Blue-Cloud 2026 - D2.6 Tuning between Blue-Cloud Data Lakes and DTO development, 1st report
Creators: name: Tonani, Marina
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Coconstruction
Collaboration
DOF
DTO
Data Lake
EMODnet
Synergies
VRE

description: The European Digital Twin Ocean (EU DTO) initiative, announced by President 
von der Leyen, aims to harness digital technology to provide comprehensive 
knowledge of the ocean. The European Digital Twin of the Ocean seeks to 
provide an innovative set of user-driven, interactive and decision-making 
tools backed by the best science and data. Its core development is underway 
with the European Union (EU) funding through the European Digital Twin 
Ocean (EDITO) R&D projects. Two sister projects, namely EDITO-Infra and 
EDITO-Model Lab, are building the operational backbone infrastructure of 
the European Digital Twin Ocean. Key components of the EDITO approach 
include a Data Lake, Processing Engine, and Virtual Simulation Environment. 
EDITO aims to integrate and expand existing European assets and 
capabilities, starting with the Copernicus Marine and EMODnet data and 
services, to develop the EU Public Infrastructure for the EU DTO. The 
vision is to widen the engagement to additional projects and 
infrastructures that can contribute with complementary data, services, 
algorithms, and computing resources. From that perspective, EDITO is 
considering engagement through projects such as ILIAD and Blue-Cloud 2026 
and several other EU research projects and e-infrastructures, such as 
EuroHPC. The plan is also to integrate EDITO with Destination Earth 
(DestinE), the European Commission's flagship initiative for a sustainable 
future. The DTO Task Force in Blue-Cloud 2026 has been set up to ensure the 
complementarity of Blue-Cloud 2026 with ongoing Digital Ocean initiatives. 
Therefore, the Blue-Cloud DTO Task Force seeks to identify complementary 
data resources and analytical services which Blue-Cloud could contribute to 
the EU DTO data lake and applications portfolio. To be able to deliver 
these on an operational basis, the Blue-Cloud DTO Task Force aims to 
promote and elaborate technical synergies and interoperability between 
EDITO and the Blue-Cloud architectures, data and services. The Task Force's 
activities began with a presentation and short discussion at the Blue-Cloud 
2026 Kick-Off meeting, where the EDITO initiative was introduced. This was 
followed by a dedicated workshop between managers and developers of the 
Blue-Cloud 2026, EDITO-Infra and EDITO-Modellab projects. The presentations 
and discussions created a level playing field and gave the early impression 
that the technologies in use in Blue-Cloud and EDITO are already quite 
aligned. Areas of potential collaboration were identified, and for the 
short term, a plan was made to demonstrate synergy between Blue-Cloud 2026 
and EDITO at the upcoming Digital Ocean Forum 2024 (DOF 2024) in June 2024 
by deploying a copy of a successful Blue-Cloud VLab at the EDITO 
infrastructure. In the meantime, this plan has been accepted by the DOF 
2024 organisers, including EU DG RTD and DG MARE, and technical activities 
have started to roll out this plan. For the longer term, more structural 
cooperation and connectivity will be desired as Blue-Cloud is developing 
and delivering an increasing portfolio of Virtual Labs with potential for 
use in the EU DTO context while also building an interesting data provision 
through a federation of multiple leading data repositories and deploying 
fast performing data lakes with high-quality data and data products, which 
might complement the core data offer for EDITO from Copernicus Marine and 
EMODnet. Therefore, ongoing dialogue and technical exchanges are required 
to identify in more detail the added value that Blue-Cloud 2026 could offer 
to the EU DTO data and services portfolio and to elaborate on how smart 
connectivity could be established between the Blue-Cloud digital ecosystem 
and the EDITO infrastructure to achieve a dynamic exchange. These 
discussions and analyses should become part of a roadmap for 
co-construction between Blue-Cloud 2026 and EDITO, which could then be 
proposed to the EU DTO management team.