The ENVRI-Hub: A Platform for Advancing Environmental and Earth Sciences through Integrated Virtual Research Environments

Modern Environmental and Earth sciences demand seamless integration across atmospheric, marine, terrestrial, and biodiversity data, and this process is often hindered by disciplinary silos. The ENVRI-Hub addresses this challenge directly by serving as the unified Virtual Research Environment (VRE) for Europe's Environmental Research Infrastructures. It moves beyond a simple data portal to function as an integrated platform where discovery, access, and analysis converge.

The hub provides researchers with a centralised gateway to discover and access FAIRified research assets, enabled for cross-disciplinary work. Crucially, it enables these assets to be leveraged in situ through any VRE using a unified machine actionable API/toolset. , in order to support data analytics in scientific workflows. VREs will allow users to compose, execute, and share reproducible analytical pipelines - from accessing Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) to running complex AI analytics. This architecture not only streamlines the scientific process but also underpins applications like environmental Virtual Laboratories and foundational work for future applications like Digital Twins.

This presentation will detail the ENVRI-Hub's technical architecture for enabling VRE support. We will demonstrate, through specific scientific use cases, how its Catalogue of Services and AI-powered Knowledge Base work synergistically to reduce data friction. The contribution will highlight how this integrated environment supports workflow builders in creating robust, cross-domain analyses, thereby accelerating scientific results and advancing collaborative, data-driven Environmental and Earth science.