EVER-EST: European Virtual Environment for Research in Earth Science Themes

EVER-EST is an EC Horizon 2020 project having the goal to develop a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) providing a state-of-the-art solution to allow Earth Scientists to preserve their work and publications for reference and future reuse, and to share with others. The availability of such a solution, based on an innovative concept and state of art technology infrastructure, will considerably enhance the quality of how Earth Scientists work together within their own institution and also across other organizations, regions and countries. The concept of Research Objects (ROs), used in the Earth Sciences for the first time, will form the backbone of the EVER-EST VRE infrastructure. ROs will enhance the ability to preserve, re-use and share entire or individual parts of scientific workflows and all the resources related to a specific scientific investigation. These ROs will also potentially be used as part of the scholarly publication process. EVER-EST is building on technologies developed during almost 15 years of research on Earth Science data management infrastructures. The EVER-EST VRE Service Oriented Architecture is being meticulously designed to accommodate at best the requirements of a wide range of Earth Science communities and use cases: focus is put on common requirements and on minimising the level of complexity in the EVER-EST VRE to ensure future sustainability within the user communities beyond the end of the project. The EVER-EST VRE will be validated through its customisation and deployment by four Virtual Research Communities (VRCs) from different Earth Science disciplines and will support enhanced interaction between data providers and scientists in the Earth Science domain. User community will range from bio-marine researchers (Sea Monitoring use case), to common foreign and security policy institutions and stakeholders (Land Monitoring for Security use case), natural hazards forecasting systems (Natural Hazards use case), and disaster and risk management teams (Supersites use case). The EVER-EST project will coordinate and collaborate with other relevant initiatives worldwide mainly through the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Virtual Research Environments interest group (VRE-IG).