EOSC and Beyond: LifeWatch ERIC at the project’s kickoff meeting to accelerate research applications

The EOSC Beyond kickoff meeting occurred on April 17, marking the beginning of an initiative to improve the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) by providing new foundational technical solutions. The outputs will enable developers of scientific application environments to leverage EOSC resources and present them as integrated functionalities to researchers. The ultimate goal is to increase the number of integrated providers and active users of EOSC.

As a candidate EOSC node, LifeWatch ERIC – represented by Nicola Fiore, Service Centre ICT Coordinator – participated in the meeting by presenting services like the Metadata Catalogue and LifeBlock, particularly relevant to scientists in biodiversity and ecosystems. EOSC nodes operate at different levels to fulfil specific scientific missions, such as accelerating scientific applications, enabling Open Science, promoting innovation, and aligning EOSC architecture with European data spaces.

LifeWatch ERIC’s Metadata Catalogue is built on comprehensive standards to make digital objects (datasets, services, workflows, VREs, etc…) FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable). This tool enables scientists and researchers worldwide to discover, access and use digital objects, services and resources from various repositories to tackle pressing scientific questions for biodiversity and ecosystem research. Similarly, LifeBlock is a blockchain-based platform that stores and manages biodiversity and ecosystem data. It ensures data integrity, provenance, and traceability while offering the possibility of retrieving data from multiple research infrastructures.

The goals of EOSC Beyond focus on accelerating the development of new scientific applications like the Metadata Catalogue and LifeBlock and fostering innovation within EOSC through testing and integration environments. It will also align EOSC Core architecture and specifications with European data spaces. The project aims to achieve these goals using co-design methodologies that involve collaborating with various national and regional initiatives to address their use cases. To learn more about EOSC Beyond, please visit this page: https://eosc.eu/eu-project/eosc-beyond/

LifeWatch ERIC at the EOSC Future General Assembly and Project Meeting

EOSC Future General Assembly gathered at Casa de la Ciencia, Sevilla.

On 3–5 May, LifeWatch ERIC participated in the EOSC Future General Assembly and Project Meeting, held in Seville, Spain. The event was hosted by LifeWatch ERIC in Casa de la Ciencia, where all the entities who are the backbone of EOSC Future gathered.

Christos Arvanitidis, LifeWatch ERIC CEO, is very pleased with the level of participation and cooperation shown in the various sessions of this meeting: “Our assessment is very positive and increases expectations regarding the achievement of the objectives for the development of this platform”.

On the first day of the Meeting, LifeWatch ERIC’s CEO, Christos Arvanitidis, opened the first session by welcoming the participants and explaining the objectives of WP6, which is the Work Package coordinated by LifeWatch ERIC. Then Sally Chambers from Dariah (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) hosted the session “Onboarding and Integration: Challenges & Solutions”, indicating two main objectives:

  • To clarify the differences between the five resource types which can be on boarded into the EOSC-Exchange;
  • To explore the Resource Providers have faced when onboarding and integrating their resources into EOSC Exchange and use the methods of ‘user stories’ to explore how to ease the process.

The second part of the session was focused on “Implementing the Science Projects: Current status and next steps”, and was led by Cristina Huertas, LifeWatch ERIC International Initiatives and Project Manager. This second part of the session identified five main objectives:

  • To identify the Risks of the technical implementation of Science Projects;
  • To review the status of Scientific Documents;
  • To explore the way Science Projects could consider their sustainability after the end of the project;
  • To engage and satisfy the users;
  • To review the status of the webinars provided by the ten Science Projects to date.

On the first day of the General Assembly, forty people have participated in person, in total, and other representatives of the consortium have also intervened livestream. Among others, Yannis Ioannidis, Greek delegate to the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), member of the ESFRI Executive Board, and ESFRI representative to the e-Infrastructures Reflection Group (e-IRG). As coordinator of EOSC Future, Yannis Ioannidis chaired the assembly. A total of thirty-five entities have also been integrated into the EOSC Future consortium.

The first day of EOSC Future General Assembly has been moderated by Ron Dekker, associate consultant at Technopolis Group Belgium (where he coordinates the Open Science activities) and EOSC Future Project Leader, and Lennart Stoy, senior consultant in Technopolis Group Belgium.

On the second day of EOSC Future General Assembly and Project Meeting, Agis Evrigenis and Sophie Viscido, from Technopolis Group, led the session dedicated to the overview of the project implementation status, challenges and next steps. Then Paolo Manghi (Openaire), Roksana Wick (ACK Cyfronet), Mark Van de Sanden (Surf / Eudat) and Klaas Wierenge (Géant), coordinated the session about new and upcoming tech capabilities and led a short presentation and demos by the product teams (marketplace, providers, portal, helpdesk, etc.). EOSC Architecture and Interoperability Framework has also been presented, discussing tech planning towards project end and capabilities to be demonstrated at the month 30 review.

LifeWatch ERIC, with Christos Arvanitidis, Cristina Huertas, and Ana Mellado, led a session about the overview status of Science Projects. The topics covered included: progress to date, resources’ integration status and plans, lessons learned as piloting EOSC and post project sustainability.

Later in the afternoon, LifeWatch ERIC presented a scientific case in progress: Implementation ARMS workflow. This early-warning system for marine biological invasions allows non native invasive especies (NIS) researchers and stakeholders to identify newly arrived NIS, track the migration of already known NIS and monitor the composition of hard-bottom communities over long periods. This system is based on ARMS data (Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structure), which are quality controlled and open access based, permanently stored (Marine Data Archive) along with their metadata (IMIS, catalogue of VLIZ), ensuring fairness.

LifeWatch ERIC CEO, Christos Arvanitidis, introduced Joaquín López Lérida, LifeWatch ERIC Data e-Science Management Plan & BlockChain Officer, who also explained, whit a remote online presentation, how the integration of the platform is being done with EOSC. In terms of authentication, the integration has been confirmed to be ready for internal consumption of all LifeWatch ERIC Tesseract Services, including LifeBlock.

In the session about real-life demonstrations of use cases, (in view of the month 24 review), which has been led by Matthew Viljoen, another of the presentations that has aroused interest is the one presented by Carolina Simón, from the National Center for Biotechnology (Spain), who exposed the case of integration of Covid-19 Data with EOSC. On the other hand, Elisa Cauhé (EGI Foundation), presented results and next steps of the EOSC Digital Innovation Hub (DIH): eight projects collaborations, twenty-three supported pilots, and more than fifty funding opportunities.

The last day of EOSC Future General Assembly and Project Meeting was, instead, focused on addressing aspects such as EOSC Procurement, EOSC as a Data Space and also RDA Open Calls. The closing session revolved around updates provided by WP10 about the progress made for the project.

The EOSC Future Meeting held in Seville for three days has concluded with a standing ovation from all the participants to congratulate the LifeWatch ERIC team for the quality of their work as host of the meeting.

Ron Dekker, EOSC Future Project Leader, called on all the entities participating in the consortium to intensify the implementation of their work packages, in order to finish the last phase of the project in the best possible way. From 20-22 September 2023, the EOSC Symposium will take place in Madrid, in the context of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. In the context of the EOSC Future project, the EOSC Symposium will also be a critical platform to showcase project achievements and key exploitable results.

Horizon Europe project Blue-Cloud 2026 to enhance Open Science in support of ocean protection and restoration

Blue-Cloud 2026

Over the past decades, Europe has developed an impressive capability for aquatic environmental observation, data-handling and sharing, modelling and forecasting. This builds upon national environmental observation and monitoring networks and programmes, complemented with EU infrastructures such as the Copernicus satellite observation programme and related thematic services, the European Marine Observation and Data Network , as well as a range of environmental European RIs and major R&D projects. 

Within this framework, since October 2019, the pilot Blue-Cloud project combined both the interests of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), aiming to provide a virtual environment with open and seamless access to services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and disciplines, and the blue research communities by developing a collaborative web-based environment providing simplified access to an unprecedented wealth of multi-disciplinary datasets from observations, analytical services, and computing facilities essential for blue science. 

Funded by Horizon Europe, Blue-Cloud 2026 aims at a further evolution of this pilot ecosystem into a Federated European Ecosystem to deliver FAIR & Open data and analytical services, instrumental for deepening research of oceans, EU seas, coastal & inland waters. It develops a thematic marine extension to EOSC for open web-based science, in support of the EU Green Deal, UN SDGs, the EU Destination Earth initiative, and the EU Mission “Restore Our Ocean and Waters by 2030”.

Blue-Cloud 2026 as a key link for EOSC and the Digital Twin of the Ocean

Over the course of 42 months starting in January 2023, the consortium is going to integrate more blue analytical services into the Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment, configure new thematic Virtual Labs, improving services for uptake of new data sets from a multitude of data originators and major e-infrastructures, and for discovery and access to their structured data collections.

The existing Blue-Cloud framework is already home to one of the most mature communities in EOSC, and can provide practical examples to younger communities on a variety of aspects ranging from interoperability to data federation, from FAIR practices to cross-domain interaction.

Blue-Cloud 2026 is co-coordinated by CNR and Trust-IT Services, with MARIS as technical coordinator, counting on a core team of partners such as VLIZ (focal point of LifeWatch Belgium), Ifremer, Mercator Ocean International, Seascape Belgium. Overall it mobilises a solid, multidisciplinary, committed team of 40 partners across 13 EU countries. The three-day kick-off meeting in Pisa, Italy, was hosted by CNR (National Research Council of Italy) in collaboration with Trust-IT, and provided the first official opportunity for the consortium to meet in person, take stock of the work performed in the pilot project and plan the key upcoming activities towards a successful implementation of the Blue-Cloud framework by 2026.

Read the full press release here.

Follow Blue-Cloud 2026 on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

The Call for EOSC FAIR Champions is Open!

EOSC FAIR Champions

FAIR-IMPACT, a Horizon Europe project in which LifeWatch ERIC partners, has announced the opening of its call for EOSC FAIR Champions, a group of 12 experts that will be actively engaged in analysing and shaping FAIR data policies and practices in their field who will be on board to act as ambassadors for FAIR, engage their community, and advocate for adoption of the project results.

The candidate Champions will be engaged in identifying research data gaps and needs within their communities, to create broader engagement with FAIR, and to shape and disseminate the outcomes of the FAIR-IMPACT project, for instance by facilitating national roadshows in their country, and contributing to the development of FAIR implementation stories.

FAIR-IMPACT is looking for Champions who have broad expertise in FAIR policy and/or practice, bring strong research data advocacy experience and excellent communications skills, are driven to help mobilise others to generate more FAIR data on policy and/or practice level, and are keen to share best practices. Gender diversity, a balanced geographical and stakeholder representation, and broad interdisciplinary expertise across FAIR policy and practice will be ensured in the evaluation of the profiles.

Click here for more details on how to apply. The deadline to apply is Friday 10 March at 17:00 CET.