The Blue Cloud 2026 Horizon Europe project introduces a federated model in which Blue Research Infrastructures (RIs) and other data and service infrastructures and technology providers make their services available to the community through agreed, FAIR formats and technologies that the Open Science Community in Europe accepts and recommends under the umbrella of the European Open Science Cloud environment. This is underpinned by expertise from the EMODnet community, among others.
The partnership organised a rich event in Lisbon at the Instituto Hidrográfico from 5 to 7 November.
The first day of the recent Blue Cloud event was dedicated to the General Assembly and internal meetings with the partnership, the second to the Federation Workshop and the last to the Technical and Scientific Committee meeting. The General Assembly provided a valuable opportunity for the consortium to reflect on the progress made in the first two years of the project and to plan the upcoming activities necessary for the successful implementation of Blue Cloud. The aim of the workshop was to assess the federated services of Blue-Cloud in relation to the needs and challenges of other marine and climate research infrastructures. It also stimulated a debate around the practical impact of open science federation. The agenda of the GA and the Technical and Scientific meeting and the Federation workshop are accessible online on the Blue-Cloud website.
In terms of synergies between EMODnet Chemistry and Blue Cloud, EMODnet Chemistry's data and expertise contribute to the Blue Cloud workbench (Figure 1), which addresses the Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) of eutrophication. The workbench aims to create harmonised and validated EOV data collections for Chl, nutrients and oxygen, integrating multiple datasets from different EU and non-EU data infrastructures.
In addition, OGS is working with the other partners involved in this task to provide a toolbox for users.
“Currently, several data sets for eutrophication have to be manually synchronised in different data infrastructures with their own Quality Assurance and Quality Control. Drawing from various data sources managed by Copernicus Marine Service, EMODnet Chemistry and the World Ocean Database, this workbench will implement an efficient, user-configurable toolbox to create customisable, validated datasets and assess the consistency of information. The result tested for the north-east Atlantic will be extended to the global ocean by the end of the project.” A.Giorgetti - OGS
A.Giorgetti – OGS
EMODnet Chemistry is also the data source of one of the Blue Cloud Virtual Laboratories dedicated to the 'Marine Environmental Indicators'(VLab4, figure 2), which will develop tools for calculating online metocean information and indicators of the environmental quality of the Mediterranean and global oceans.
In particular, the EMODnet Chemistry data in the northern Adriatic was used to calculate the composite trophic status index (TRIX) as an indicator of eutrophication and to test the tool that will allow users to visualise the monthly trophic status (Figure 3). An overview of the VLab4 can be found on the poster presented at the Blue Cloud event and available on the project website.
“EMODnet Chemistry and Blued Cloud have different tasks; the latter can be defined as a “Science factory”. At this stage, EMODnet is providing datasets and expertise to develop a tool that will support EMODnet Chemistry's data integration and validation efforts.” A.Giorgetti - OGS