Release of the AquaMaps VRE

On 16 March 2009 the AquaMaps Virtual Research Environment (VRE) was released. This VRE is an important part of the Integrated Capture Information System (ICIS) and is available through the project portal: http://portal.d4science.research-infrastructures.eu.

The AquaMaps VRE will provide fisheries and aquaculture scientists with AquaMaps generated using the D4Science e_Infrastructure. AquaMaps are images containing the likelihood that a species or a combination of species will live in a specific areas. AquaMaps are very important for species assessment.

The AquaMaps collections was generated by processing data on 9154 Species, contained in 56,468,301 database entries representing the probability of occurrence of species in specific areas. This required extensive filtering, grouping and rendering of the data:

'Species Maps' consisting of 3582 compound objects;
'Family Maps' consisting of 592 compound objects;
'Order Maps' consisting of 132 compound objects;
'Class Maps' consisting of 39 compound objects and;
'Phylum maps' consisting of 13 compound objects.

Each of these collections contain compound objects that consists of 15 images (a two-dimensional map of the whole Earth plus 2 three-dimensional views for the Poles, 6 three-dimensional views for the Continents, and 6 three-dimensional views for the Oceans) with the relative metadata.

From a functional point of view this environment supports:

The discovery of compound information objects through browsing, simple and advanced search;
The collaboration through annotation;
The collaboration through a shared workspace;
The collaborative production of reports, i.e. enhanced publications produced through the VRE support.

The VRE is currently being evaluated, and later validated, by the User Community.

More information: