WP10

ECOPOTENTIAL Virtual Laboratory Platform (WP Leader: S. Nativi (CNR), stefano.nativi[AT]cnr.it)

WP10 implements the service-based platform for a virtual (i.e. online distributed) and open (i.e. accessible) laboratory to study ecosystems and contribute to GEO/GEOSS: the ECOPOTENTIAL Virtual Laboratory Platform. Through the platform, different user categories are able to publish and access resources according to their profile. Users interact with the platform through a set of resource sharing services including: Web-based data services, open archives, scientific models accessible as web services, semantic assets, and analytics services. The accessible resources are both provided by the project partners, in particular through the work carried out in WP3, WP4, WP5 and WP6 (such as models developed in WP6, or analytics services developed and made accessible by WP3), and external resources considered relevant for the ECOPOTENTIAL community. The ECOPOTENTIAL Virtual Laboratory Platform is deployed and operated in a cloud-based infrastructure. The platform provides four main service layers to empower the virtual laboratory capabilities:

• Discovery, access, and harmonized use of: open (EO and in-situ monitoring) data, metadata, scientific models and results, semantic engines, and analytics’ provision (links to WP3, WP4, WP5, WP6).

• Discovery, access, and use of ecosystems modelling, including ecosystem services, upscaling and future protected areas (links to WP6, WP7, WP8 and WP9).

• Discovery, access, and use of the necessary knowledge to analyse ecosystems services (see WP7) as well as to obtain climate and land-use change scenarios, upscaling to larger areas and definition of the requirements of future protected areas (see WP6, WP8 and WP9).

• Provision of specific applications and portal for different users (e.g. experts, activists, decisions makers). They will be defined in WP3, WP4, WP5 and WP6 to address their specific use-cases. The applications will be accessible through the platform discovery and access services. All four service layers are empowered by a set of transparent brokering services provided by the platform, as defined in the GEO/GEOSS framework and compliant with the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) and the GEO Portal (http://www.geoportal.org/). The layers deal with the access, harmonization, transformation, and chaining of heterogeneous digital resources (i.e. data, metadata, information, and services) of different Earth Science domains and enabling multidisciplinary applications.