The benefits of Big Data Cooperation from a single research infrastructure viewpoint – ICOS and the ENVRI-hub in EOSC

The Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS), is a distributed European Research Infrastructure which provides high-precision and highly standardised observations from more than 170 stations from three domains: Atmosphere, Ecosystem and Ocean. ICOS covers currently 16 European countries. All ICOS data is made available by the ICOS Carbon Portal, first in near-real time (within 24h when possible), and after further quality control as domain specific annual releases. The data flow follows the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR) principles.

ICOS has been cooperating with other European Environmental Research Infrastructures (the ENVRI Community) since more than a decade. ICOS used the ENVRI Reference Model to set up its data life cycle, developed common metadata and data citation strategies and most recently contributed to the ENVRI-hub within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The ENVRI-hub will be a central gateway to environmental data and services offered by the European environmental research infrastructures. The data offered through the hub will be interoperable across the Earth system disciplines and therefore easy to use for interdisciplinary environmental research. Data will be open and free to use by anyone. Users of the ENVRI-hub will be also able to use the Virtual Research Environments and do their science computing directly inside the hub.

The synergies achieved through cooperation within the ENVRI community has saved a lot of resources for ICOS when implementing its data life cycle. Furthermore, it has created common services for scientists working on complex Earth System questions such as climate-biodiversity or climate-air-quality feedbacks.