Virtual Research Environments: e-Infrastructures beyond Digital Libraries

Pasquale PaganoCNR-ISTIPasquale.pagano@isti.cnr.it

RCDL08 Conference

Information Model Mapping and Resource Integration

Friday 10 October, Dubna, Russia

www.d4science.org

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Digital Libraries should enable any citizen to access all human knowledge anytime and anywhere, in a friendly, multi-modal, efficient, and effective way, by overcoming barriers of distance, language, and culture and by using multiple Internet-connected devices

DELOS: Grand 10-Year Vision

The potential exists for digital libraries to become the universal knowledge repositories and communication conduits for the future, a common vehicle by which everyone will access, discuss, evaluate, and enhance information of all forms

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* DELOS: Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries

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DELOS: Digital Library

A (potentially virtual) organization that comprehensively collects, manages, and preserves for the long term rich digital content and offers to its user communities specialized functionality on that content, of measurable quality, and according to prescribed policies

* DELOS Reference Model for Digital Libraries

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The user’s views

* DELOS Reference Model for Digital Libraries

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The evolution

Virtual Research Environments

many virtual organizations

Repository +Catalogue +Search service

few large institutions

1996consumer

Digital Library

few small institutions

2001 consumer

2006 consumer and resource provider

Digital Library Management System

many small institutions

2003 consumer and data provider

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Virtual Research Environments (VRE): beyond DL

• Distributed frameworks for carrying out cooperative activities like “in silico experiments”, data analysis and processing, production of new knowledge using specialized tools

• Largely based on retrieval and access of always updated knowledge from diverse heterogeneous content sources

• Produce knowledge that is preserved and made available for other usages inside and outside the VRE

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Virtual Research Environments: characteristics

Highly dynamic, created and dismissed on-demand

Based on specialised tools which support the generation of new knowledge

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Operating on new information objects

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On-demand information objects

• a fixed text

• a pollution map

• a table summarizing data

from millions of observed satellite measures

• a graph reporting an analytical trend of certain information extracted from a great amount of observed data

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D4Science vision

D4Science visioncalls for the realization of scientific e-Infrastructures that will remove technical concerns from the minds of scientists, hide all related complexities from their perception, and enable users to focus on their science and collaborate on common research challenges

gCube isa framework to manage distributed e-infrastructures where it is possible to define, host, and maintain dynamic virtual environments capable to satisfy the collaboration needs of distributed Virtual Organizations (VOs)

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gCube Resources

VRE applications are designed, dynamically deployed, and operated as a set of cooperating resources:

computing, storage middleware VRE services

content and storage management, discovery and access, … applications

mostly provided by the VOs collections of raw data, content, and metadata

enriched with schemas, mapping rules, transformation programs, relationships, …

processes defined to manage such resources

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ConsumersConsumers ProvidersProvidersVRE-A

VRE-B

gCube empowered e-Infrastructure

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E-InfrastructureE-Infrastructure

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Managing Data Source Heterogeneity

Mapping Rules MR

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Bridging Data Sources

Hosted on the e-infrastructure

Data Sources are interfaced through ..The bridges are managed by ..

.. the e-infrastructure

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gCube e-Infrastructure

Managing Data Import

DS import

MR MR MR

VRE 2 VRE 3 VRE 4VRE 1 VRE 5

DS DS

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Offering a Collaboration Environment

gCube VREs provide access to a workspace where users can

share: Private data Data process results Annotation Process definition Derived data

collaborate to define new processes, tune applications and processes compare execution results

opens unique opportunities for virtual collaborations

Contain both objects owned by the workspace owner and objects the workspace owner has been allowed to see, e.g. group objects;

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INTEGRATED FISHERIES CAPTURE INFORMATION SYSTEM -

ICIS VRE

Courtesy by

Marc Taconet FAO

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REGIONAL LEVEL

FAO

RFBsCatch stats

GLOBAL LEVEL

Catch stats

Reference system

Reference system

GISareas - sp

Mapping rules

harmonisation of hererogeneous sources

standard reporting

format

ICIS VRE to respond to institutional needs

Fishery Biodiversity

Data standardisation: harmonisation of heterogeneous sourcesData queriesData importend user

query tools

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ICIS VRE to respond to institutional needs

Data processing: reallocation rules

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REGIONAL LEVEL

FAO

RFBsCatch stats

GLOBAL LEVEL

Catch stats

end user

Reference system

Reference system

GISareas - sp

reallocation rules

ICIS VRE to respond to institutional needs

Fishery Biodiversity

Products dissemination: maps - tables

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REGIONAL LEVEL

FAO

RFBsCatch stats

GLOBAL LEVEL

Catch stats

end user

Reference system

Reference system

GISareas - sp

reallocation rules

ICIS VRE to respond to institutional needs

Fishery Biodiversity

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WFC

REGIONAL LEVEL

Catch stats

GLOBAL LEVEL

Catch stats

Reference system

Reference system

fishbase DB

NOAA

OBIS

Satelliteoceanographic

Species occurrence

Aquamap

GISareas - sp

peer reviewediting

Expert

Mapping rules

end user

ICIS VRE to respond to institutional needs

Fishery Biodiversity

reallocation rules

FAO

RFBs

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Through a VRE it is possible to facilitate ... the dissemination through tables or maps of credible estimates of

catch data, according to users’ choice of spatial resolution, based on best available statistic sources and with transparent algorithms.

the comparison of catch statistics among various sources.

By exploiting ... semi-automated import of distributed data sources harmonization of heterogeneous sources implementation of re-allocation rules intensive data processing support for query, output and annotation. easy updating and feedback processes

ICIS – a response to institutional needs

the Vision

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CHLOROPHYLL AND VEGETATION DISTRIBUTION

VRES

Courtesy by

Luigi FuscoESA

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VREs: to enhance current procedures

• VREs integrated environment put at disposal a functionality set which is not today available in Earth Science to support and perform research activities: examples are

the ability to process information on-demand ingesting the results,

to set-up further VREs opening to colleague (and project partners) users,

to perform customized collection of information, to store user actions and exploit them for further use, to aggregate relevant information into ad-hoc information

sources and keeping them updated.

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daily + TB datasets + services

eogrid.esrin.esa.int

environmental data / reports

www.eea.eu.int

ES Thesaurus ~30000 objects

idn.ceos.org

~4700 global data set available

850 access in last week

www.fao.org/geonetwork Key community portal

www.gmes.info

Reference docMetadata, services

www.eoportal.org

daily data sets available

www.medspiration.org/

products

VREs data sources

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VREs: to enhance current procedures

• Currently these steps are carried on manually, on different technologies and systems delaying the delivery of research results.

• The planned VREs offer a dynamic set up and utilization of Virtual DL which are created for the specific scope defined by the users.

• The focus, once again, is not in the processing but in the dynamic allocation of resources.

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gCube today

• gCube is compliant with consolidated and emerging standards.

• gCube offers an open family of frameworks that can be easily customised

• gCube is a working horizontal solution composed by more than 200 software components

> 60 WSs, >50 independent libraries, and >30 portlets

most components widely tested and certified Public and Stable Release (November 2008)

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VRE Advantages

• gCube technology creates new opportunities to change the VRE development model used by distributed and dynamic organisations and communities

• Using gCube empowered infrastructures, the organisations and communities are able to setup their own environment:

When and for the time they need it

Accessing to and handling of distributed multi-focused data and services

Profiting from a shared storage and computational set of resources

Sharing data and services in a collaborative and efficient way

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http://www.gcube-system.org/ http://www.d4science.org/

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gCube today

gCube Software Documentationhttps://technical.wiki.d4science.research-infrastructures.eu/

gCube Core Software Documentation https://wiki.gcore.research-infrastructures.eu/

gCube System web sitehttp://www.gcube-system.org