Generic services

At the centre of the EOSC Node Digital Twin of the Ocean lies a rich ecosystem of Generic Services, a versatile toolkit that is pivotal for innovation, collaboration, and data-driven discovery across Europe’s ocean science community. These services have been developed in the framework of the Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment (VRE), empowering users to handle data, develop analyses, and share results within a fully interoperable and federated digital workspace.

A Flexible Research Workspace

The Blue-Cloud Generic Services offer a set of ready-to-use digital environments, permitting users to move comfortably from raw data to scientific insight. They integrate cloud computing, workflow management, and collaborative functionalities, making it possible to design, test, and publish research directly within the VRE.

Built for Connection

Within the EOSC Federation, these services are not standalone components, they become shared resources, discoverable and reusable across disciplines. Through their alignment with EOSC Federating Capabilities, Blue-Cloud’s Generic Services enable transparent access for all EOSC users, deployment of customised VLabs and workflows and interoperable exchanges with other thematic and national nodes. 

By stimulating openness, scalability, and scientific excellence, these services contribute effectively and efficiently to a European connected ocean research ecosystem.

Services

The EOSC Node workspace provides researchers with a secure, centralized location for storing data and resources, simplifying data management and ensuring easy access.

Robust security measures protect sensitive data from unauthorized access. To guarantee fault tolerance, low latency, and scalability, data is automatically replicated across multiple storage devices and locations, rather than being stored as a single copy.  Moreover, it supports file versioning, history management, accounting, metadata management, and data organization, ensuring that all data is well-documented and easily accessible.

A key feature of the Workspace is its automatic connectivity with other generic tools and applications within the EOSC Node Digital Twin of the Ocean infrastructure, such as JupyterLab, RStudio, and the Collaborative Computing Platform (CCP). This enables researchers to seamlessly exploit their stored data within these applications, streamlining data analysis and enhancing the overall research workflow.

The service also facilitates collaboration and teamwork by enabling researchers to share data and resources with colleagues, Virtual Lab (VLab) members, or the wider community, supporting joint projects and effective collaboration regardless of geographical location.

Provides a comprehensive and integrated development environment for data analysis and statistical computing using the R programming language.

It offers tools for coding, debugging, visualisation, and report generation, facilitating reproducible research and enabling users to perform complex statistical analyses and develop custom data processing workflows.

Offers a multi-user environment for interactive computing, enabling users to work with notebooks, code, and data in a collaborative and flexible manner.

It supports various programming languages (including Python, R, and Julia) and is valuable for data exploration, analysis, visualisation, and creating shareable documents that combine code, text, and multimedia.

A web-based platform for accessible, reproducible, and transparent data analyses, empowering users to perform complex computational analyses across various scientific domains.

It provides a user-friendly interface for running tools and workflows, managing data, and tracking analysis history, making it suitable for both novice and expert users.

Collaborative Computing Platform (CCP) services delivered by D4Science provide a suite of tools and functionalities to support collaborative research activities.

These services include data manipulation, analysis, and sharing capabilities, fostering efficient teamwork and knowledge exchange by providing shared workspaces, communication tools, and data management features.

  • GeoNetwork for the management of spatially referenced resources. It provides powerful metadata editing and search functions as well as an interactive web map viewer and support for OGC standards. 
  • GeoPortal for for managing and accessing geospatial data. It supports the publication, access, and management of GIS projects, enabling users to visualise and analyse spatial data within a collaborative environment. The GeoPortal leverages D4Science's extensive shared storage and computational resources to enhance geospatial research and applications.
  • GeoServer for sharing geospatial data. It allows users to publish, edit, and share spatial data using open standards, making it an essential tool for geospatial data management and dissemination.
  • THREDDS Data Server (TDS) is used to provide metadata and data access for scientific datasets. It supports various remote data access protocols, including OPeNDAP, OGC WMS, and HTTP, making it a versatile tool for researchers and educators to access real-time and archived environmental data.

  • NoSQL Database Management Systems to handle large volumes of unstructured and semi-structured data. Unlike traditional relational databases, NoSQL databases use flexible data models that can adapt to changes in data structures and scale horizontally.
  • Relational Database Management Systems to manage and organise data in a structured manner using tables. It allows users to create, modify, and query databases efficiently, ensuring data integrity and security.