Scientific discovery today increasingly depends on the availability of digital services and infrastructures that span the entire research workflow. While sensors, simulations, and lab experiments produce massive data, many tools for analysis remain fragmented in stand-alone systems, often hindering collaboration and a comprehensive understanding of complex Earth systems.
To address this, e-Infrastructures and Virtual Research Environments (VREs) are revolutionising how research is conducted. By providing a cohesive ecosystem, these platforms allow researchers from diverse disciplines to manage the research lifecycle: from data acquisition and processing to modeling and dissemination in the spirit of Open Science. This integration enables the research community to transition from isolated tools to interoperable systems like Digital Twins.
This session aims to highlight how interoperable e-Infrastructure services can be used to build VREs and Virtual Labs to provide end-to-end support, strengthening research capacity through collaboration between service providers and scientists. We bring together case studies and new approaches from all domains of the Earth sciences, focusing on both technological implementations and scientific applications.
Contributions in this session will:
- Demonstrate practical examples of how digital services, VREs, and e-infrastructures enhance research workflows in Earth and environmental sciences.
- Present innovative approaches to integrating tools across domains and providers, including outcomes from collaborative projects, virtual laboratories, and digital twins.
- Highlight technical implementations, including research software applications, semantic approaches, modeling practices, and the management of large-scale data.
- Share lessons learned from user-driven design, community engagement, training and support strategies.
- Address challenges of interoperability and sustainability in distributed digital services, highlighting pathways to foster collaboration across infrastructures and research domains.
By bringing together service providers, research infrastructures, and end-users, this session will provide a unique overview of the digital landscape and its impact on science. It will foster dialogue on how different infrastructures can collaborate more effectively to provide integrated, sustainable solutions, embedding Open Science principles across the research lifecycle, and advance both science and society.
Tim Rawling