What is a Virtual Research Environment?
A Virtual Research Environment (VRE) is an online collaborative space designed to support scientific research and experimentation. A VRE brings together data, tools, computational resources, and collaboration features in a web-based environment. VREs empower researchers to analyse large datasets, share methods, and replicate experiments in a secure, ethical, and scalable way.
Within SoBigData, VREs provide tailored ecosystems for social data mining and big data analytics in support of multidisciplinary science.
What SoBigData VREs Offer
- Centralised access to data and tools – VREs let researchers explore curated datasets and analytical methods from a common platform.
- Collaborative workspace – Users can work together with peers, share results, and build experiments across institutions.
- Interactive analysis – Compute-intensive workflows and programming environments (like Jupyter notebooks) are integrated into some VREs for flexible data science.
- Ethical and legal support – SoBigData includes frameworks to ensure responsible handling of sensitive social data.
- Cloud and high-performance computing – Some VREs offer access to scalable computing resources for large-scale analysis.
Examples of SoBigData VREs
SoBigDataLab VRE
An interactive environment for developing, testing and running algorithms using notebook interfaces and integrated tool libraries.
SoBigData Apps
Allow researchers and innovators to run specialised applications directly in the browser within a secure, reproducible environment. To begin using these environments, you can register for access via the SoBigData e-Infrastructure portal and explore available resources, tools, and documentation.
More info about VRE available here
How to request the creation of a new SoBigData VREs
- Click the button below and download the form.
- Fill the form and send it to our team at info@sobigdata.eu
