Blue-Cloud 2026 builds upon the pilot Blue-Cloud project which established a pilot cyber platform, providing researchers access to multi-disciplinary datasets from observations, analytical services, and computing facilities essential for blue science. Core services delivered are the federated Data Discovery & Access Service (DD&AS), the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) and Virtual Labs. Blue-Cloud 2026 aims at a further evolution of its pilot ecosystem into a Federated European Ecosystem to deliver FAIR & Open data, analytical services, instrumental for deepening research of oceans, EU seas, coastal & inland waters. It develops a thematic marine extension to EOSC for open web-based science, & serves needs of the EU Blue Economy, Marine Environment and Marine Knowledge agendas. Blue-Cloud 2026 in 42 months covers activities at a growing number of federated environmental RIs to improve & optimise services for uptake of new data sets from a multitude of data originators and for discovery and access to their structured data collections. The advanced ecosystem will provide a core data service for the Digital Twin of the Ocean, mobilising and making available major additional data resources as validated and harmonised in-situ data by means of Data Lakes. The modular architecture of the VRE is scalable & sustainable, fit for connecting additional e-infrastructures, integrating more blue analytical services, configuring more Virtual Labs, and targeting broader (groups of) users. Blue-Cloud 2026 main KERs: A) FAIR compliant DD&AS; B) Open Science VRE federating multiple e-Infrastructures; C) 3 EOV WorkBenches; D) 5 Virtual Labs; E) Blue Strategic Roadmap; F) DTO Task Force. Blue-Cloud 2026 is co-ordinated by the same organisations Trust-IT & MARIS, counting on the same core team of partners CNR, Ifremer, MOI, Seascape Belgium, VLIZ; overall it mobilises a solid, multidisciplinary, & committed team of 40 partners from 13 EU countries.

ILIAD builds on the assets resulting from two decades of investments in policies and infrastructures for the blue economy and aims at establishing an interoperable, data-intensive, and cost-effective Digital Twin of the Ocean (DTO). It capitalizes on the explosion of new data provided by many different earth sources, advanced computing infrastructures (cloud computing, HPC, Internet of Things, Big Data, social networking, and more) in an inclusive, virtual/augmented, and engaging fashion to address all Earth Data challenges. It will contribute towards a sustainable ocean economy as defined by the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Ocean, a hub for global, multistakeholder co-operation. The ILIAD DTO will fuse a large volume of diverse data, in a semantically rich and data agnostic approach to enable simultaneous communication with real world systems and models. Ontologies and a standard style-layered descriptor will facilitate semantic information and intuitive discovery of underlying information and knowledge to provide a seamless experience. The combination of geovisualisation, immersive visualization and virtual or augmented reality allows users to explore, synthesize, present, and analyze the underlying geospatial data in an interactive manner. The enabling technology of the ILIAD DTO will contribute to the implementation of the EU?s Green Deal and Digital Strategy and to the achievement of the UN Ocean Decade's outcomes and Sustainable Development Goals. To realize its potential, ILIAD DTO will follow the System of Systems approach, integrating all existing EU Earth Observing and Modelling Digital Infrastructures and Facilities To promote additional applications through ILIAD DTO, the partners will create the ILIAD Marketplace. Like an app store, providers will use the ILIAD Marketplace to distribute apps, plug-ins, interfaces, raw data, citizen science data, synthesized information, and value-adding services derived from the ILIAD DTO.