Sophia Antipolis, France – 21 November 2018
Building and Enhancing e-Research Infrastructures with VRE4EIC – VRE4EIC (A Europe-wide Interoperable Virtual Research Environment to Empower Multidisciplinary Research Communities and Accelerate Innovation and Collaboration) has successfully developed a reference architecture and software prototypes called eVRE, designed to build or enhance e-Research Infrastructures (e-RIs).
e-VRE provides a comfortable, homogeneous interface for researches and developers by virtualising access to the heterogeneous datasets, software services and resources of e-RIs. On top of this, it also supports collaboration and communication between users/researchers. The e-VRE source code is available on GitHub.
The potential of e-VRE is demonstrated by the European Plate Observing System (EPOS) and ENVRI+, a Horizon 2020 project bringing together Environmental and Earth System Research Infrastructures, projects and networks. Both EPOS and ENVRI+ are represented in the project, themselves supported by e-Infrastructures such as GEANT, EUDAT, PRACE, EGI, OpenAIRE.
VRE4EIC provides a superset canonical rich catalog into which information from the distributed heterogeneous e-RI catalogs is imported via convertors. It thus provides a homogeneous view over the heterogeneous metadata describing the assets and thus automates findability and accessibility. Access to the catalog is offered via the Metadata Manager component of the reference architecture, encapsulating all operations on the descriptions held in the catalog. The Metadata Manager was included in the architecture of EPOS, enhancing EPOS’ interoperability level.
The current state of the art has some interoperability and re-use among research assets but this is usually restricted to a particular domain where local metadata standards are utilised. However, the interoperation usually requires considerable human effort and rarely is (even partially) automated. The VRE4EIC catalog allows homogeneous access across the heterogeneous metadata provided, and thus —progressively—interoperability and re-usability.
Building or enhancing a VRE is a complex procedure. The project has produced a series of video tutorials about VREs in general, and the VRE4EIC reference architecture and component services in particular to help researchers and technicians understanding the principles and aspects of eVRE. The tutorials are available via the project web site.
VRE4EIC website: /
VRE4EIC tutorials: /tutorials
eVRE on GitHub: https://github.com/vre4eic
About VRE4EIC
VRE4EIC is a 3-year Horizon 2020 research & innovation action (EINFRA-9-2015) coordinated by ERCIM and carried out with partners from The Netherlands (CWI, TU Delft, EuroCRIS and UvA), Italy (CNR and INGV) and Greece (FORTH). VRE4EIC stands for a Europe-wide interoperable Virtual Research Environment to Empower multidisciplinary research communities and accelerate Innovation and Collaboration. VRE4EIC is a 4,37m€ investment that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 676247.
VRE4EIC develops a reference architecture and software components for VREs (Virtual Research Environments). e-VRE bridges across existing e-RIs (e-Research Infrastructures) such as EPOS and ENVRIplus, both represented in the project, themselves supported by e-Is (e-Infrastructures) such as GEANT, EUDAT, PRACE, EGI, OpenAIRE. The e-VRE provides a comfortable homogeneous interface for users by virtualising access to the heterogeneous datasets, software services, and resources of the e-RIs and provides collaboration/communication facilities for users to improve research communication. Finally, it provides access to research management /administrative facilities so that the end-user has a complete research environment.
About ERCIM EEIG
ERCIM - the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics - aims to foster collaborative initiatives within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry. Leading European research institutes are members of ERCIM. ERCIM is based in Sophia Antipolis, France.
More information: www.ercim.eu
Contacts:
ERCIM
Keith Jeffery | +44 7768 446088 | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Peter Kunz | +33 7 68165047 | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
