Blue-Cloud: exploring and demonstrating the potential of Open Science for ocean sustainability

The Blue-Cloud project is part of 'The Future of Seas and Oceans Flagship Initiative' of the European Commission and runs since October 2019. It has established a pilot cyber platform, providing researchers access to multidisciplinary datasets and derived data products from observations, in-situ and satellite-based, analytical services, and computing facilities essential for blue science to better understand and manage the many aspects of ocean sustainability. A number of core services have been delivered and are now in a phase of wider dissemination and uptake by marine researchers. Core services are the Federated Data Discovery & Access Service (DD&AS), the Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment (VRE), and five Blue-Cloud Virtual Labs.