Environmental RI-as-a-Service: a viewpoint on common challenges and interoperable solutions

Abstract

To understand the impact on our global environment of societal challenges such as climate change or pollution, scientists need to measure the environment on a large scale, and to understand the interactions between different environmental systems involving the atmosphere, oceans and geosphere. However, the complexity of environmental systems makes this task very difficult. Most Research Infrastructures (RIs) are constructed to address specific research areas, and so using data and software across different RIs has proven challenging. In order to break the barriers between RIs and provide standardised solutions, a reference model guided engineering approach is being used in ENVRI+, a H2020 cluster project. The focus of the project is to develop solutions in six priority areas: identification and citation, curation, cataloguing, processing, optimisation and provenance.