e-Infrastructure

D4Science.org is an organisation offering an Hybrid Data Infrastructure service and a number of Virtual Research Environments. 

Such an Hybrid Data Infrastucture (HDI) service represents a new solution supporting scientists called to deal with data-intensive science. In this domain, large-scale datasets come in all forms and shapes from huge international experiments to cross-laboratory, single laboratory, or even from a multitude of individual observations. 

An HDI assumes that several technologies, including Grid, private and public Cloud, can be integrated to provide an elastic access and usage of data and data-management capabilities. D4Science.org relies on the gCube software system to realize and operate its HDI.

 A Virtual Research Environment (VRE) is a system with the following distinguishing features: (i) it is a web-based working environment; (ii) it is tailored to serve the needs of a community of practice; (iii) it is expected to provide a community of practice with the whole array of commodities needed to accomplish the community’s goal(s); (iv) it is open and flexible with respect to the overall service offering and lifetime; and (v) it promotes fine-grained controlled sharing of both intermediate and final research results by guaranteeing ownership, provenance and attribution.

The D4Science Infrastructure is currently supporting two projects: iMarine and EUBrazilOpenBio. The services offered by such projects are available via the iMarine Gateway and the EUBrazilOpenBio Gateway respectively.