29 March 2021
The online workshop "Open Science for the Ocean: Meet the Blue-Cloud demonstrators" took part on 23 March 2021, welcoming more than 120 participants from all over the world, with the main objectives of introducing the Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment and presenting the five Blue-Cloud demonstrators to the wider marine research community. The consortium also provided an overview of the project's goals, the technical architecture of the Blue-Cloud framework, as well as the Strategic Roadmap to 2030.
The interactive Q&A session saw the participation of key actors in ocean science, such as Sheila Heymans (European Marine Board), Linda Fourdain (FAO), Robert Huber (MARUM) and Jaume Piera (ECSA), who provided key insights and suggestions which will be taken into account by the Blue-Cloud consortium. In this page, we have collected some of the most relevant questions and answers from the open session.
Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment
- I'm attending this webinar because in the framework of JERICO-DS, I'm co-designing what could be the future JERICO-RI e-infrastructure. As blue cloud is federating so many ESFRI-RI and ERICS, I'm wondering how sustainable is your project and if we can consider your tool to build JERICO VRE
- Blue-Cloud is exploiting the D4Science infrastructure. All of its services will be maintained and operated by D4Science even after the end of the Blue-Cloud project. D4Science is an asset managed and operated by the CNR (National Research Council of Italy). You can visit the Virtual Research Environment here: https://blue-cloud.d4science.org/
- Where can I find data about all steps of the processing of salmon (aquaculture) done by fisheries?
- For Salmon processing, there is no comprehensive IT system in Blue-Cloud or in a public domain. For cage detection Blue-Cloud is working to test in Chile, but not in the EU. We are interested to link Cage detection and estimate production, and link that to local food Systems. We started development of a VRE for Food Composition Tables (uFish can already be downloaded from FAO, we want to update the information). If you are interested in Processing after aquaculture harvest, the GRSF partner SFP has more information.
- Very interesting with regard to application to aquaculture. Are there other case studies in addition to Chile and Tunisia? Is there the opportunity for others in the aquaculture industry to engage in this work?
- FAO and CLS tested cage detection over Chile, Malta, Greece, Turkey, Zambia. We also work with them on coastal pond detection over South Sulawesi (AI Classification of S2 data). Cage monitoring over a season is more challenging, and this is now being developed over Chile and Tunisia as test sites. The innovation of Blue Cloud is to put this in the hands of local organisations that hold the cage info. We use Blue Cloud SDI for that.
- Regarding the metadata associated with species samples, do we also have access to environmental parameters sampled together with species information?
- Yes, the metadata will be available in the advanced version of the notebooks.
"This is a huge source of information for biogeographical studies!"
- Hi, I am wondering whether the implemented tools can handle the different data QCs from the different sources and if there is documentation on this.
- Yes. The QCs performed at the pre-processing steps are described in the scripts in the VRE (e.g. the phytoplankton product in the jupyter notebooks). Data infrastructures have different standards - and apply several QC steps in their workflows. e.g. The VLIZ team applies several EMODnet quality control steps to our data before it's ingested in the EMODnet Bio/EurOBIS database.
- This is an exciting way to bring data together. how do you foresee to be able to build the capacity to build such an infrastructure leveraging on data on such a global scale?
- We work with regional fisheries bodies, local institutes that detect the cage locations. For the GRSF this was a huge record across 3 different organisations, now a wide audience can log in and validate their data.
- How do you find data useful to produce the results and ensure they are handled in a FAIR way?
- When sharing data, users won’t only share the notebooks but also the metadata behind them in the Blue-Cloud catalogue.
- What's the next step? QCs of the data For instance I am a biologist interested in the temperature of some taxonomic groups - how is this passed to different users?
- It’s a cultural change and we can be helped by IoT to create more metadata in a data centre where there is a quality control before it goes outside the production environment. It’s also about how scientists handle their data. Data collection is a key step in the verification phase.
- In addition, EMODnet and CMEMS as long-term marine data services (working with SeaDataNet and many others) already offer clear metadata to describe integrated (diverse sources) open data sets and data products, specifying the provenance of the data and also the data processing levels. Providing this information and the levels of processing, quality control etc to provide more information on the data provenance. This is continuously improving. For example, see the EMODnet data and data product portfolio here: https://www.emodnet.eu/en/data-portfolio Blue-Cloud is leveraging on this existing EU capability and connecting assets and capabilities in marine open data and open science.
- Does the association of a DOI to published material pass through Zenodo?
- Yes, it does. The author of a published material in the Blue-Cloud Catalgoue can activate the publication into zenodo (this is done with a guided process). With this activation, a DOI is generated.
- From the identity of the listed European Data infrastructures, it is not clear how fishery sciences are covered under "marine science". However, the demonstrators show that international organisations like FAO can be considered as providers of data infrastructure (fishery sciences), and are able to expand the remit of Blue-Cloud at global scale opening up to the world of global users and data contributors who, for their fishery science, also increasingly need marine environmental and biodiversity sciences. In Blue-Cloud we do environmental science, biodiversity in fisheries science is a key one, and we see an increase of requests in questions about biodiversity and e-aquaculture information. We see a big value in Blue-Cloud and in what EU partners can provide and an interest from FAO in expanding this at a global level. I see a bit of disconnection between the data infrastructure for fisheries science and marine science - what do you mean with marine science?
- We are trying to bring it all together. We are building a community with many different players from all of ocean science, and we try to fit all of their purposes. We could have built 100 demonstratos from all kinds of domains using the same data and additional applications, as well as the computing power to be able to bring it all in a federated system and get more knowledge out of this. In our case, marine science is everything that has to do with the sea, with data and its use, with knowledge generation. We want to expand Blue-Cloud and expect more people to join. Blue-Cloud is an organic thing, which has to grow with the community.
"Thank you, I think your answer clarifies my doubts, in saying that marine sciences are all encompassing. This is also in general my understanding."
- Is there a common approach to application of a consistent framework for attachment of confidence flags/values to given product?
- Blue-Cloud collects automatically provenance data but lets the owner decide if and what to publish and make it available. In case of confidential original data, those datasets can be kept private. More in general, any Virtual laboratory has the possibility to define its open access policy and all users joining that laboratory will have to observe it.
- How do you work with other projects that might be doing something similar, such as the Reliance project that just started (with demonstrators on ocean pollution, loss of biodiversity (links to your second demonstrator?) extreme weather (maybe linked to 3rd demonstrator) … or even within your project - I can see that the fish data can really help with the modelling in the NPZD modelling from demonstrator 1.
- Indeed Blue-Cloud VRE has a large potential to boost scientific productivity by collaborating with other projects. We invite everyone to use and build further on the products generated in the demonstrators.
Blue-Cloud and the European Open Science Cloud
- How does Blue-Cloud collaborate with other EOSC-related projects providing marine services to the EOSC ecosystem such as NEANIAS? Is this something that will be considered in the roadmap? And more generally, what other synergies are exploited with other projects contributing to further developing EOSC?
- Blue-Cloud will become one of the pillars of the EOSC and its assets will be integrated into the EOSC Portal Marketplace. As for projects such as NEANIAS, we are developing a series of synergies on specific topics and carrying out joint activities with many initiatives in the EOSC ecosystem.
- A long-term strategic vision for Blue-Cloud and its role within the marine ecosystem is a key way to bring visibility to the initiative and ensure buy-in from relevant stakeholders. In a way, the concept is similar to the EOSC Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda. Will both documents be aligned?
- Yes, the B-C Roadmap to 2030 is being drafted with consideration of the marine knowledge landscape, policy context and relevant developments surrounding EOSC and other related initiatives. The B-C Roadmap to 2030 will seek to align its recommendations with those brought forward by the EOSC SRIA - including its roadmap of implementation - welcoming, supporting and benefitting from them, but also underpinning them with specific recommendations and actions that are relevant for unlocking and realizing the potential of open science in the marine domain.
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