1. BlueBRIDGE receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 675680 www.bluebridge-vres.eu
The BlueBRIDGE approach to
collaborative research
Gianpaolo Coro
CNR, Italy
gianpaolo.coro@isti.cnr.it

2. Context
Progress in Information Technology has changed
the paradigms of Science
 The large and fast increase of volume and
complexity of data requires new approaches to
collect-curate-analyse the data
 This requires new tools to guarantee exchange
and longevity of the data and of the reapplication
of the experiments

3. Big Data
• Large volume
• High generation velocity
• Large variety
• Untrustworthy
(veracity)
• High complexity
(variability)
Big Data: a dataset with large volume, variety, generation velocity, containing complex and
untrustworthy information that requires nonconventional methods to extract, manage and
process information within a reasonable time.

4. New Science Paradigms
 Open Science: make scientific research, data and dissemination
accessible to all levels of an inquiring society, amateur or
professional.
Keywords: Open Access, Open research, Open Notebook Science
 E-Science: computationally intensive science is carried out in highly
distributed network environments that use large data sets and
require distributed computing and collaborative tools.
Keywords: Provenance of the scientific process, Scientific workflows
 Science 2.0: process and publish large data sets using a
collaborative approach. Share from raw data to experimental
results and processes. Support collaborative experiments and
Reproducibility-Repeatability-Reusability (R-R-R) of Science.
Keywords: collaborative and repeatable Science

5. Requirements for IT systems
• Support collaborative research and experimentation
• Implement Reproducibility-Repeatability-Reusability of
Science
• Allow sharing data, processes and findings
• Grant free access to the produced scientific knowledge
• Tackle Big Data challenges
• Sustainability: low operational costs, low maintenance
prices
• Manage heterogeneous data/processes access policies
• Meet industrial processes requirements

6. e-Infrastructures
e-Infrastructures enable researchers at different locations across the world
to collaborate in the context of their home institutions or in national or multinational
scientific initiatives.
• People can work together having shared access to unique or distributed scientific
facilities (including data, instruments, computing and communications).
Examples:
Belief, http://www.beliefproject.org/
OpenAire, http://www.openaire.eu/
i-Marine, http://www.i-marine.eu/
EU-Brazil OpenBio,
http://www.eubrazilopenbio.eu/

7. Virtual Research Environments
• Define sub-communities
• Allow temporary dedicated
assignment of computational,
storage, and data resources
• Manage policies
• Support data and information
sharing
Integrates
e-Infrastructure
Unified Resource Space
Enables
VRE VRE VRE
WPS
External e-Infrastructures

8. Virtual Research Environments
Innovative, web-based, community-oriented, comprehensive, flexible, and
secure working environments.
• Communities are provided with applications to interact with the VRE services
• Client services are provided both with APIs (Java, R) and simple HTTP-REST interfaces

9. VREs Example
The D4Science e-Infrastructure
D4Science supports scientists in several domains
1. More than 25 000
taxonomic
studies per month
www.i-marine.eu
2. More than 60 000
species distribution
maps produced and
hosted
www.d4science.eu
3. Used to build a
pan- European
geothermal energy
map
www.egip.d4science.org
4. Processing and
management of
heterogeneous
environmental and
Earth system data
www.envriplus.eu
5. Enhances
communication and
exchange in Linguistic
Studies, Humanities,
Cultural Heritage,
History and
Archaeology
www.parthenos-project.eu

10. BlueBRIDGE VREs
Stock Assessment
assess the health status of fisheries stocks.
http://www.bluebridge-vres.eu/services/stock-
assessment
CMSY model
Marine Protected Areas
reduce adverse impact of human activities
(e.g. fishing, aquaculture, tourism) on
ecosystems, and ensure these activities are
properly embedded in policy frameworks.
http://www.bluebridge-vres.eu/services/protected-area-
impact-maps

11. Education VREs
Lecture-style: the course topics stress is different
depending on the audience
Interactive: after each explained topic, students do
experiments
Experimental: students reproduce the experiment
shown by the teacher and possibly repeat it on their own
data
Social: students communicate via messaging or VRE
discussion panel
• 1 course/year
In Pisa
• 1 course/year
In Paris
• 12 courses
In Copenhagen
www.bluebridge-vres.eu
International Council for
the Exploration of the Sea
• 38 courses
All over the world
+1000 attendees

12. Social networking is key to share information in e-Infrastructure
BlueBRIDGE offers a continuously updated list of events / news produced by users
and applications
User-shared
News
Application-
shared News
Share News
BlueBRIDGE VREs:
Social Networking

13. A free-of-use folder-based file system allows managing and sharing
information objects.
Information objects can be
• files, dataset, workflows,
experiments, etc.
• organized
into folders
• shared
• disseminated via public
URLs
BlueBRIDGE VREs:
The Workspace – an online files storage system

14. Storage
Databases Cloud storage Geospatial data
Metadata generation
and management
Harmonisation Sharing
Data
management
Cloud computing Elastic resources
assignment
Multi-platform: R,
Java, Fortran
Processing
BlueBRIDGE Facilities:
Overview

15. Data Processing

16. • Experiments on Big Data
• Sharing inputs and results
• Save the provenance of experiments
• Supports R-R-R of experiments
WPS
REST
• Input/Out
• Parameters
• Provenance
Cloud Computing
Platform

17. BlueBRIDGE computational
capabilitiesProject resources:
 6 Virtual Machines (VM) with 16 virtual CPU cores, 16GB of RAM and
100GB of storage
 100 VMs with 2 virtual CPU cores, 8GB of RAM and 20GB of storage
Processes:
 ~ 200 algorithms hosted in all the VREs
 ~ 20 contributing institutes
 ~ 30,000 requests per month
 ~ 2000 scientists/students in 44 countries using VREs
 Programming languages: R, Java, Python, Fortran, Linux-compiled
External providers (European Grid Infrastructure):
 6 VMs: 8 virtual CPU cores, 16GB of RAM and 100GB of storage
 2 VMs: 16 virtual CPU cores, 32GB of RAM and 100GB of storage
 24 VMs: 2 virtual CPU cores, 8GB of RAM and 50GB of storage
 5VMs: 4 virtual CPUs cores, 8GB of RAM and 80GB of disk

18. Integrating new processes
Integration: putting a script that works offline into the Cloud
computing platform.
Tools:
https://wiki.gcube-system.org/gcube/How-to_Implement_Algorithms_for_the_Statistical_Manager
https://wiki.gcube-system.org/gcube/Statistical_Algorithms_Importer
R script
Computing platform Web interface and Web service
SAI - Importing tool
Automatic

19. Advantages
 The process is available as-a-Service
 Invoked via communication standards
 Higher computational capabilities
 Automatic creation of a Web interface
 Provenance management
 Storage of results on a high-availability system
 Collaboration and sharing
 Re-usability, e.g. from other software (e.g. QGIS)

20. Collaborative experiments
WS
Shared online folders
Inputs
Outputs
Results
Computational system
In the e-Infrastructure
Through third party software

21. Ensemble Model
Implementation of an ensemble model approach to support advice and management in
fisheries.
Thorpe et al. (2015). Evaluation and management implications of uncertainty in a multispecies size structured
model of population and community responses to fishing. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 6(1), 49-58.
 Diet Information
 Life history diet information
 Historical fishing scenarios
 MSY fishing scenarios
 Initial abundance values
 Life history prior information
 Total Biomass
 Stock Spawning Biomass
 Life history traits
Input Output
Process
Python script

22. EM Integration
Download the python script
and the user’s data
Execute script
Collect output
Destroy local copies of I/O and script
Save Output on the User’s Workspace, with provenance info
Scientist’s provided
script
User’s data
Infrastructure
machine

23. EM Interface
User’s private
Workspace

24. EM Interface

25. EM Interface

26. EM Interface

27. Scientific Workflow
Script provider
Updates the script on
his private Workspace
The service downloads
the script on-the-fly
A user executes an
experiment on
his/her data
The output, the input
and the parameters can
be shared with another
user
This user can execute the
experiment again
and share the
computation with the
other user
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28. Limitations and requirements
Input OutputScript
Script
Required Provided
Issues:
 Code is often designed for one precise data set
 Often, prototype scripts have code that is not separable from the I/O
In the context of e-Infrastructures and Science 2.0:
 Modularity is necessary for integration
 Scripts should be re-organised in a way they could be re-used on other data without
changing the code
Vs

29. WS
Self-consistent comp. products
RepeatabilityProvenance Prov-O
Reusability
Use of standards
Reproducibility
Conclusions
 E-Infrastructures endow processes with several Science
2.0 features
 BlueBRIDGE offers an e-Infrastructure and resources to
host processes and collaborate
 Effort is required to algorithms providers to comply with
service and generalisation requirements