AquaINFRA Presented at the Living Data Conference in Bogotá

In October, AquaINFRA was represented at the Living Data Conference in Bogotá, Colombia, where the project contributed to discussions on advancing data-driven freshwater research. The focus of the participation was on how Virtual Research Environments (VREs) can support reproducible, transparent, and scalable scientific workflows when working with diverse and complex environmental datasets.

Merret Buurman (IGB Berlin) delivered a presentation in the session “Integrative tools, data platforms and applications to address freshwater biodiversity research.” Her talk, “Virtual Research Environments as a tool to enable reproducible research workflows,” introduced core components of the AquaINFRA VRE and demonstrated how chaining tools, datasets, and analytical steps can improve the efficiency and reproducibility of research outputs. The presentation highlighted several tools developed at IGB within the AquaINFRA framework, demonstrating their role in enabling FAIR, accessible, and collaborative aquatic research.

AquaINFRA was also referenced during a practical workshop on “Learning novel tools for integrating freshwater biodiversity and high-resolution hydrographical data.” Delivered in a hackathon-style format using Jupyter Notebooks, the workshop explored hands-on data processing techniques and prompted discussion about how VRE-based tools could support similar workflows in future applications, especially when addressing real-world freshwater biodiversity challenges.

This engagement contributed to raising awareness of AquaINFRA’s role in building a more connected and interoperable digital ecosystem for aquatic research communities.