1. LifeWatch Cloud Computing Workshop
Fernando Aguilar
IFCA – CSIC

2. Introduction
LifeWatch is an e-science and technology infrastructure for biodiversity and ecosystem research to support the scientific community and other users. ERIC from 17th March.
Its mission is to advance Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research and to provide major contributions to addressing the big environmental challenges (e.g. Climate Change)
Knowledge-based solutions to environmental managers for its preservation, by providing access through a pan-European distributed e-Infrastructure to a multitude of sets of data, services and tools enabling the construction and operation of Virtual Research Environments (Virtual Laboratories & Decision-support Applications).
Example of relevant case studies:
Invasive species
Evolution of wetlands
Evaluating the ecological quality of habitats
Members: Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, etc.

3. Connecting LifeWatch - EGI
Service Oriented Approach. Exploiting common e-infrastructures. Cloud-based services.
EGI (FedCloud) resources, one of the best options to provide the e-infrastructure layer required.
Analysis and processing tools can be deployed and executed.
Support, Ecological Observatories, Workflows & Vlabs, Citizen Science.
Service Oriented Approach, exploiting the possibilities offered by common e-infrastructures, and in particular exploring the option of cloud-based services, as quoted already in the LW statement for H2020 in 2013.
The LifeWatch Competence Center under the EGI-Engage project addressed the adoption and exploitation of the EGI infrastructure by the LifeWatch user community, in particular by deploying basic tools required to support data management, data processing and modelling for Ecological Observatories, considering the services required to support workflows oriented to the deployment of Virtual Labs for LifeWatch, and exploring the possibilities to offer a better support to the direct participation of citizens in LifeWatch contributing observation records, in particular those including images uploading and processing.

4. ICT Core Virtual Labs Optional in-kind construction
Virtual laboratories for scientific cooperation
Select the data, software and computing power for your project
Integrate resources
Linking to resources (databases, sensors, software, computing power)
Common Facilities
Compulsory construction
Third party
contributions
Courtesy of Wouter Los 4

5. Achievements: Support
OpenProject instance running in FedCloud resources.
Document Repository
Meetings Management
Managing Working Groups.
Common requirements
Expertise groups
Exploring Data Management Tools.
Data Management Plans
Analysis tools
Data Repositories

6. Achievements: Support
OpenProject instance running in FedCloud resources.
Document Repository
Meetings Management
As well as Wiki page
Managing Working Groups.
Common requirements
Expertise groups
Exploring Data Management Tools.
Data Management Plans
Analysis tools
Data Repositories
Data Lifecycle

7. Achievements: Ecological Observatories
VLIZ (Flanders Marine Institute)
Support: Image storage.

8. Achievements: Ecological Observatories
Global Biodiversity Information Facility, Spanish Node (GBIF.es).
Supporting Biodiversity Data Repository.
Web application: managing, querying, etc.
Freshwater Reservoir
Data Management
Modelling: Hydrodynamics, Water Quality.

9. Achievements: Workflows & Vlabs
TRUFA
Galaxy (NGI-FR): web portal based on Galaxy for metabarcoding and molecular taxonomy R
R Vlab
Rserver
Rshiny
Specific Working Group
Jupyter
As a general solution for Virtual Labs

10. Achievements: Citizen Science
Supporting Citizen Science Initiatives.
FedCloud supporting Natusfera:
Biodiversity Observation
Web portal + App
Allows everyone to register observation, creating projects, etc.
Image Classification
Approach to Orchids classification
Convolutional Neural Network. Exploiting EGI GPUs
Caffe
Portal on FedCloud (BIFI)

11. Lessons Learnt: WG Identifying Common Requirements.
Avoiding reinvent the wheel.
Groups of experts.
WG List:
AAI: AARC + AARC2
Citizen Science
GeoServer – GIS
NoSQL R
Semantics
Storage
Workflow

12. Lessons learnt: Cloud Resources
Cloud-based approaches fit very well in LifeWatch.
Solutions based on web apps.
Common requirements can be satisfied using Cloud Computing.
Dynamic use (models, analysis) Vs. Long Term running (Web services).
Use of GPGPUs is an exception, but some initiatives are addressing exploitation in the cloud.
Storage and Data Management – Very important requirement
Some Cloud-like solutions available.

13. Workshop objectives
Describe Cloud Infrastructure (Current and potential services). IFCA & EBD
List the User Requirements in terms of services/functionalities.
Understand the problems and address them.
Start the service deployment

14. Thanks for your attention
Fernando Aguilar
IFCA – CSIC