ENVironmental Research Infrastructures delivering an open access Hub and NEXT-level interdisciplinary research framework providing services for advancing science and society

Project Information

ENVRI-Hub NEXT

Grant agreement ID: 101131141

DOI

10.3030/101131141

EC signature date 23 October 2023

Start date 1 February 2024

End date 31 January 2027

Funded under

• Research infrastructures

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 5 000 000,00

Coordinated by

STICHTING EGI
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ENVRI-Hub NEXT (ENVironmental Research Infrastructures delivering an open access Hub and NEXT-level interdisciplinary research framework providing services for advancing science and society)

Reporting period: 2024-02-01 to 2025-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Climate change and environmental degradation are existential threats to Europe and the world, demanding a coordinated, data-driven response. However, the research community faces significant challenges due to the fragmentation of environmental data across disparate Research Infrastructures (RIs) in domains like atmosphere, marine, terrestrial, and solid earth. The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) aims to overcome this by creating a web of FAIR data and services, but domain-specific integration remains crucial.

ENVRI-Hub NEXT directly addresses this need. Building upon the foundation of the ENVRI-FAIR project, its overarching objective is to operationalise and advance the ENVRI-Hub as the central open-access platform for the ENVRI Cluster. This hub provides a seamless framework for discovering, accessing, and utilising interdisciplinary data and services from Europe's leading environmental RIs, to be fully integrated within EOSC.

The project's specific objectives are to:
- Establish an operational model for the ENVRI-Hub.
- Develop a modular technical architecture that simplifies cross-domain data interoperability and complex workflow orchestration for users.
- Deliver user-oriented services through the ENVRI-Hub, anchored by the scientific framework of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs), to directly support research on climate change mitigation, adaptation, and risk assessment.
- Ensure the ENVRI-Hub is technically prepared for a future as an EOSC node, making environmental data and services easily accessible and reusable.

By creating this integrated pathway from data to knowledge, ENVRI-Hub NEXT enables multidisciplinary environmental science, making it more efficient, reproducible, and impactful for policy and society.

The consortium features key ESFRI Landmarks (ACTRIS, AnaEE, EPOS, Euro-Argo, IAGOS, ICOS, LifeWatch) and ESFRI Projects (eLTER) that had participated in the ENVRI-FAIR project, ENVRI information technology development teams, support providers from the University of Amsterdam, SeaDataNet as the key marine data infrastructure, FMI for the close relationship to the EOSC Association and stakeholders, and the EGI Foundation and members of the EGI Federation to implement the operation of the services and the integration with the EOSC Federation.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Several cross-RI services, initiated during the ENVRI-FAIR project, were enhanced: (1) the Catalogue of Service (CoS), including development of an API library and of a Graphical User Interface, and (2) the Knowledge Base, with its upgrade toward using Large Language Model technology-based AI Expert system for a dialogue-based Knowledge Base.

Other cross-RI services were developed from scratch: (1) the Analytical Framework: a library allowing to query programmatically the ENVRI-RI services in a unified way, (2) the ENVRI-ID provides seamless access and providing licences to use ENVRIs assets for users and machine to machine (M2M) applications using an ENVRI ID Token or by users using Single Sign On access to all Data Portals. This Service is aligned with the blueprint architecture needed for EOSC integration, and (3) the ecv-data-access library, accessible using the CoS and (4) direct data access via the Fair Data Point distributed catalogue.

Taking into account the training gateway and the science demonstrators, 8 cross-RI services are accessible from the ENVRI-Hub.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

ENVRI-Hub NEXT advances the state of the art in environmental research infrastructures by operationalising principles of interoperability, FAIR-by-design data governance, and federation at scale. It moves beyond fragmentation by aligning governance, service management, architecture, EOSC integration, scientific framing around ECVs, and training into a coherent and reusable framework.
- The ENVRI-Hub Framework provides a backbone for governance and operational alignment, reducing coordination costs and creating predictable interfaces across infrastructures.
- The Service Management System formalises lifecycles, roles and performance monitoring, improving quality, transparency and trust.
- The Technical Architecture delivers a modular, API-first and cloud-ready design that supports authentication, metadata brokering, semantic interoperability and workflow orchestration, enabling scalable multi-infrastructure use and advanced applications.
- EOSC integration consolidates identity federation, service onboarding, discovery and quality signalling, ensuring consistent alignment with European policies and enhancing discoverability and uptake.
- The ECV Framework anchors data and services in common scientific definitions and provenance practices, improving comparability and reliability for climate services and policy evidence.
- Training materials provide structured, modular curricula that connect concepts with practice, equipping researchers and operators to adopt federated services effectively.

Together, these six outputs create an integrated pathway from governance to skills, enabling reproducible, multidisciplinary science, greater efficiency and enhanced visibility through EOSC. Long-term success depends on sustained governance, alignment with evolving standards, pragmatic compliance mechanisms, mixed funding models, and continuous investment in interoperability, automation and training.

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