The new EU-funded project D4Science-II ('Data infrastructure ecosystem for science') has held its kick-off meeting from 13 to 16 October in Pisa, Italy. It is set to establish 'virtual research environments' that will offer significantly enhanced services to scientists without high development and maintenance costs. [...]

The amount of information being generated about our planet is increasing at an exponential rate, but it must be easily accessible in order to apply it to the global needs relating to the state of the Earth. GENESI-DR (Ground European Network for Earth Science Interoperations - Digital Repositories), an ESA-led, European Commission (EC)-funded two-year project, is taking the lead in providing reliable, easy, long-term access to Earth Science data via the Internet. [...]