1. Virtual Research Environments as-a-Service
Donatella Castelli
CNR-ISTI
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

2. Context Research work is driven by Research Problems/Questions
These emerge dynamically & corresponding activities have a limited lifetime
Addressing research problems often requires interdisciplinary approaches
Multidisciplinary team & (re-)use of data, methodologies, model, tools produced in different domains
IT support can largely facilitate research work and it can enable research methods that were not possible before
The time and the cost of a research activity and of its assessment can be largely influenced by the capabilities & services offered by the IT supporting environment
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

3. D4Science: an infrastructure ecosystem enabler
D4Science own resources
+50 heterogeneous data providers, over a billion quality records
+20,000 processes/month
99,7% service availability
Third-party providers
WPS
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

4. D4Science services: supporting the entire data mgmt lifecycle
Metadata generation and management
Harmonisation
Semantic Data
Biodiversity
data
Geospatial
Statistical data
Documents
Analytics
Sharing
Cloud storage
Multi-platform: R, Java, Fortran
Geospatial data
Store
Cloud computing
Databases
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

5. EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam
VRE as-a-Service
web-based working environment
providing access to services and resources tailored to serve the needs of the research team in addressing a research question
open and flexible with respect to service offering and lifetime
providing fine-grained controlled sharing of both intermediate and final research results
Low cost of creation and operation
Virtual Research Environment
e-Infrastructure
VRE
Public
Restricted
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

6. VRE Definition 1. Specify VRE metadata (including policies)
2. Select applications
Un punto chiave in questo contesto sono le policy – certi utenti possono usare certe risorse (dati & computazionali) – certe applicazioni possono essre attivate solo su certi dati
4. Select data collections
3. Configure applications
Hardware setup and software deployment completely hidden
Evolving needs of its users completely supported
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

7. D4Science offer VREs to …
Environmental Science, Marine biodiversity, Fisheries&Aquaculture science, Culture Heritage, Social data mining, Geothermal Science, Smart cities
+50 VREs
2000 scientists in 44 countries
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

8. Collaborative Environment
A single point to
Get status and updates from applications and other users they are interested in
Get notifications about messages, jobs completion, new generated products, etc.
Share Updates
User news feed
VREs user is a member of
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

9. EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam
User Workspace
Folders can be shared
Including documents, datasets, software & computations
Data and processes can be hosted elsewhere – this is only what the user perceive
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

10. EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam
Inside a VRE
Data Trends
Processing Tools
Visualization Tools
Species Discovery
Search
Trusted access to services & systems!!!!
Resuse of shared data
Across discilinary, socia and geographic borders
Federated env across member states
Solution for managing policies
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

11. Data preparation & Processing
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

12. Store software in a personal workspace
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

13. Prepare software through a Web interface
(JAVA programming is also supported:
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

14. Execute the process and analyse the results
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

15. Store and share “research objects”
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

16. Infrastructure as a “Publisher”
VRE
e-Infrastructure
VRE–as-a-service
Workspace &sharing
Publishing service
(re-)Usage of the “research object”
Reseach Activity
Review
Dissemination
& access
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam

17. www.d4science.org www.bluebridge-vre.eu
EGI Conference 2016, 6-8 April 2016, Amsterdam