The first version of the ecocloud Platform was officially launched on 26 September 2018. It provides an online platform giving researchers easy access to large volumes of curated data and tools using Cloud and Virtual Laboratory (VL) technology.
The alpha release of the ecocloud platform brings you four key components:
ecocloud Workspace
10GB of persistent storage to keep your code/notebooks so they are ready to go when you start up a server (R or Python environment).
Your Workspace is only really intended to store code, you can import and export large datasets and results directly from your server to places like Dropbox.
ecocloud Explorer
A portal that indexes data from more than 600 publishers and provides code snippets to access and interact with this data.
ecocloud Tools
The powerhouse of the ecocloud Platform are our server environments. With a couple of clicks, you can have a server running in the cloud with R (including RStudio) or Python as your coding language of choice. These servers use the JupyterLabs interface which includes connections to GitHub, Google Drive and Dropbox.
You can also spawn a ready-to-go Virtual Desktop using TERN’s CoESRA which includes software such as QGIS and Biodiverse. Alongside all of this, the Tools page provides links to popular ecoscience related tools which will be updated regularly.
ecocloud Support
Everyone needs support from time to time so ecocloud has a support site with articles on how to use the platform. A community forum focused on code and scientific topics relevant to the ecoscience community will also be added in the future.
The ecocloud project is a collaborative effort supported by NCRIS-funded Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) as the major project sponsor, and the Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation (QCIF) as the implementation partner.
TERN is a founding partner of ecocloud alongside:
- Atlas of Living of Australia (ALA)
- Australian Plant Phenomics Facility (APPF)
- The Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory (BCCVL)
- CSIRO Land & Water - Environmental Informatics
- Department of Agriculture (ABARES)
- Department of Environment and Energy (DoEE)
- eResearch South Australia (eRSA)
- Fenner School of Environment and Society (ANU)
- Griffith University
- National Computational Infrastructure (NCI)
To ensure ecocloud continues to create solutions that meet your needs, we encourage you to take a look at the alpha release and submit comments, ideas and thoughts here.
