NI: DEPICTION - DEveloPing an International CollaboraTIon to advance community-based, Open and FAIR eNvironmental modelling

解决自然界面临的最广泛和最紧迫的问题需要对控制它的复杂相互作用有一个全面的理解。这需要使用模型——对世界的数学描述——来解释观察到的趋势，回答“如果”的问题，并预测未来的轨迹。随着这些模型的发展，以配合我们对自然世界日益增长的理解，支撑它们的研究软件基础设施也必须如此。除此之外，这个软件基础设施负责帮助我们将模型连接在一起以评估更大的图景，通过使模型结果可重复来促进对科学结果的信任，让我们在最新的高性能计算机上轻松使用模型，提供一致的计算环境和数据访问以帮助开发人员协作，并为更广泛的受众提供模型结果的交互式可视化和应用程序。打个比方——就像分析科学家需要进入充满高科技设备的实验室进行科学实验一样，计算科学家需要进入充满最新软件基础设施的虚拟实验室进行计算实验。软件基础设施和社区已经开始在全球范围内应对这些挑战，并且这个项目的合作伙伴已经领导了这些发展几十年。然而，这些软件和社区目前是独立的，并且受到地理或特定科学领域的限制。这个项目的目标是将这个基础设施统一在一个国际实践社区周围，在环境建模软件基础设施之间提供急需的国际凝聚力。联合起来，该软件具有真正变革性的潜力，实现协同创新，例如：模型可以随时部署到云中并在云中动态链接；基于物理、统计和数据科学的模型可以无缝地协同工作，为我们的模型预测自然世界的现实程度提供一个步骤的改变；结果可以通过交互式应用程序轻松地分享给非开发人员。我们将通过一个案例研究来展示这种变革潜力，该案例研究将预测微塑料在环境中的运输，从它们的释放，通过水道和陆地环境，到海洋。塑料污染是广泛和全球性的，从深海海沟到偏远山区，塑料碎片存在于环境的各个部分。它对环境和我们自己都构成了潜在的重大风险。尽管如此，环境中微塑料运输的模型仍处于起步阶段，虽然存在单个隔间（河流，海洋）的模型，但没有能够预测高分辨率微塑料从源头到海洋运输的框架。我们的案例研究将解决这个问题，同时展示我们的统一软件基础设施所带来的好处。该基础设施将支持案例研究，提供将其所包含的水文、微塑料运输和沿海海洋模型联系在一起所需的工具，并提供协作虚拟环境来为其提供动力。结果将是一个建模框架，不仅为我们预测微塑料从源头到海洋的运输能力提供了一个台阶，而且它足够灵活，可以适应不同的化学类别，从而为我们实现零污染社会的努力做出重大贡献。我们是一个新的合作伙伴关系，共同将软件基础设施开发、社区建设、水文学、化学命运建模和海洋学方面的世界领先专业知识结合在一起。所有合作伙伴都致力于确保长期、自我维持的合作，最终将有助于推动环境建模远远超出本项目的范围。

Addressing the broadest and most pressing issues facing the natural world requires a holistic understanding of the complex interactions that govern it. This requires the use of models - mathematical descriptions of the world - to explain observed trends, answer "what if?" questions and predict future trajectories. As these models evolve to match our increasing understanding of the natural world, so must the research software infrastructure that underpins them. Amongst other things, this software infrastructure is responsible for helping us link models together to assess the bigger picture, promoting trust in scientific results by making model results reproducible, letting us easily use models on the latest high-performance computers, providing a consistent computational environment and access to data to help developers collaborate, and providing interactive visualisations and apps of model results to a broader audience. To use an analogy - just as analytical scientists require access to laboratories full of high-tech equipment to perform scientific experiments, computational scientists require access to virtual laboratories full of the latest software infrastructure to perform computational experiments. Software infrastructure and communities have developed to begin to meet these challenges across the globe, and partners in this project have been leading these developments for several decades. However, these software and communities are currently independent and constrained, either by geography or to particular scientific domains. The goal of this project is to unite this infrastructure around an international community of practice, providing much needed international cohesion across environment modelling software infrastructure. United, this software has the potential to be truly transformative, enabling collaborative innovation where, for example: models can be readily deployed to and dynamically linked within the cloud; physics-based, statistical and data science models can work seamlessly together to provide a step change in how realistically our models predict the natural world, and; results can be shared easily to non-developers via interactive apps. We will showcase this transformative potential through a case study, which will predict the transport of microplastics in the environment from their release, through waterways and the terrestrial environment, out to the ocean. Plastic pollution is widespread and global, with plastic debris present in all parts of the environment, from deep ocean trenches to remote mountains. It poses a potentially significant risk to both the environment and ourselves. Despite this, the modelling of microplastic transport in the environment is in its infancy, and whilst models of individual compartments (rivers, oceans) exist, there are no frameworks capable of predicting high-resolution microplastic transport from source to sea. Our case study will solve this, at the same time as demonstrating the benefits yielded by our united software infrastructure. This infrastructure will underpin the case study, providing the tools needed to link together the hydrological, microplastic transport and coastal ocean models of which it comprises, and providing a collaborative virtual environment to power it. The result will be a modelling framework that not only offers a step change in our ability to predict microplastic transport from source to sea, but that is flexible enough to be adapted to different chemical classes, thereby making a significant contribution to our efforts towards a zero pollution society. We are a new partnership who collectively unites world-leading expertise in software infrastructure development, community building, hydrology, chemical fate modelling and oceanography. All partners are committed to securing a long-term, self-sustaining collaboration that will ultimately help advance environmental modelling far beyond the scope of this project.