Heraklion, Greece - From 13th to 15th June 2023, the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas - Institute of Computer Science (FORTH-ICS) hosted the Blue-Cloud 2026 all-hands meeting, a three-day workshop on Virtual Research Environments (VRE) services for supporting Work Package 4 Virtual Labs (VLabs) and Work Package 3 Workbenches (WBs).
The event aimed at providing detailed explanations and practical sessions on VRE services promoting Open Science practices to representatives from VLabs and WBs, enabling them to implement real examples in their workflows with the support of the WP5 VRE team led by Massimiliano Assante from CNR (National Research Council of Italy).
The workshop kicked off on the morning of 13th June at the Stelios Orphanoudakis seminar room. The first day focused on presentations and discussions regarding the progress, technical requirements, and expectations from the VLabs and Workbenches. Leaders from various VLab and WB teams shared their insights and updates, showcasing their ongoing work. Vania Lima from IH, Alexander Barth from ULiège, Steven Pint from VLIZ, Francesco Palermo from CMCC and Bastien Grasset from IRD presented their respective VLabs. Simona Simoncelli from INGV (WB physics), Alessandra Giorgetti from OGS (WB eutrophication), and Stéphane Pesant from EBI (WB ecosystems) provided valuable input as well.
The workshop continued with presentations on VRE Common Services for Open Science practices. Experts from CNR discussed possible exploitation and APIs of key services, including the Analytics Computing Framework, Workspace Storage Engine, and Catalogue Framework. The discussions then focused on Spatial Data Infrastructure services for managing spatial datasets and the customisation of JupyterHub and RStudio for VLabs and WBs.
The second day, 14th June, began with an exploration of VLab/WB Apps Authentication and Authorization Framework presented by Marco Lettere from Nubisware. The workshop then delved into the Cloud Computing Platform (CCP) Analytics Engine, covering topics such as vision, objectives, architecture, and demonstrations of methods and OGC API Processes. Participants also learned about method executions from the user interface and the programmatic executions of methods using Python, Jupyter Notebooks, and RStudio.
In the practical session that followed, all participants, including representatives from VLabs and Workbenches, were actively involved, the participants teamed-up in 4 different groups to which an expert from WP5 was assigned as tutor. Each VLab and Workbench brought actual algorithms/methods to integrate into the VRE, and tried integrating it into the VRE platform.
The third and final day, 15th June, began with an overview of applications integration and the Dockerizing process by Massimiliano Assante and Andrea Dell'Amico from CNR. The discussion further explored packing, deploying, and running applications using containers on the VRE. Additionally, Dell'Amico presented continuous deployment of (Shiny) Apps on the VRE.
In the following practical session all participants had the opportunity to apply their learning and explore further. At the end each team representative presented the results of their practical sessions work and provided feedback on the overall experience. A goodbye lunch was served, bringing the event to a pleasant end. Following the workshop, a separate WP3 meeting was held, bringing together participants from WP3 and WP2.
The Blue-Cloud 2026 VRE all-hands meeting facilitated valuable knowledge exchange and collaboration among representatives of VLabs and Workbenches. The workshop enhanced their understanding and use of VRE services, promoting Open Science practices and fostering innovation within the Blue Science community.
