE. The final aim of evolving the service offer and enlarging the number and type of users, giving additional value to the impact of Blue-Cloud Open Science services.