AquaINFRA is an EU Horizon Europe project funded under the HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01 call, coordinated by Aalborg University (Denmark), connecting 21 international partners from 10 countries across Europe, the UK, and Scandinavia.
The 4-year AquaINFRA project (started on 1st January 2023) aims to support the advancement of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and will develop a project-based interactive platform as a result. This platform will incorporate FAIR multi-disciplinary data and services to assist both marine and freshwater scientists and stakeholders in the restoration of healthy oceans, coastal, and inland waters.
The international AquaINFRA consortium is made up of 21 partners and is led by Aalborg University. This international collaborative effort will see the development of an innovative AquaINFRA Interaction Platform (AIP). Through a single user interface, the platform will permit data discovery and processing.
The AIP will act as the main entry point for scientific communities focused on aquatic research with the aim to exchange knowledge and connect with the EU flagship initiative, European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Included in this development will be the creation of a cross-domain and cross-region search and discovery mechanism, and the establishment of services for spatio-temporal analysis and modelling through Virtual Research Environments (VREs). The AquaINFRA VRE is designed to allow stakeholders to store, access, share, analyse, and process research data and information from their own fields in addition to other international research of various disciplines and infrastructures.
As an international project, AquaINFRA prioritises the requirements of marine and freshwater researchers to allow communities to effectively collaborate across the domains. The framework for co-designing and testing services in the targeted research communities will be produced by strategic use cases, including those from the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and a Pan-European use case. The AquaINFRA project will further the successful efforts and work in collaboration with project BlueCloud26, as well as other EU-funded projects, such as Iliad and EDITO Digital Twins of the Ocean.
Blue Lobster will lead the Dissemination and Communication workpackage of the project. This includes developing the brand identity for the project, developing a comprehensive web platform to support the project and communications activities, designing and executing the outreach (marketing) and communications strategy, social media activities, graphic design and illustration for communication materials and communicating the AquaINFRA services to the private and public sectors.
The AquaINFRA project has received funding from the European Commission’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No 101094434.