Earth observation (EO) problems require processing large volumes of data, such as those involved in environmental studies using diverse spatiotemporal variables. In this context, the computing continuum offers a promising model to support EO tasks. It enables low-latency data processing near ground stations and broad data sharing through the cloud. Nevertheless, designing systems in the computing continuum introduces challenges. One is the coordination of distributed entities across different computational environments (e.g., the edge, the fog, or the cloud). Another is managing data across heterogeneous infrastructures. This paper presents OrbiFaaS, a serverless-based method for building Continuum Earth Observation Systems (EOS) using an orbital model. OrbiFaaS organizes a continuum EOS as a system of multiple orbits, each representing a different computational environment arranged around a core of data sources. Orbits near the core correspond to low-latency environments (e.g., the edge), while those farther away exhibit higher latencies (e.g., the cloud). Each orbit contains satellites, which represent service provider infrastructures. Organizations can use these satellites to deploy multiple data management services, such as containerized microservices or functions. Satellites are interconnected using data containers that establish communication channels based on available filesystem, memory, and network resources. We evaluate OrbiFaaS in a case study involving the processing of satellite images across multiple environments. Our experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of OrbiFaaS for constructing Earth observation systems.

Context: Organizations increasingly rely on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to process data, automate tasks, and enhance decision-making. At the same time, the computing continuum enables AI and ML to be deployed closer to data sources, thereby reducing system latency and response time. Objective: Managing applications across this distributed environment is challenging due to the need for manual deployment, integration, and compliance with non-functional requirements (NFRs) such as security and fault tolerance. Therefore, there is a need for frameworks that automate the deployment and execution of computing continuum systems while integrating both functional and non-functional requirements. Method: This paper presents Nez , a design-driven skeleton model for building continuum AI and analytics systems. Nez construction model automatically and transparently integrates AI/ML applications with non-functional components to create continuum systems that are deployed dynamically across multiple distributed infrastructures. Results: We conducted case studies on the processing of medical imagery and satellite imagery to provide automatic and continuous support for decision-makers. Nez has already been deployed at the Mexican hospital, Instituto Nacional de Rehabilitación Luis Gerardo Ibarra Ibarra , to create an AI-based data flow supporting bone cancer diagnosis. The evaluation shows that Nez outperforms state-of-the-art tools such as Nextflow, Makeflow, and Parsl, achieving improvements in response time of 28.46%, 17.46%, and 23.54%, respectively. Conclusion: Nez efficiently transforms organizational data flow designs into continuum computing services. This enables organizations to construct continuum AI-based and analytical systems that account for both functional and non-functional requirements.

Data distribution across different facilities offers benefits such as enhanced resource utilization, increased resilience through replication, and improved performance by processing data near its source. However, managing such data is challenging due to heterogeneous access protocols, disparate authentication models, and the lack of a unified coordination framework. This paper presents DynoStore, a system that manages data across heterogeneous storage systems. At the core of DynoStore are data containers, an abstraction that provides standardized interfaces for seamless data management, irrespective of the underlying storage systems. Multiple data container connections create a cohesive wide-area storage network, ensuring resilience using erasure coding policies. Furthermore, a load-balancing algorithm ensures equitable and efficient utilization of storage resources. We evaluate DynoStore using benchmarks and realworld case studies, including the management of medical and satellite data across geographically distributed environments. Our results demonstrate a 10 % performance improvement compared to centralized cloud-hosted systems while maintaining competitive performance with state-of-the-art solutions such as Redis and IPFS. DynoStore also exhibits superior fault tolerance, withstanding more failures than traditional systems.

Global changes are increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, posing challenges for forecasting localized phenomena with sub-grid resolution. The Hi-WeFAI project addresses this by combining high-performance computing, Federated Artificial Intelligence, and heterogeneous sensor networks to improve short-term precipitation forecasting and flood nowcasting. In this paper, we present preliminary results using a transformer-based radar prediction model coupled with a flood model to generate high-resolution early warning maps. The results from the Naples pilot site improved accuracy and detail, highlighting the potential of the hybrid AI and HPC approach to support quasi-real-time decision-making and disaster risk reduction.

The exponential growth of data necessitates distributed storage models, such as peer-to-peer systems and data federations.While distributed storage can reduce costs and increase reliability, the heterogeneity in storage capacity, I/O performance, and failure rates of storage resources makes their efficient use a challenge.Further, node failures are common and can lead to data unavailability and even data loss.

Computing continuum systems are emerging as a solution for organizations to process data across diverse infrastructures, reducing latency compared to traditional cloud computing. However, managing I/O operations in such distributed and heterogeneous environments remains an open research challenge. In this paper, we present A-Flow, a model for constructing I/O systems to manage data exchange in computing continuum environments. These systems are built around data distribution patterns defined by structures called abstract communication channels (ACCs). ACCs are established between processing stages using memory, file system, and network resource connections. To prevent resource overload during execution, A-Flow automatically selects the appropriate communication channel based on user-defined criteria such as throughput or resource utilization. We implemented this model in a prototype and evaluated it through a case study focused on managing medical data in HDF5 format across different environments. The evaluation revealed that A-Flow’s ACCs can be integrated into existing stage-based systems found in the state of the art. The results highlight the efficiency and effectiveness of A-Flow in enabling dataflows across heterogeneous infrastructures, addressing key challenges in computing continuum.

Computing continuum is becoming a solution for organizations to process and analyze data for supporting decision-making processes. In this context, serverless paradigm is arising as a solution to manage continuum computing. However, the management of data storage still represents an obstacle for integrating continuum computing and serverless paradigms into a single solution, as this has to be performed transparently to users through multiple infrastructures. This paper presents StructMesh, a storage framework for serverless continuum systems. This framework is based on a processing plane where functions are managed as patterns, and a data plane based on storage meshes that represent maps of storage resources available in a given infrastructure. The logical interconnection of storage meshes enables organizations to integrate storage resources into a single unified storage service, which creates data exchange channels for continuum processing throughout multiple infrastructures. These meshes include load-balancing and data allocation/location algorithms for transparently and automatically managing the inputs/outputs of functions throughout these channels, as well as non-functional requirement schemes for organizations to manage sensitive data. We developed a framework prototype that harmonizes processing serverless functions with storage functions for building serverless pipeline services. A case study was conducted by using these services for processing meteorological and earth observation data throughout multiple infrastructures. The evaluation revealed the efficiency of StructMesh when managing data through fog and cloud infrastructures. It also showed the feasibility of StructMesh to create and enable continuum data exchange channels for serverless pipelines.

MeshStore, a fault-tolerant serverless storage model for edge-fog-cloud continuum systems, enables organizations to integrate distributed heterogeneous storage resources into a single unified storage service for the sharing of data through serverless functions deployed on edge-fog-cloud environments to create continuum dataflows. This unified service automatically and transparently manages the input/output data of serverless functions by coupling storage structures, including load-balancing and data allocation/location algorithms. Organizations also can add non-functional requirement properties (e.g., either reliability or security) to the storage structures when managing sensitive data.

Data crowdsourcing is an increasingly pervasive and lifestyle-changing technology due to the flywheel effect that results from the interaction between the Internet of Things and Cloud Computing. This paper presents the Citizen Science for the Sea with Information Technologies (C4Sea-IT) framework. It is an open platform for gathering marine data from leisure boat instruments. C4Sea-IT aims to provide a coastal marine data gathering, moving, processing, exchange, and sharing platform using the existing navigation instruments and sensors for today's leisure and professional vessels. In this work, a use case for the detection and tracking of marine litter is shown. The final goal is weather/ocean forecasts argumentation with Artificial Intelligence prediction models trained with crowdsourced data.

This paper presents a continuous delivery/continuous verifiability (CD/CV) framework for IoT dataflows in edge-fog-cloud. In this framework a CD model based on extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) mechanism as well as a directed acyclic graph (DAG) construction, enable end-users to create efficient schemes for the continuous verification and validation of the execution of applications in edge-fog-cloud infrastructures. This framework also provides tools for continuous verification and validation (CV) of predefined execution sequences and the integrity of digital assets using blockchain. CV model converts ETL and DAG into business model, smart contracts in a private blockchain for the automatic and transparent registration of transactions performed by each application in workflows/pipelines created by CD model without altering applications nor edge-fog-cloud workflows. This framework ensures that IoT dataflow delivers verifiable information for organizations to conduct critical decision-making processes with certainty. A containerized parallelism approach solves portability issues and reduces/compensates the overhead produced by CD/CV operations. The talk will also present evaluation results of the CD/CV framework based on a case study where user mobility information is used to identify interest points, patterns, and maps. The experimental evaluation results show the feasibility of CD/CV to register transactions performed in IoT dataflows through edge-fog-cloud in a private blockchain network.

Autonomous Surface Vehicles and their management represent one of the significant challenges in coastal and offshore surveying. Although the development of this kind of data acquisition device has skyrocketed in the last few years, line guides and technological solutions still need to come. On the other hand, this kind of robotic vessel's true potential has yet to be explored. This paper presents ArgonautAI, a containerized distributed processing platform for autonomous surface vehicles. The proposed ArgonautAI architecture leverage a cluster of single-board computers with diverse and different characteristics (computing power, CUDA GPUs, FPGAs, GPIOs, PWMs, specialized I/O) orchestrated using Kubernetes and a customized programming interface. Furthermore, the proposed solution introduces two different types of containers: 1) the platform containers hosting the software life support for the platform and 2) the mission containers defined to support the survey mission-specific scopes. The firsts manage the vehicle's instruments (e.g. position, attitude, environment, depth), the data storage, the vessel-to-shore communication, and so on; the latter host mission-specific software components. Finally, as proof of concept of the proposed platform, we present an AI-based marine litter detection application using a hierarchical computer vision approach on heterogenic onboard computing resources.

Summary Cloud‐based services have proved useful in several research fields, such as engineering, health science, and astrophysics, to mention a few examples. The computational environmental science community developed a strong need for cloud facilities to store, process, and manage data from observations and numerical models for simulations and forecasts. Weather forecast models and global sensor networks deal with multidimensional geo‐referenced data∖sets. However, environmental data consumer applications usually require a relatively small amount of multidimensional input data slice to analyze a specific area or time interval. Hence, reducing data dimension for information retrieval is mandatory. This paper presents a twofold solution: a technique to load and retrieve the sliced multidimensional data set on different cloud services such as Amazon Web Service (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. The experimental results performed on these cloud services highlight that the proposed method can significantly speed up the process of loading and retrieving the data slices compared to working with the entire data set in bulk or OPeNDAP server.

This paper presents a continuous delivery/continuous verifiability ( CD/CV ) method for IoT dataflows in edge–fog–cloud. A CD model based on extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) mechanism as well as a directed acyclic graph ( DAG ) construction, enable end-users to create efficient schemes for the continuous verification and validation of the execution of applications in edge–fog–cloud infrastructures. This scheme also verifies and validates established execution sequences and the integrity of digital assets . CV model converts ETL and DAG into business model, smart contracts in a private blockchain for the automatic and transparent registration of transactions performed by each application in workflows/pipelines created by CD model without altering applications nor edge–fog–cloud workflows. This model ensures that IoT dataflows delivers verifiable information for organizations to conduct critical decision-making processes with certainty. A containerized parallelism model solves portability issues and reduces/compensates the overhead produced by CD/CV operations. We developed and implemented a prototype to create CD/CV schemes, which were evaluated in a case study where user mobility information is used to identify interest points, patterns, and maps. The experimental evaluation revealed the efficiency of CD/CV to register the transactions performed in IoT dataflows through edge–fog–cloud in a private blockchain network in comparison with state-of-art solutions.

This paper presents the design, development, and evaluation of PuzzleMesh, an agnostic service mesh composition model to process large volumes of data in edge-fog-cloud environments. This model is based on a puzzle metaphor where pieces, puzzles, and metapuzzles represent self-contained autonomous and reusable software artifacts encapsulated into containers and published as microservices. Apiecerepresents the integration of apps with I/O interfaces (loops/sockets), parallel processing, and management software. Apuzzlerepresents a processing structure (e.g., workflows) built coupling pieces through loops and sockets. Puzzles integrate structures with a microservice architecture, implicit continuous dataflows, and transparent data exchange management software. Ametapuzzlerepresents a recursive assemble of puzzles. A mesh represents a pool of pieces, puzzles, and metapuzzles available for designers to choose artifacts to build services. A prototype developed using PuzzleMesh model was evaluated through case studies about the automatic construction of processing services for the acquisition, pre-processing, manufacturing, preserving, and visualizing of satellite imagery. A qualitative comparison revealed that PuzzleMesh provides a flexible way to build reusable and portable services and to improve the usability of the services. The case study also revealed that PuzzleMesh yielded better performance results than other state-of-the-art tools.

The systems that meet non-functional requirements (NFRs) are key for e-health services to face up events such as service outages and violations of confidentiality. How-ever, traditional NFR systems produce overhead in execution time, which could affect critical decision-making processes. This paper presents a dynamic parallel pattern construction model to design and create efficient NFR self-adaptable sys-tems. The construction of patterns is performed in two design phases: in the first one, the designers build NFR systems by creating pipelines including as many applications as required to meet the NFRs established by healthcare organizations. In the second phase, a pipeline is converted into a worker that auto-matically is added to a dynamic pattern. In a dynamic pattern, the workers can be cloned to be executed by different parallel patterns (e.g., manager/worker, divide&conquer, etc.) to face changes in the incoming workload during execution time, which converts a worker into a self-adaptable NFR system. A proto-type was implemented to create self-adaptable NFR systems, which were used in a case study to manage spirometry studies, tomography images, and electrocardiograms. The evaluation showed the effectiveness of this dynamic pattern model to create self-adaptable systems when processing multiple types of medical data/contents. The evaluation also revealed that the self-adaptable NFR systems built by dynamic patterns yielded significant performance gain in a direct comparison with the implementation of NFR application pipelines built by a traditional framework called Jenkins.

Cloud storage has been the solution for organizations to manage the exponential growth of data observed over the past few years. However, end-users still suffer from side-effects of cloud service outages, which particularly affect edge-fog-cloud environments. This paper presents SeRSS, a storage mesh architecture to create and operate reliable, configurable, and flexible serverless storage services for heterogeneous infrastructures. A case study was conducted based on-the-fly building of storage services to manage medical imagery. The experimental evaluation revealed the efficiency of SeRSS to manage and store data in a reliable manner in heterogeneous infrastructures.

In organizational environments, such as in hospitals, data have to be processed, preserved, and shared with other organizations in a cost-efficient manner. Moreover, organizations have to accomplish different mandatory non-functional requirements imposed by the laws, protocols, and norms of each country. In this context, this paper presents a Federated Content Distribution System to build infrastructure-agnostic health data synchronization services. In this federation, each hospital manages local and federated services based on a pub/sub model. The local services manage users and contents (i.e., medical imagery) inside the hospital, whereas federated services allow the cooperation of different hospitals sharing resources and data. Data preparation schemes were implemented to add non-functional requirements to data. Moreover, data published in the content distribution system are automatically synchronized to all users subscribed to the catalog where the content was published.