Key role of AquaINFRA Interactive Platform integrated in blue research infrastructures

The increasing acquisition of observations in hydrological research is a critical factor to accelerate FAIR and open data sharing across relevant scientific communities.  Conventionally, research infrastructures have developed in silos that are specific to the domains and/or countries. With the ambition of tackling this fragmentation, the establishment of European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is in progress to federate multidisciplinary research infrastructures by ‘Enabling an operational, open and FAIR EOSC ecosystem (INFRAEOSC)’ projects.  One of them, AquaINFRA (https://aquainfra.eu), has been funded to protect oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters, in support of the EU Mission 'Restore our Ocean and Waters' by 2030.

AquaINFRA will develop a research infrastructure equipped with FAIR multi-disciplinary data and services, allowing seamless data discovery and processing through the AquaINFRA Interaction Platform (AIP) to support freshwater and marine scientists and integrate with EOSC seamlessly. More specifically, the AIP will include a data discovery and access service as well as spatio-temporal models in Virtual Research Environments (VREs) to provide the optimal environment for the global hydrosphere research through interoperability with external infrastructures such as the European Digital Twin of the Ocean (EDITO).

Regional studies will highlight the Mediterranean case in Tordera and Maresme, Catalonia, with a VRE workflow to evaluate the marine ecological state impacted by land catchment interactions in a system of the hydrological cycle.  Based on the methodology of coupling freshwater and marine models using different types of data (e.g. in-situ, remote sensing, socio-economic) and services (e.g. Copernicus, EMODnet) from local, regional, national to European sources, we conclude with the challenges and opportunities for enabling a FAIR research environment among the interested regional stakeholders including scientists and decision-makers to provide feedback to the EOSC Partnership.

(This project has received funding from the European Commission’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No 101094434.)