Final Report on the Role and Operation of an ICT E-Infrastructure and E-Learning Office for Applications to Use DANUBIUS-RI

Final Report on the role and operation of an ICT e-infrastructure and e-Learning Office for applications to use DANUBIUS-RI

Deliverable 5.18

DANUBIUS-PP Deliverable 5.18

Preparatory Phase for the pan-European Research Infrastructure DANUBIUS–RI “The Project Full title International Centre for advanced studies on river- sea systems”

Project Acronym DANUBIUS-PP

Grant Agreement No. 739562

Coordinator Dr. Adrian Stanica

Project start date and duration 1st December 2016, 36 months

Project website www.DANUBIUS-pp.eu

Deliverable Nr. 5.18 Deliverable Date M24

Work Package No. 5

Work Package Title Architecture

Responsible UPC & POS

SPAIN

UPC

Vicente Gracia, Agustin Sánchez-Arcilla, César Mösso Authors & Institutes Acronyms POS

Manuel Alberto Moreno, Antonio Torralba

Final (F) 

Status: Draft (D)

Revised draft (RV)

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Public (PU)

Restricted to other program participants (PP)

Restricted to a Dissemination level: group specified by the consortium (RE)

Confidential, only for members of the  consortium (CO)

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Table of contents

Executive summary / abstract ...... 6 1. Introduction ...... 8 2. The DANUBIUS-RI context ...... 9 2.1. The General structure of DANUBIUS-RI ...... 9 2.2. Resources and components to be integrated in DANUBIUS-RI ...... 14 3. e-services in DANUBIUS-RI ...... 15 3.1. Common e-services demanded by Research Infrastructures ...... 15 3.2. The potential e-services offer of DANUBIUS-RI ...... 15 3.3. Training offer in DANUBUIS-RI ...... 18 4. E-learning as a distinctive service in DANUBIUS-RI ...... 19 4.1. The Learning Management System (LMS) ...... 20 4.2. The Moodle initiative ...... 24 4.3. The OpenCourseWare initiative ...... 25 5. ICT for Virtual e-Learning Environments ...... 28 6. Building DANUBIUS-RI infrastructure ...... 31 7. Summary and conclusions ...... 38 References ...... 40 ANNEX I LIST OF TRAINING COURSES TO BE OFFERED IN DANUBIUS-RI (from WP4) ...... 42 ANNEX II LIST OF FUNCTIONALITIES OF A LMS (SCOPEO, 2009) ...... 45

List of figures

Figure 1. DANUBIUS-RI landscape ...... 9 Figure 2: Distribution of training offer by the elements of DANUBIUS-RI ...... 18 Figure 3: Screen capture of a course using Moodle ...... 24 Figure 4: Screen capture of the Civil Engineering degree at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC, Spain) ...... 26 Figure 5: Example of Client-Server based Virtual Environment ...... 28 Figure 6: Virtual Learning Environment schema based on ICT e-infrastructure ...... 29 Figure 7. From data to impact ...... 31 Figure 8: Data flow between DANUBIUS RI elements...... 31

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Figure 9: Basic DANUBIUS RI Architecture ...... 32 Figure 10: Advance DANUBIUS RI Architecture ...... 33 Figure 11: Typology of web servers ...... 34 Figure 12: LAMP toolchain ...... 37

List of Tables

Table 1: Summary of existing e-services for RI ...... 15 Table 2. DANUBIUS-RI potential e-services. Direct refers to a service directly related with the exploitation of the subject to which it refers. Internal refers to services to handle with the associated management aspects ...... 17 Table 3. Technologies associated to LMS tools according to Boneu (2007)...... 21 Table 4. LMS open source software applications...... 22

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Executive summary / abstract

DANUBIUS-PP is a three-year project to raise DANUBIUS-RI (International Centre for Advanced Studies on River-Sea Systems) to the legal, financial and technical maturity required for successful implementation and development. DANUBIUS-RI is a pan-European distributed research infrastructure (RI) building on existing expertise to support interdisciplinary research on river-sea (RS) systems, spanning the environmental, social and economic sciences. It will provide access to a range of RS systems, facilities and expertise, a ‘one-stop store’ for knowledge exchange, access to harmonised data, and a platform for interdisciplinary research, education and training.

Research infrastructures like DANUBIUS-RI offer services that facilitate the coordination of activities in their communities of practice, promote collaboration, build capacity through e-learning, and benefit from centralisation/operation at scale. Key elements of this preparatory phase are to determine the necessary computing, storage and communication infrastructure and simulation tools for the distributed RI and to provide the tools and techniques for the development of all computing elements.

This study is concerned with creating and integrating an ICT distributed e-Infrastructure to support the Virtual Research Environments, develop a virtual environment for cooperation, research, and e- Learning activities, and decision makers within the RI. An e-Services provider for DANUBIUS-RI will be created. The study will design the ICT e-infrastructure to provide applications with coordinated access to the different and distributed parts of the RI

The present document explores the approach to be used for the definition of the ICT e-infrastructure and e-learning office for applications to use DANUBIUS-RI. Data e-services and Training e-services have been identified as fundamental issues within DANUBIUS-RI. Moodle has been identified as an excellent learning management system.

E-learning and e-learning technology is gradually gaining global acceptance by Information Communication Technology (ICT) experts, education managers, institutions, corporate bodies, students and other stake holders in education industry. It has been proved the adding value of ICT e-Infrastructures on information sharing among researchers and by allowing them to be connected independently of where they are in any time.

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the research community and will evolve according to the new requirements and constrains that come up during the proper development of the communication technologies.

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1. Introduction

The DANUBIUS-RI architecture, which will be the units and how they will be organised is defined in WP5. This main objective can be split in two targets: (i) the definition of the roles and contributions of the Hub, the Supersites, the Data Centre and the Technology Transfer Office and (ii) the definition of the internal functioning and links between them.

This document deals with the design of an ICT distributed e-Infrastructure to support the Virtual Research Environments and e-learning activities within DANUBIUS-RI. It also has to design the ICT e-infrastructure to provide applications with coordinated access to the different and distributed parts of the RI.

The present deliverable has integrated the latest achievements of other WPs but specially the findings of the tasks of WP4 (Developing the funding model of DANUBIUS-RI), WP5 (Structure) and WP8 (ICT e-Infrastructure and digital data cloud storage). To complete the knowledge about the services that DANUBIUS-RI will provide a survey was performed in WP4 through individual interviews and also internal meetings and workshops. It also incorporates the outcomes of WP2 and specially the Scientific and Innovation Agenda from which is distilled new needs that will demand e- services in future.

The report is at present structured in 5 main chapters: (i) the DANUBIUS-RI context, in which a general overview of the main parts of DANUBIUS-RI is presented and in which the main findings of interest of WP5 and WP8 are shown; (ii) the e-services in DANUBIUS-RI, where e-services area categorised according to whom are they address (outcomes of WP4); (iii) a chapter dedicated to develop e-learning in DANUBIUS-RI from an organizational point of view, (iv) the creation of a ICT for e-learning and (v) the building of ICT. Finally, a summary and conclusions is given.

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2. The DANUBIUS-RI context

The following chapter is taken from documents developed within DANUBIUS-PP.

2.1. The General structure of DANUBIUS-RI

Physically, DANUBIUS-RI will be distributed across Europe to optimize the use of existing world- leading expertise. The Hub and Data Centre in Romania, a Technology Transfer Office in Ireland, and Supersites and Nodes across Europe. This structure will enable DANUBIUS-RI to build on existing expertise and synergies to support world-leading interdisciplinary research and innovation in freshwater-marine research.

DANUBIUS-RI is meant to be a big pan-European RI led by Romania but with funding commitments given by four countries (Germany, Italy, Romania and Spain) and political commitment from a further seven (Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Moldova, Netherlands and UK).

Expressions of interest and support from the scientific community have been received from these countries and also from an additional 16 European and non-European countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, China, India, Morocco and USA.

Figure 1. DANUBIUS-RI landscape

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The architecture to provide services and interconnection between any of these elements and countries will be complex and standard-oriented in order to fill the existing gap related to regulation, standardization and interoperability.

The Hub will provide leadership, coordination, and key scientific, educational and analytical capabilities. The Hub is under construction at Murighiol on the edge of the Danube Delta in Romania. As headquarters of DANUBIUS-RI, it will provide leadership, management, administration and governance, coordination, communication and standardisation activities. It will be in charge of strategic planning, scientific evaluation, scientific endorsement, connectivity to the Data Centre, coordination with the Technological Transfer Office, Nodes and Supersites and dissemination of research outputs.

The Hub will contain the administrative building of DANUBIUS-RI, office space for managers and scientists, meeting/lecture rooms, conference halls, library, local IT Centre and storage facilities. It will also provide accommodation for scientists, technical and administrative staff, students and visitors. The Director General and senior staff of the ERIC will be based at the Hub. The buildings will use the latest standards of green management strategies for water and energy supply and waste water treatment.

The Hub will also have key scientific and educational capabilities, including acting as the Hosting Laboratory for the Danube Delta Supersite and facilitating access to the Lower Danube and Black Sea. It will be an Accredited Service Provider for the Nodes.

Supersites are designated natural sites providing the focus for observation, research and modelling at locations of high scientific importance and utilizing a range of opportunities to study river-sea systems from river source to coastal sea. Supersites will provide natural laboratories for observation, research, modelling and innovation at locations of high scientific importance and opportunity, covering river-sea systems from river source to transitional waters and coastal seas. Ranging from the near pristine (eg Danube Delta Supersite) to the heavily impacted (eg Thames Estuary Supersite), the Supersites will be selected to provide contrasting systems across environmental, social and economic gradients that have been impacted, to varying degrees either directly or indirectly, by industrialisation, urbanisation, population expansion, land use change and farming. They will provide interdisciplinary research platforms and identify, model and define system states and conditions for naturally and anthropogenically triggered transitions in the physical, biogeochemical and biological states. They will provide excellent opportunities to undertake social and economic investigations in contrasting settings. An initial suite of eight Supersites is being developed, and it is expected that further Supersites will be added in the future. Each Supersite will

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have a Host Laboratory with responsibility for providing information to researchers and stakeholders, facilitating access, managing long-term observation programmes, and managing data.

Nodes will be centres of expertise providing facilities and services, data storage and provision, experimental and in situ measurements facilities, state-of-the-art analytical capabilities and implementation of standardised procedures and quality control (the DANUBIUS Commons). They will be centres of expertise providing facilities and services, data storage and provision, experimental and in situ measurements facilities, state-of-the-art analytical capabilities and implementation of standardised procedures and quality control.

Leading Laboratories for the Nodes are: The Observation Node (UK), The Analysis Node (Germany), The Modelling Node (Italy), The Impact Node (Netherlands)

Under the coordination of the Leading Laboratories, extra needs – both in facilities and geographical – will be identified. These needs will be satisfied by Accredited Service Providers: facilities to be developed and, if necessary, built under the coordination of the Leading Laboratories and respecting the DANUBIUS Common set of Standards, requirements and rules (DANUBIUS Commons).

The Observation Node, led by the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), will capitalise on the launch of the next generation, operational Earth Observation (EO) satellite platforms through the European Copernicus programme, along with the rapidly advancing capability of sensors technologies and their miniaturisation which enhances their suitability for deployment on fixed and mobile platforms. The capability of processing medium and high resolution EO data in near-real time and from long- time series, provides the first opportunity of operationally observing and reconstructing physical and biogeochemical changes occurring in optically complex inland and coastal waters. In addition, higher temporal resolution landcover data and landcover quality (derived from Sentinel 3 Landcover CCI along with Sentinel 2) can also be mapped in higher temporal resolution and changes detected that may impact on water quality and environmental hazards. The Node will develop sensors that can be interconnected to provide real/near real time observation capability to address the societal challenges including measures of standard water quality parameters, emerging pollutants and gas exchange between the water/atmosphere boundary. The Node will be responsible for the standardisation of instrumented buoys across the Supersite catchments and ensure that telemetry is in place to enable real time data capture. Super-buoys positioned in estuary/delta systems will include radiometers for satellite validation that could contribute to the AERONET-OC robotic sensor network. Expertise will be provided on in situ techniques and sampling protocols to ensure consistent measurement of physical and biogeochemical water parameters across DANUBIUS-RI compliant with international standards. Calibration and training activities for DANUBIUS-RI partners is central

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to the Observation Node. In addition, the rapidly growing interest in Citizen Science provides a wealth of opportunity for in situ measurement and observation to help validate EO products and extend existing monitoring and promoting environmental stewardship. Together, these developments provide exciting opportunities to study the spatial and temporal dynamics of river-sea systems with a resolution and accuracy that has hitherto been unachievable. It will be the task of this Node to ensure that data are acquired, processed and distributed in compliance with the DANUBIUS-RI Commons.

The Analysis node led by Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde (BfG) will be to ensure a high level of consistency and reliability in analytical techniques requiring analytical rigour and quality control to enable a common evaluation and effective comparison between research groups operating at the same Supersites, and other observation and experimental sites, and between the Supersites themselves. It will provide access to state of the art scientific expertise, laboratories, instrumentation and highly innovative methodologies that enable the identification of anthropogenic impacts on aquatic systems and the characterization of their biotic and abiotic processes and interactions. This includes the analytical capability to span across disciplines in geology, hydrology hydromorphology, chemistry, biology, ecotoxicology and hygiene. The Analysis Node is concerned with all parts of a water-groundwater-soil-sediment system and all kinds of samples that may be relevant in the context of research undertaken in the frame of DANUBIUS-RI. The Node will draw on the BfG expertise and facilities and a series of Accredited Service Providers providing methodological-analytical know-how, instrumentation, services, education and training in all fields of knowledge necessary for the desired complex system and process understanding. All laboratories of the Node operate within the framework of the DANUBIUS Commons with quality systems in place and where possible compliant with ISO17025.

The Modelling node led by ISMAR-CNR is one of the major services provided by DANUBIUS-RI, relying on the inputs from the Nodes and Supersites. Data collected from the Supersites and with the involvement of the Analysis and Observation Nodes will be integrated in models that simulate specific processes, interpolate between available measurements and carry out forecasts and „what- if’” predictions. Thus, the numerical modelling tools are essential prerequisites in delivering a well- informed management process, especially in sensitive and complicated areas, such as river-sea systems and transitional environments. River-sea systems are challenging from a modelling point of view, due to their peculiar characteristics in terms of morphology and to the typology of processes occurring, considering the interactions between different hydro-eco- morphological processes on the large (basin) and small (local, coast, rivers, lagoons) scale. The Modelling Node will provide relocatable tools and suitable techniques to be efficiently applied in the different Supersites,

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integrating the DANUBIUS-RI modelling skills and showing high performance modelling solutions for the investigation of river-sea systems. Moreover, the Node will provide a technological advanced platform for modelling services, in terms of software and shared data.

The Impact Node, led by Deltares, will integrate technical knowledge on river-sea systems (including water, subsurface and infrastructure) – generated by DANUBIUS-RI – with governance and policy- making to solve problems in highly complex dynamic river-sea systems. This Node has the primary focus of developing and testing concepts, methods and instruments to realize this goal. Methods and instruments may be focused, for example, on accelerating design and decision making (e.g. by using a decision theatre), improving quality and decreasing the costs of spatial planning in river-sea systems. Methods and instruments may also focus on how to better cope with uncertainties in decision making processes, how to involve stakeholders (e.g. in knowledge co-creation), and on spanning the boundaries between the different science disciplines involved in DANUBIUS-RI (e.g. by the development of a common language). Methods and instruments developed will help to transfer and apply knowledge in practice to deal with issues in highly complex dynamic river-sea systems. This relates to the second aim of the Social and Economic Node i.e. to connect to, and actually transfer, scientific outputs from DANUBIUS-RI to those committed to and engaged in the sustainable management of river-sea systems – or parts thereof – as well as to strengthen business in this area. There is no growth without innovation, no innovation without knowledge. Innovative ideas develop when nurtured by knowledge; mature technology can be brought onto the market. Supported by the scientific output of the Hub, other Nodes and Supersites, the node aims to innovate and transfers the DANUBIUS-RI knowledge, products, services and spinoffs to the business sector (small and medium enterprises as well as larger organisations). As knowledge grows, so too does the economy.

The DANUBIUS-RI Data Centre will be located in Romania, within the national Network Operations Centre of Romanian research and education network (RoEduNet) with connections to the Hub, to major European e-infrastructures and to GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems). The Data Centre will be responsible for data availability and processing. The data portal will provide access to a DANUBIUS-RI metadatabase covering digital data from: remote sensing; automatic stations in real time and periodic downloading; cruises; computer models; and the results of other physical, sedimentological, chemical, and biological and ecotoxicological analyses.

The three objectives of the Technology Transfer Office, which will be based at University College Cork (Ireland), will be to: realise the potential of intellectual property generated by DANUBIUS-RI by delivering general use as rapidly as possible, whilst protecting academic and research integrity and

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generating a financial return to the research infrastructure and inventors; and generating economic growth and employment.

As Task 5.8 about creating the Virtual Research Environments ICT e-Infrastructure Office will be developed in cooperation with WP8, in order to implement the architecture better fit to the identified needs it is important to consider the findings of WP5 and WP8 about data storage, data processing and any requirements for data connectivity, communciation and interoperability as they are going to define the usability of the application to be deployed over DANUBIUS RI ICT infrastructure.

2.2. Resources and components to be integrated in DANUBIUS-RI

This comparison of the organisational models of different RIs has shown up the large variety of models and lack of any standard approaches to organisational structure.

DANUBIUS-RI will be a distributed pan-European RI based on the following resources:

 Nodes, starting with 4 nodes, additional nodes and service providers are possible.  Host Laboratories distributed in more than 8 Supersites.  One Data Centre  One Technology Transfer Office  One Hub

In fact, there is no standardisation of terms between existing (or in construction) RIs. In particular, Hub and Node are used by several RIs but in different ways.

In conjunction to WP8, added capacities will be added to the e-infrastructure like data cloud storage, semantic interoperability or data processing, mining and aggregation using high performance computing. All these functionalities will be integrated using standards protocols to offer to users a full virtual laboratory experience.

DANUBIUS-RI is constituted by different institutions covering a wide range of disciplines which will offer a comprehensive set of services dedicated to the River Sea continuum. Because of that, the design of the DANUBIUS-RI e-Infrastructure will require to explore the potentials of the institutions to not only integrate the different services in a structured manner within DANUBIUS-RI but also to identify gaps or lacks of services in which it will be also necessary to dedicate more effort.

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3. e-services in DANUBIUS-RI

3.1. Common e-services demanded by Research Infrastructures

A total of 14 RIs has been reviewed in WP8 covering the Energy, Environment and Social Science and Humanities disciplines. Most of the reviewed e-services have been tailor-made to cover the following needs:

(i) Repository of documents (ii) Remote experiment accesses; (iii) Data access; (iv) Education and training; (v) Networking and (vi) Modelling analysis.

The associated services range go from simply downloading tools based on web portals to more sophisticated environments in which the users are able to analyse data at different levels of complexity.

A summary of the e-services and covered needs is given in Table 1.

e-SERVICES Remote Social Discussion Data Data Computing Modelling Metadata Data Blog Control Dashboard Wiki Media Forums storage Transfer capacity tools services viewer Systems Repository X X Database X X X Data X X X X X X Analysis NEEDS Education X X X X X X Networking X X X X

Table 1: Summary of existing e-services for RI

Education may take advantage of remote control services by allowing the realization of pre-defined experiments (physical or virtual), the dashboard and data viewer services.

3.2. The potential e-services offer of DANUBIUS-RI

The present list of services is taken from the results of WP4 and internal meetings and workshops done up to date of this document. The main objectives of WP4 are: (i) to define an access policy to the DANUBIUS-RI services and resources and (ii) to identify long-term funds. The first objective has

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required the definition of the potential services to be offered. This information is extremely useful because establishes the principles of the potential DANUBIUS-RI e-services.

The main categories of services potentially offered by DANUBIUS-RI and susceptible to be offered as an “e-service” are:

(vii) Digital and non-digital data produced within DANUBIUS-RI: There are several type of information covering the science disciplines of the RS continuum that will be produced in the RI and should be potentially available. Non-digital data, due to its nature, is by definition a non “e-service”, however it has been considered due to the possible needs of cataloguing such type of information. (viii) Tools: Data processing, visualization and numerical model codes are the main items considered. The “e-service” referred to codes can be understood as a repository for download or as a virtual platform to perform simulations. (ix) Study and measurement: This type of service referrers to “in situ” or laboratory actions and because their nature have not been considered as potential “e-service”. (x) Diagnostic and support: This category is closely related to “Tools” with the added value of the knowledge of the DANUBIUS-RI community. Modelling exercises and tailor made assessments are the activities that can be offered as “e-services”. (xi) Solution developments: The offers in this group cover, as in the previous category, client- oriented products. Modelling is, as it has been identified before, the service that can be implemented in an “e-mode”. (xii) Test, audit, validation and certification: Due to their “physical” nature they have not been considered as potential “e-service”. (xiii) Training: This category refers to courses that can be offered by the different elements of the DANUBIUS-RI. They cover as the RS continuum and associated disciplines and are basically capitalized by the nodes. Two main modalities can be distinguished: long last and short courses (workshops or seminars). Almost all type of courses can be offered within an “e-environment” although they should adapt to specific goals. A course which will require the presence of the attendant, because it is necessary the use of a laboratory or facility would require the design of a more sophisticated e-infrastructure. Besides, the good practices in education recommends to maintain face-to-face encounters or lectures. There is an academic discussion of the advantages/disadvantages of face-to-face, “e- learning” and blended learning (Goz, 2009; Barrios et al.; 2014 among many others). For all of these reasons, training is considered as susceptible of being offered as an “e-

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service” but always understood as a supporting tool in both academic and management issues. (xiv) Internal services: This category includes services dedicated to the internal functioning of DANUBIUS-RI. Two main subcategories can be identified: management and internal knowledge transfer.

As a summary Table 2 shows the services that can be offered within a virtual environment. E-services have been groped in two main categories: (i) Direct and (ii) Internal. The “Direct” category represents services focussed on the use and exploitation of the issue whereas Internal services are associated to the organisation and administration of the topic to which it refers.

Table 2. DANUBIUS-RI potential e-services. Direct refers to a service directly related with the exploitation of the subject to which it refers. Internal refers to services to handle with the associated management aspects

Typology DANUBIUS-RI service Direct Internal Digital data Data set / Data base

non-Digital data Cataloguing

Data processing Tools Visualization

Codes

Modelling Study & Measurement Remote sensing

Diagnostic & Support Modelling - Dashboard

Solution development Modelling - Dashboard

Test, audit, validation & certification Management "e-learning" Training Management Blended learning Internal Services Management As it can be seen, most of the services correspond to the “Direct” category, that is, the future DANUBIUS-RI can take advantage of the Infrastructure and Communication Technology (ICT) to offer its products to the whole community.

According to Gracia et al. (2018), data products related e-services is a cross-cutting issue within DANUBIUS-RI and because of this should be treated as a priority e-service. Besides, training has

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been identified as another important topic that would require a learning management system for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of training or learning programs.

3.3. Training offer in DANUBUIS-RI

The survey performed in WP4 has shown a high capacity of providing training course by the different elements of DANUBIUS. A list of initial courses can be seen in Annex I.

Not all courses support a full virtual approach, those that require the use of laboratory facilities or in situ data acquisition will require the presence of the participants on place. However, even in these cases, the e-learning environment emerges as a necessary tool in the teaching process.

Two main modalities can be distinguished from the survey: (i) courses and (ii) workshops. Figure 2 shows the training offer by the different elements of DANUBIUS-RI. The nodes represent more than the 60% of the offer although should not be restricted to them. The modelling courses is a good example of this, courses can focus on the physics of the modelled process and the computing strategies or, have a more practical objective. In that case, the main goal is to apply the model to a specific location to learn from the modelled processes the implications of a change and would be run by the Supersites that have a better skill on the characteristics of the location.

Impact 14% Others 25% Modelling 14%

Commons Analysis 12% 12%

Observation 23%

Figure 2: Distribution of training offer by the elements of DANUBIUS-RI

A special mention has the ”Others” category. Although it represents the 25% of the total is formed by three main categories: (i) academic matters such (Master programms, students exchange programs); (ii) ad-hoc courses of”any kind” not previously listed and (iii) bussines oriented course (aquiculture, GIS, etc).

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4. E-learning as a distinctive service in DANUBIUS-RI

The term e-learning refers to an internet-based teaching system, a teaching and learning system based on the use of ICT, which allows to follow lectures without the restriction associated to space, nor time. The spread of ICT’s has caused e-learning practices to change significantly (Kahiigi et al., 2008) and because of this, at present, many different definitions can be found.

Terms such as computer-based learning, technology-based training or computer-based training have been used in the literature to refer to such type of learning specially during 1990s (Friesen, 2009). Moreover, concepts such as virtual campus or online courses are part of the e-learning universe but do not sufficiently define it.

In the educational sciences, different meanings of e-learning can be found (Allen, 2004; Baker, 1979; Garavan, 1997; Stanovich, 1998; Wright, 2002, Keegan, 1980, 1988; Garrison & Shale, 1987). In our understanding, these slightly different definitions indicate that such discipline is evolving in time (in parallel with ICT) and adapts and accommodates to new demands and technologies.

For a sake of simplicity, we distinguish two main categories of internet-based teaching: (i) e-learning and (ii) Blended learning. The first term, E-Learning, states for the general definition of the use of ICT in the teaching process but also may refer to a more “pure” approach in which the student does not have to physically attend a classroom and the contents are fully given in a virtual environment. The second term, B-Learning, combines traditional face-to-face classroom methods with online educational materials where computer-assisted activities, content and material delivery through internet is also used.

The e-learning platforms are generally integrated environments which should offer: (i) support for teachers in the creation of multimedia courses (composition tools); (ii) teaching courses interactively, either at the same time or later, either locally or remotely and (iii) automatic tools for testing the progress of individual learning.

In any case, the design of an E-Learning environment, that is a web-based training requires the definition of a platform to organise all related tasks such as the material content, the student-system- teacher communication protocols, the deliveries, the evaluation process or the administrative issues among others (Boneu 2007). Such type of environment is commonly known as a Learning Management System.

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4.1. The Learning Management System (LMS)

A learning management system (LMS) is the fundamental tool that allows the teaching in virtual environment. The LMS is a software aimed to help in the planning, boosting, tutoring and evaluation process of all learning activities.

The LMS’s are software applications installed on a server to manage, distribute and control the activities of e-learning. The functionalities are to register students, register teachers, assign and manage courses, manage materials, follow up on learning, assessments and qualifications, use communication services such as mail, forums, chats and videoconferences, among other authors.

LMS should provide tools for (López et al., 2010):

(i) Administration: user management, personal page, course management and platform management. (ii) Communication: forums, chat, videoconference, email, comments and bulletin board. (iii) Participation: groups, blogs, wikis and community networks. (iv) Management: agenda, management of the course calendar, tasks and exercises. (v) Content: shared content and instructional design tools. (vi) Evaluation and monitoring: online grade book and evaluation methods. (vii) Support: authentication, registration and help. (viii) Mechanisms to generate personalized views of the course. (ix) Monitoring of student activities.

A sophisticated LMS should include the following statements as much as possible (Rodenes et al, 2013):

(i) Mechanisms of artificial intelligence, with help in real time according to the student's learning problems or according to the results of their evaluations, that is, "true automated tutors" (ii) Adaptability or personalization according to the aptitudes and tastes of the student (iii) The authoring tools provided by these systems and that are capable of allowing the creation of resources with interactivity; (iv) The portability of learning especially the possibility that systems operate with mobile devices; (v) Direct access to different sources of content, so that important amounts of resources are available and can be manipulated to create new resources or to build courses online;

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(vi) Systems should intercommunicate, share information with each other and with others from other organizations. (vii) Usability. Consideration should be given to how the platform is structured since problems in navigation can have an impact on learning deficiencies. (viii) Stability The platform must not fail, and must be available at all times to users. (ix) Affinity and support of international standards of online courses, such as SCORM and AICC.

According to Boneu (2007) LMS tools can be grouped in 7 categories: (i) addressed to learning; (ii involvement of students; (iii) support; (iv) contents; (v) management of knowledge; (vi) productivity and (vii) plans of study. The technologies associated to them is presented in Table 3.

Table 3. Technologies associated to LMS tools according to Boneu (2007).

Involvement of Learning Support Contents Productivity students Personal Course chat networking authentication annotations administration (posts) Tests and e-mail self-evaluation auditing automated Calendar results Qualification Platform help file exchange student's corner register tools tutorial assignment of privileges Student follow- Blogs Student's profile Search contents according to up role Media services RSS Support of different Podcast formats Wikis News Webpage Forums update notification Search of Broken links resource notification e-portofolio

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Finally, SCOPEO (2009) proposed a general classification of tools following the results of Boneu (2007), Brun (2009) and Quan (2009). Annex II shows a summary of the functionalities of an ideal LMS.

There are several commercial and non-commercial platforms available for the above mentioned tasks. Table 4 shows the most used open source LMS. The wide range of possibilities indicates that LMS have been designed for specific purposes covering distinctive characteristics of the academic CV to which they give service. The Claroline, .LRN, Mooddle and Sakai will be treated in depth because they fit with the multidisciplinary approach of DANUBIUS-RI.

Table 4. LMS open source software applications.

Name Source Moodle http://moodle.org Sakai http://sakaiproject.org/ Chamilo http://www.chamilo.org/ Atutor http://www.atutor.ca/ Olat http://www.olat.org/website/en/html/index.html Ilias http://www.ilias.de/docu/ WebCT http://www.webct.com Edustance http://www.edustance.com/ Claroline http://www.claroline.net .LRN http://dotlrn.org/ eCollege http://www.ecollege.com/index.learn

Google Classroom https://classroom.google.com Dokeos https://www.dokeos.com/ Canvas LMS https://www.canvaslms.com/

Claroline was developed by the Institut de Pédagogie universitaire et des Multimédias of the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) in 2000. Since 2004, it has also the support of Center de recherche et de Développement de l'Ecam and the Laboratoire d'Etudes sur les nouvelles Technologies, l'Innovation et le Changement from Liège University. Claroline is based on the concept of reaching the greatest possible development in the pedagogical autonomy of the teacher by allowing them to do enough tests to discover the need for a solid pedagogy and thus foster pedagogy in university teaching. It has a GPL license. It uses PHP and MySQL language as a Database Management System (DBMS) and works with SCORM and IMS specifications. It is available for platforms several platforms (Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and Windows) and free browsers (Mozilla, Netscape) proprietary browsers (Internet Explorer). It is available in more than 35

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languages. It offers a collaborative learning environment that allows teachers and institutions to create and administer virtual courses.

.LRN startup in 2006. It is created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and it is supported by a community of users and the .LRN Consortium, which work together to support and accelerate its development. It has a GPL license and is based on Open ACS, designed for Unix-like systems, as well as on AOLserver. It also works on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows and its DBMS is Oracle, PostgreSQL and AOserver. It has compatible modules based on the IMS LD and SCORM standards. The .LRN is based on five main pilars: (i) learning is inherently social and is carried out most successfully in the context of the communities, (ii) there is no "correct" pedagogical model for learning, (iii) the source of innovation is the user not the LMS developer, (iv) online communities provide the relevant and most important information of the learning and (v) learning communities should self-sustainable.

Moodle, Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, was initially developed by Dougiamas and Taylor (2002) as a learning platform designed to provide educators, administrators and learners with a single robust, secure and integrated system to create personalised learning environments (from Moodle webpage). It has been developed under a GPL license with OSI certification. It has PHP language. The data is stored in a SQL database, but it allows to operate with several database management systems. Its allowed standards are SCORM and IMS-QTI. The LMS gives the user (teacher or administrator) a wide range of functionalities. It is available in more than 120 languages and has regular updates. Moodle tries to support a constructivist education framework.

The Sakai Project (honouring the cook Hiroyuki Sakai) has its origins in the University of Michigan and in Indiana University, which was joined by MIT and Stanford University, together with the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) and the uPortal consortium. Its main objective is to integrate various e- learning functionalities into an academic portal. At present, it is supported by more than 100 universities. Sakai has a large number of additional tools ("contrib") available and developed by the community and in use by many institutions including research institutions. It is increasingly used by research networks and higher education organizations to share information and communicate from different geographical points, different organizations and different disciplines. Sakai reduces the administrative burden of bringing all researchers together at the same workplace.

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4.2. The Moodle initiative

Moodle is probably one of the most extended LMS worldwide. It is used in more than 200 countries and has more than 107,000 registered sites offering more than 17 million of courses for about 14 million of users. Moodle provides a high flexible tool-set to support both blended learning and 100% online courses. It is also fully customizable permitting tailor made setups. Figure 3 shows an example of a course organized with Moodle. As it can be seen the central pannel is costumized in this case to be the area where the student can take the lectures and also upload exercices, homework or present a required docment. The right panel in that particular case is dedicated to tools such as a calendar, a searching engine, news and also to monitor the acces to the web by the students.

Figure 3: Screen capture of a course using Moodle

Moodle can be setup in two manners: (i) by using own servers or (ii) by using generic hosting servers. In the first type the software and hardware maintenance of these servers will be our responsibility.

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On the second, the provider will perform hardware maintenance. Software maintenance will be our responsibility. In this case, the Internet connection will be provided by the hosting provider.

Generic hosting providers usually work with two types of servers:

(i) Virtualized Servers (VPS). The virtualized servers are "shared servers". That is, a single physical server is used by multiple clients. (ii) Dedicated Servers. Dedicated servers are non-shared physical servers. Your CPU, memory and disk are assigned exclusively to a single client.

In all cases, the database can be hosted, either on the same server as Moodle, or on an additional server. Hosting providers usually offer pre-configured database servers. On these servers it is possible to host the database of our Moodle. In addition, its use is usually included in the hosting price, with no more limitation than the maximum number of databases to be hosted.

More and more, managers and administrators opt to host Moodle in the Cloud. The client, in this case the Training centre, retains only the responsibility of using Moodle as a training platform. The tasks of hardware management, software administration and Internet connection, fall on the Cloud provider. This type of hosting is known as "Software as a Service (SaaS)". This term applies to any software that is made available to us through the Internet. This type of hosting offers better performance and user experience, since cloud providers optimize the configuration of servers. Besides, automate tasks that do not add value such as backups or updates.

For a detailed descrition of the capabalities and tools available the reader should visit the Moodle webpage.

4.3. The OpenCourseWare initiative

E-learning, can be also achieved without the assistance and monitoring of the improvements of the student. This approach implies that materials are offered through virtual learning environments to students as an additional source of information typically with an academic structure.

Many universities use the OpenCourseWare (OCW) platform in which the materials are structured as a course that often include the teaching strategy and the evaluation system, because of this, OCWs are understood as educational resources. Most of the OCW from universities have chosen the Creative Commons although some of these materials are offered with other permits, such as the GPL license.

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) started to launched their OCW in 2002 and at present the offer has more than 1,900 degree and postgraduate courses. The Open Education Consortium (https://www.oeconsortium.org/) is the institution in charge of developing OCW and make it visible worldwide. According to the website of the OpenCourseWare Consortium, an OCW project: (i) it is a digital publication of free and high quality educational materials.; (ii) it is available for use and adaptation under an open license and (iii) it does not usually provide certification or access to instructors or trainers. An example of a course offered in a OCW is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Screen capture of the Civil Engineering degree at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC, Spain)

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As it can be seen, the contents are organised in different levels showing the OCW capabilities, the upper panel illustrates a welcome page, the middle panel gives an overview of the different degrees and master programs whereas in the lower panel a detailed information of the course is given. In the lower level, the user has the course information or Syllabus, the contents, a calendar with the activities (chronogram) the lectures, and a description of the activities.

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5. ICT for Virtual e-Learning Environments

An important added value in the implementation of DANUBIUS-RI is the possibility of offering Virtual Learning/Research Environments to those institutions or research communities interested in using data from databases or experimentation sites located all around the world.

In order to give users an impression that they are actually operating on physically existing instruments, the user interface of a remote laboratory should be as realistic as possible. Using Client/Server framework and Browser/Server framework both are oriented to construct a user- friendly and robust laboratory.

A typical virtual environment based on client-server process is showed in the following picture:

Data Data Data USER INTERFACE Interface Interface Interface 1 2 3

Parsing Module Connection DATA APIs Manager STANDARDIZATION

TCP CLIENT TCP CLIENT TCP CLIENT

Figure 5: Example of Client-Server based Virtual Environment

In this sense, the new Virtual Environment must be able to query data from all the resources and application existing within DANUBIUS e-infrastructure.

This is a very complex task, due to its distributed nature, political reasons, technical aspects or operational issues. Besides, differences in the way to access data from any system or resource;

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which forces to the e-Infrastructure to include standardization mechanisms in order to build an interoperable research ecosystem also contributes in the complexity.

The data transformation mechanisms should be implemented gradually in different stages in order to facilitate the integration of systems (and users) in different levels or layer of the e-infrastructure.

Application Server

ICT e-Infrastructure Supersite USER Virtual Laboratory / Learning Environment

External DataBase

Figure 6: Virtual Learning Environment schema based on ICT e-infrastructure

So, DANUBIUS-RI will move from the classical client-server architecture to a more rich and complex e-infractructure able not only to interconnect in a feasible way all the resources described in chapter 2.2, but also to set the basis for the integration of any new system or elements able to improve the knowledge of the scientific community.

It has been claimed that ICTs play a vital role in the global socio‐technological through knowledge mobilization, network externalities, alliances and “cooperative” relationships. The convergence of Knowledge Management (KM) processes, ICTs infrastructure and architecture have been augmented by the recent advancements in technology ubiquity, semantics and knowledge representation.

The role of ICTs in advancing knowledge and human development should be central to promoting sustainable development. In fact, some schools point out that gross national product is not a proper way to measure development. With the emergence of the notion of a knowledge‐based economy and the steady advancement of KM to improve the development process, the classical objectives of development, such as improving the economic situation in developing countries, should change. Instead, the effort should now be directed towards the enhancement of human development the growth in the economy is subjected to its readiness for international competitiveness, which in turn, is a matter of embracing the knowledge‐based economy. Therefore, if the economic growth is to be sustainable, then the increasing adoption of ICTs has to be conducive to sustainability.

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The modern ICT infrastructure must embed the capabilities for cooperation and collaboration within its core design, in addition to providing connectivity, processing and storage. If that is achieved, with its higher bandwidth, improved performance and ubiquity, ICTs will make the world progressively smaller and its development much faster. The latest procession in connectivity, scalability and interoperability may allow for unprecedented geographic expansion of organizational boundaries, human networking and knowledge dissemination.

There is no doubt that the informal face‐to‐face meeting to transfer knowledge for development projects is the most efficient approach, However, this method is definitely not feasible for all development partners. In some cases, these techniques fall short in finding remedies not only due to the remoteness of the sink from the source of knowledge, but also due to voluminous information and documentation created over the years in a single organization, let alone in collaborating organizations

Nevertheless, technology alone is not the solution. The assumption that an intranet can provide the know‐how to the organization is, surely, incorrect. This is because the very existence of technology will not transform organizations from knowledge‐hoarding organizations to knowledge‐sharing organizations. Hence, he recommended that the change must happen in parallel on two fronts: the culture and the technology.

That technology may result in a robust repository populated with knowledge, but that may not contribute to real knowledge sharing, and may not attain the creation of a common environment between people. However, it is equally inadequate to use ICTs in an inappropriate context to share knowledge to knowledge technological infrastructure and innovations can be used for different causes ranging from good to bad. Nevertheless, well‐controlled and well‐maintained technological facilities can create incalculable assets for the organization; this should be the main role of the e- learning office, to guarantee the proper use and knowledge spread.

Four major factors are projected to play a critical role in achieving more robust sustainable development. These factors are: (i) Knowledge Management (KM); (ii) ICT itself; (iii) ICT capacity building; and (iv) ICT policies: An ICT policy is a roadmap to ICT implementation strategies, that must result on actions adopted and pursued by various governments involving issues in ICT.

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6. Building DANUBIUS-RI infrastructure

DANUBIUS-RI infrastructure must support connectivity between each of the systems and elements but also to provide access to any available data and resources in order to offer a complete virtual research experience for the scientific community.

Moreover, apart from the connectivity objectives of DANUBIUS-RI as an RI; an important added /9qxvalue provided by DANUBIUS RI is based on obtaining a social and environmental impact from the data analysis and modelling. This procedure makes than both Data sources and Technology transfer offices have got a specific weight in the project, including every intermediate node included in the process.

In this way the information flow should be as follows:

Data Information Knowledge Impact

Figure 7. From data to impact

The relation between all the services, databases, repositories and, ultimately, all the nodes and scientific resources altogether with the data exchanging is show in the following schema:

rsites Supe

data

Ob serva tion Node Modeling Data Impact Node Centre node Node lysis Ana Technology Transfer Office data

Figure 8: Data flow between DANUBIUS RI elements

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Technology transfer should be support by several services (e-services) that consume data acting as USERS of the e-infrastructure,

So USER’s interfaces will be represented in the top side of the architecture as virtual labs, external data bases or decition making platforms.

On the other hand, the needed resources as data sources, storage, laboratories, ... are represented in the bottom part of the architecture; so the data are consumed from bottom to top part, going thought all the nodes necesary for the data processing, analysis and modellling.

Figure 9: Basic DANUBIUS RI Architecture

The basic architecture tries to represent to all the needed functional blocks, interfaces and the interactions between them.

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In order to comply with the interoperability and standardization constrains is important to define every interface and how the data is exchange thought it.

In this sense, an advanced version of the proposed architecture is showed in the following picture, where the Data Centre is the access point to every user interested in use the DANUBIUS e- infrastructure:

USERS

DANUBIUS RI

Data Educational Data Searching Management Modelling Management Inventories Services Analysis Services Services - 1 Services - 2 e-Service Layer Services DATA CENTRE

Compositional Service layer METADATA HOSTING METADATA METADATA (internal) - COMMONS following standardsINSTITUTION following standards MANAGER

LOCAL INSTITUTION

SUPERSITE

NODE NODE

NODE

SERVICE SERVICE

IMPACT

SERVICE SERVICE

IMPACT

PROVIDER

ANALYSIS PROVIDER

PARTNERSHIP ANALYSIS

ACCREDITED ACCREDITED

MODELLING

ACCREDITED ACCREDITED

MODELLING OBSERVATIONAL OBSERVATIONAL TECHNOLOGY SUPERSITES HUB NODES TRANSFER OFFICE

External Database …… Research Educational Facilities support

Resource layer

Flume

…

vessels Hydrographic Hydrographic

…..

Courses

… Tutorial

……..

…

PRACE

EUDAT

…

Bathymetry

Satellite Topography Physicalparameters

Figure 10: Advance DANUBIUS RI Architecture

Hardware requirements shall be able to support a variable amount of users and data exchanging between servers and clients. So a variable architecture is preferred in order to let the system move from basic specs for a low access level and a limited amount of user (at the beginning of the system deployment) to a high demand system when the e-infrastructure is fully operative and providing all the expected Danubius-RI services of it catalogue.

In these sense, due to the nature of the system, a distributed infrastructure is preferred in order to avoid “bottlenecks” during the data access. This distributed infrastructure should be “transparent” to users, so they not need to know where the data are stored or where the services are provided from, but guarantee and stable access to them.

This is compatible with the DATA CENTRE role acting as access point to data and services offered by DANUBIUS-RI.

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Regarding Software, common recommendations from development community are based on the use of well-known and supported technologies for servers and database deployments.

About the use of web servers, most used technologies during 2018 according to “netcraft.com” are (Figure 11):

Figure 11: Typology of web servers

Apache Tomcat is a Servlet and Java Server Pages container developed under the Apache license that can act as both a standalone server and an add-on to an existing web server such as Apache.

While the Apache HTTP Server functions as a traditional server for static web pages, Tomcat is primarily designed to deploy Java servlets and JSPs in dynamic websites and used by Java developers to run web applications. Tomcat can be used in conjunction with the Apache HTTP server, but also functions as a capable web server in its own right thanks to its own internal HTTP server.

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Apache was founded in 1995 and became the most used HTTP server the next year, a title it went on to hold for almost 20 years. Microsoft surpassed its market share in July 2014, and Apache has been losing ground to its competitors since then. It still powered a total of more than 374 million sites and had the largest market share of active sites at 42.4 percent as of April 2018.

The name Apache was long thought to be a pun on the words "A Patchy Server", until one of the creators revealed that it was in fact chosen in homage to the aggressive strategy of the Native American tribe that shares its name.

Apache uses a modular architecture to meet the differing demands of each individual piece of infrastructure. It's known for its reliability, an impressive range of features and support for numerous server-side programming languages.

NGINX was developed by Russian engineer Igor Syosev in 2002 in response to the growth in website traffic and broadband internet and the resulting need to manage 10,000 simultaneous connections. His solution is an asynchronous, event-driven architecture renowned for its high-performance and efficiency.

The company has enjoyed rapid growth since then. More than 300 million sites and applications are now on its platform, more than double the number of one year ago, and it has become the engine of choice for the majority of world's 100,000 busiest sites.

It's particularly popular for its scalability and the minimal resources it requires to handle heavy user loads. It can also function as a reverse proxy and as a mail proxy server.

Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS, formerly Internet Information Server) is an extensible web server created by Microsoft for use with the Windows NT family. IIS supports HTTP, HTTP/2, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP and NNTP. It has been an integral part of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 4.0, though it may be absent from some editions (e.g. Windows XP Home edition), and is not active by default.

The first Microsoft web server was a research project at the European Microsoft Windows NT Academic Centre (EMWAC), part of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and was distributed as freeware. However, since the EMWAC server was unable to handle the volume of traffic going to Microsoft.com, Microsoft was forced to develop its own web server, IIS.

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"Lighttpd" is a portmanteau of "light" and "httpd" but pronounced "lighty" to describe its speed, flexibility and stability. The lightweight server is optimised for high-performance speed-critical environments and is ideally suited to servers with a high load.

Jan Kneschke developed the server with the same ambition as that of NGINX founder Igor Syosev: to solve the c10k problem of handling 10,000 concurrent connections on one server. The proof-of- concept design he began to develop while writing his university thesis in 2003 is now one of the most popular web servers available.

Lighttpd has a comparatively low memory footprint, small CPU-load and advanced set of features. Its high-level of integrability provides support for interfaces to external programmes and for web applications written in any programming language to be used with the server.

Regarding Database servers, different technologies could be used, some of the most common are:

PostgreSQL, or simply Postgres, is an open-source object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) that hides in such interesting places as online gaming applications, data center automation suites and domain registries. PostgreSQL also enjoys some high-profile duties at Skype and Yahoo! PostgreSQL is in so many strange and obscure places that it might deserve the moniker, "Best Kept Enterprise Database Secret." PostgreSQL's current stable release is PostgreSQL 9.6.3, which was released in late May 2017, and PostgreSQL 10 is expected to debut in the second half of 2017, with PostgreSQL 10 Beta 2 available now.

PostgreSQL runs on a wide variety of operating systems, including Linux, Windows, FreeBSD and Solaris. And as of OS X 10.7 Lion, Mac OS X features PostgreSQL as its standard default database in the server edition. PostgreSQL benefits from more than 25 years of development as a free, open- source database system, and it includes enterprise-grade features comparable to Oracle and DB2 such as full ACID compliance for transaction reliability and Multi-Version Concurrency Control for supporting high concurrent loads.

MariaDB Server is one of the most popular database servers in the world. It’s made by the original developers of MySQL and guaranteed to stay open source. Notable users include Wikipedia, WordPress.com and Google.

MariaDB turns data into structured information in a wide array of applications, ranging from banking to websites. It is an enhanced, drop-in replacement for MySQL. MariaDB is used because it is fast, scalable and robust, with a rich ecosystem of storage engines, plugins and many other tools make it very versatile for a wide variety of use cases.

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MariaDB is developed as open source software and as a relational database it provides an SQL interface for accessing data. The latest versions of MariaDB also include GIS and JSON features.

About choosing the most suitable toolchain, a typical option is Apache, PostgreSQL/MySQL/MariaDB and PHP, sometimes known as the LAMP platform (Figure 12).

Figure 12: LAMP toolchain

How data should be stored in order to facilitate access and data classification are fully described in deliverables from the WP7 which main target is to establish essential requirements and ultimately, build technical and data-sharing connections with international programmes.

Also, interfaces description and secure access to platform will be described in the deliverables from WP8.

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7. Summary and conclusions

It is seen that DANUBIUS-RI is proposing a holistic view of the River-Sea continuum which means a multidisciplinary approach with complex relationships. Besides, the continuous technological advances make available new methodological approaches very quickly. Because all this reasons, the following conclusions have to be understood as the result of the present knowledge. The actions derived from them have to be (if possible) open enough to accommodate to this new expected changes.

Regarding with e-services in RI it has been seen that they are developed to provide service mainly for repository of documents, data management, education and training, modelling networking and also remote observation. In any case, the services are tailor made although they take advantage from existing already developed tools (see deliverable D8.1 and D8.3).

The e-services identified for DANUBIUS-RI have been grouped in 2 main categories: direct and internal. The first is addressed to provide service to 7 main topics: (i) digital data, (ii) non-digital data (cataloguing), (iii) tools, (iv) study and measurement, (v) diagnostic and support, (vi) solution and development and (vii) training. The second category refers to internal management aspects of DANUBIUS-RI.

Data e-services and Training e-services have been identified as fundamental issues within DANUBIUS-RI.

The use of an open source environment is extremely recommended because they cover the requirements of the different topics efficiently (are used by most of the scientific community) and can accommodate to expected future technological changes faster.

The use of Learning Management Systems is a fundamental issue for e-learning services. Among the different possibilities it is recommended the Moodle platform.

OGC e-services for data and Moodle e-services for training has been shown adequate for DANUBIUS-RI needs. Because of that, e-service providers correspond to the institutions in charge of them although they do not have to be restricted to them.

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e-Infrastructures on information sharing among researchers and by allowing them to be connected independently of where they are in any time.

Current adopted and/or open source standards must be the way to proceed for sharing information and also let new researchers or datasets/database to be connected with DANUBIUS_RI ICT e- infrastructure, trying to avoid the use of private solutions. Standards solutions are fully supported by the research community and will evolve according to the new requirements and constrains that come up during the proper development of the communication technologies.

Joining initiatives with existing RIs are highly recommended for the ICT e-infrastructure development.

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References

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Dougiamas, M. and Taylor, P.C. (2002) Interpretive analysis of an internet-based course constructed using a new courseware tool called Moodle. Proceedings of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) 2002 Conference, Perth, Australia.

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Gracia V. and Sánchez-Arcilla A. (2017) Review of Research Infrastructure service offerings relevant to DANUBIUS-RI. Deliverable Nr.8.1, DANUBIUS-PP project.

Gracia V.; Sánchez-Arcilla A.; Moreno M.; Brottier F.; Friedrich J.; Brils J. and Bold S. 2018. Definition of and recommendations on DANUBIUS-RI remote service offering – 2. Deliverable Nr.8.3. DANUBIUS-PP project

Garavan, T.N. (1997). Training, development, education and learning: Different or the same? Journal of European Industrial Training, 21(2), 39–50.

Kahiigi, E.K., Ekenberg, L., Hansson, H., Tusubira, F.F., & Danielson, M. (2008). Exploring the e- learning state of the art. The Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 6 (2), 77-88.

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López Rodrigo J, Hernández Silva Mortega Mohedano J. Aproximación pedagógica de las plataformas Open sources en las universidades españolas. [Internet] SCOPEO 2011. Available at: http://scopeo.usal.es/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/scopeomoo2.pdf

Moreno M. and Torralba A. (2018) Draft on Implementation of application interfaces. Deliverable Nr.8.14, DANUBIUS-PP project

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Rodenes M.; Vallés R. S. and Moncaleano G. I. (2013) E-learning, características y evaluación. Ensayos de economía 43, 143-159.

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Shultz, M. and Satnica A. (2017) Review of existing major European distributed research facility organisational models. Deliverable Nr.5.1, DANUBIUS-PP project.

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https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2018/02/13/february-2018-web-server-survey.html

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ANNEX I LIST OF TRAINING COURSES TO BE OFFERED IN DANUBIUS-RI (from WP4)

Name Description DANUBIUS Commons 101 Training course in-situ or MOOC DANUBIUS Commons for Advanced

Users DANUBIUS Commons Certificate DANUBIUS Master programme DANUBIUS-RI basic Observation Training courses on the use of remotly sensed data and in-situ methods for Students sensors and sampling techniques for beginners DANUBIUS-RI advanced Training courses on the use of remotly sensed data and in-situ Observation methods for Students sensors and sampling techniques for advanced users DANUBIUS-RI basic Observation Training courses on the use of remotly sensed data and in-situ methods for Professionals sensors and sampling techniques for beginners DANUBIUS-RI advanced Training courses on the use of remotly sensed data and in-situ Observation methods for sensors and sampling techniques for advanced users Professionals DANUBIUS-RI basic Observation Training courses on the use of remotly sensed data and in-situ methods for Researchers sensors and sampling techniques for beginners DANUBIUS-RI advanced Training courses on the use of remotly sensed data and in-situ Observation methods for sensors and sampling techniques for advanced users Researchers DANUBIUS-RI basic Analytical Training for specific data analysis software for beginners methods for Students DANUBIUS-RI advanced Analytical Training for specific data analysis software for advanced users methods for Students DANUBIUS-RI basic Analytical Training for specific data analysis software for beginners methods for Professionals DANUBIUS-RI advanced Analytical Training for specific data analysis software for advanced users methods for Professionals DANUBIUS-RI advanced Analytical Training for specific data analysis software for advanced users methods for Researchers Training courses on the use of modelling software, model applications, good modelling practice, model development, DANUBIUS-RI basic Modelling etc.Workshop on modeling, every year on a different Supersite. methods for Students Practical applications for the stakeholder communities, targeting the three users typology (researchers, public, private) Training courses on the use of modelling software, model applications, good modelling practice, model development, DANUBIUS-RI advanced Modelling etc.Workshop on modeling, every year on a different Supersite. methods for Students Practical applications for the stakeholder communities, targeting the three users typology (researchers, public, private)

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Training courses on the use of modelling software, model applications, good modelling practice, model development, etc. DANUBIUS-RI basic Modelling Workshop on modeling, every year on a different Supersite. Practical methods for Professionals applications for the stakeholder communities, targeting the three users typology (researchers, public, private) Training courses on the use of modelling software, model applications, good modelling practice, model development, etc. DANUBIUS-RI advanced Modelling methods for Professionals Workshop on modeling, every year on a different Supersite. Practical applications for the stakeholder communities, targeting the three users typology (researchers, public, private) Training courses on the use of modelling software, model applications, good modelling practice, model development, etc. DANUBIUS-RI basic Modelling methods for Researchers Workshop on modeling, every year on a different Supersite. Practical applications for the stakeholder communities, targeting the three users typology (researchers, public, private) Training courses on the use of modelling software, model applications, good modelling practice, model development, etc. DANUBIUS-RI advanced Modelling methods for Researchers Workshop on modeling, every year on a different Supersite. Practical applications for the stakeholder communities, targeting the three users typology (researchers, public, private) DANUBIUS-RI basic Impact methods Training courses and workshops on how to achieve societal impact. for Students DANUBIUS-RI advanced Impact Training courses and workshops on how to achieve societal impact. methods for Students DANUBIUS-RI basic Impact methods Training courses and workshops on how to achieve societal impact. for Professionals DANUBIUS-RI advanced Impact Training courses and workshops on how to achieve societal impact. methods for Professionals DANUBIUS-RI basic Impact methods Training courses and workshops on how to achieve societal impact. for Researchers DANUBIUS-RI advanced Impact Training courses and workshops on how to achieve societal impact. methods for Researchers customised, on-demand training for

Researchers customised, on-demand training for

Professionals customised, on-demand training for

Authorities DANUBIUS Commons-compliant Implementation, Maintainance and

Use of Automated Measuring Systems DANUBIUS Commons-compliant calibration and validation of sensors Aquaculture education and training Science communication training Computer programming for environmental sciences

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Training in image analysis and GIS Workshops, Conferences DANUBIUS-RI PhD student In collaboration with Universities exchange programme Awareness raising campaigns Training in remote sensing systems

(active/passive) Land/Water Training in sampling, sample processing for calibration/validation activities (general) Training for Bio-geo-optical characterisation of optically complex waters Custom training courses

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ANNEX II LIST OF FUNCTIONALITIES OF A LMS (SCOPEO, 2009)

Management Tools

User management The administrator is responsible for assigning the roles to the other users

The administrator role allows you to perform all the actions available in the system

The role of course creator allows creating the courses, and managing their contents and activities The role of teacher allows you to manage the contents and activities of the courses assigned to you, but not to create them The role of teacher without permission to edit can participate in courses and qualify students, but can not modify the contents of it The student role allows you to follow the courses, read contents and complete exercises and jobs The guest role allows you to see the courses but not participate in them. You have an account on the platform but you are not enrolled in the course

The role of anonymous is a visitor to the course without an account on the platform

Webpage The students have a personal page with all the courses in which they are enrolled, the mail and the agenda The student profile allows you to administer the curriculum and present your Portfolio The teacher has access to the profile of each student of the cursol course without account on the platform Course management The platform allows you to schedule courses according to time or topics The platform allows the categorization of the courses The platform allows you to publish materials in different formats The platform allows you to publish external or internal web resources The platform allows you to publish glossaries The platform has a course search engine The platform has templates to develop courses The platform allows you to adapt each course graphically The platform alerts when there are course updates The platform has a directory of courses for public use or for private communities The teacher can reuse courses as templates

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The teacher can specify standard conditions for all students completion of activities, qualification, date, etc. The teacher can use the conditions as prerequisites to access other courses, which allows an orderly progression and the construction of itineraries The teacher and / or students can see progress reports within the course, or through a series of courses The teacher can limit the tools to which the student can have access Platform management The administrator can define the limitations of disk space for each user The platform can be adapted graphically The platform has an interface in several languages The platform has a basic editor and an HTML editor The platform has an editor based on TinyMCE The platform has a spell checker for editors The platform allows to use filters with different courses, activities or categories The platform can support multiple institutions, departments, schools, etc., in a single installation, and each unit can apply its own customized view The platform allows you to create backup copies (backup) The backup can be made of the courses but also of specific sections or activities

Support Tools

Regitry The administrator can create an unlimited number of functions with access privileges specific to content and tools The platform allows self-registration, although with the authorization of the administrator The platform allows ReCAPTCH keys to control self-registration The platform allows access restriction based on roles and functions There are courses that inherit registrations from other courses, metacourses Help There is the option of help for any tool There are online tutorials

Communication Tools

Forums The platform has forums The platform has a content search engine within the forum

The platform offers the possibility that the messages of the forum reach the email

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The platform offers the possibility of receiving emails in the form of summaries Chat The platform has chat The platform has a chat search engine The teacher can save chat conversations in a file The teacher can moderate the chats and suspend students from chat rooms Students can create new chat rooms e-mail The platform has an internal email system The platform allows the sending of simultaneous mails to E-mail several users The platform allows sending emails to an external address Comments Each user's activity reports include all their comments Bulletin board The platform has a bulletin board blackboard, etc.) to publish news The platform allows you to send the ads to the email

Involvement Tools

Groups The platform has a system to organize students in groups The platform has a system that allows the automatic grouping of students The teacher can create groups The teacher can review all group messages The teacher can point to a student as tutor of a group The teacher can allow students to create groups Groups have the possibility to include documents Groups have the possibility to include forums Groups have the possibility to include wikis Groups have the possibility to include bulletin board (balckboard) Groups have the possibility to include chat The groups have statistical summaries of the debates, showing the participation of the students and can be used in the grades. Blogs The platform has blogs to create content The platform supports comments on each entry on the Blog The platform allows subscription via RSS to external blogs Wikis The platform has a Wiki The platform has support for syntax (Mediawiki, Creole, etc.) Networking

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The platform allows the development of audio conferencing The platform allows the development of videoconferences The platform allows integration with some social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.))

Activity Tools

Agenda Teachers can post events and news in the calendar Students can post events and news in the calendar Work/Tasks The platform allows to perform some of the tasks in offline mode The teacher can mark the initial and final date of delivery of the works The teacher can decide if he / she allows to submit papers once the deadline for delivery is exceeded. The teacher can decide if the work delivered is visible to all, or only to him and the authors Students can submit their work by uploading a file Students can send their answers by text Exercices

The platform saves the questions in a repository of questions, so they can be reused

The platform has calculation exercises The platform has description exercises The platform has essay exercises, answer a question with a text developed in the editor The platform has matching exercises, the answer to the question The platform has nested answers exercises The platform has multiple choice exercises The platform has multiple choice exercises The platform has short answer exercises The platform has true / false exercises The platform has numerical response exercises The platform allows you to add chat in each exercise The platform allows you to add queries, survey The platform allows you to add a database to share information The platform allows you to add lessons, sequence of pages with activities that the student must answer in order to advance The platform allows you to add surveys The platform allows to add questionnaires The platform supports Quiz Protocol

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The platform allows exercises with multimedia elements The platform supports a MathML editor to include formulas The platform allows anonymous attempts but without storing results The platform allows you to import exercises created in other specialized tools The teacher can allow multiple attempts to perform the exercise The teacher can set a time limit on a test

The teacher can restrict access to activities according to various criteria: dates, grades

The teacher can determine when an activity is seen as completed by a student The teacher can export the exercises The teacher can see the statistics of all the exercises Students can review past attempts made on a questionnaire

Content Tools

Re-use Both the administrator and the teacher can manage the contents The platform allows you to organize the contents in folders and according to a hierarchy The platform allows to add labels, Metadata, to the contents The platform allows you to add content in IMS format The platform notifies when there are broken links or expired pages The platform does not store duplicate files The platform has a content search engine The platform supports the integration with external repositories of content such as Flickr, Google Docs, Picasa, YouTube, etc. The platform has the Unicode Standard The platform has a content repository The teacher can personalize the access to the didactic material depending on the group Students can share the contents of their personal folders with other students Students can subscribe via RSS and learn about changes in course materials Pathways The platform allows to create learning sequences or routes and organize them hierarchically by lesson, theme, etc. The platform allows the import of pedagogical content that complies with the SCORM standard The teacher can insert labels that serve to introduce indications or attention calls between the elements of a learning path Gradebook The teacher can add notes in the online grades

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The teacher can export the results of the grade book to an Excel external sheet The teacher can create a rating scale based on percentages, etc. The student can see their qualifications and compare them with the benefits of the rest of the class Assessment The platform has a system to perform self-assessments The platform allows different scoring models for each course The teacher can choose to evaluate the answers of the students of Methods of

The teacher can track, and create reports, on the frequency and duration of student accesses, grouped or individually, to the different components of the course