Our journey

EcoCommons and our team, based at the Queensland Cyber Infrustructure Foundation (QCIF), have a proud track record of building virtual laboratories in partnership with other organisations and organisations.

Our track record of innovation

EcoCommons’ history of building cutting-edge virtual laboratories began in 2014, when external funding from NCRIS allowed the eResearch team at Griffith University to build the first virtual laboratory called the Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory (BCCVL). Following BCCVL, three other virtual laboratories were built: ecocloud in 2018, tinker in 2018, and the Collaborative Species Distribution Modelling (CSDM) in 2019. Each was designed to support the unique needs of researchers and practitioners across different organisation types. Combined, these projects received around $3.5m of funding from external grants between 2014 and 2019.

Established in 2020, EcoCommons re-engineered the core functions of existing platforms including BCCVL and ecocloud, and integrated them into a new platform with additional functionality, scientific workflows and processing capacity.

The EcoCommons was officially launched November 2022 with an event at the Ecological Society of Australia (ESA) conference.

In 2024 the EcoCommons has partnered with QCIF and ARDC to build additional functionality.

Learn more about what EcoCommons can do

Our evolution

2014 - BCCVL was released

BCCVL, which is still in operation today and will soon migrate to EcoCommons, is a point-and-click environment where users from all coding experience levels have access to curated datasets and scientifically-approved modelling workflows they can use to build trusted models using an easy to use interface. BCCVL dramatically reduces the time to implement a species distribution model and raises the standard of modelling by enabling more comprehensive sensitivity analysis.

2018 - ecocloud was released

ecocloud, which is also in operation, is a command-line environment developed for the environmental space, where intermediate to advanced users can run their own scripted analyses on the cloud and can access high performance computation and free cloud storage. ecocloud will join EcoCommons’ full suite of digital modelling and analysis tools.

2018 - Tinker was released

Tinker, was a platform built for the Humanities and Social Science sector based on the platform developed for ecocloud. The Tinker project was one of the first national platform projects to adopt the technology innovations from the now EcoCommons program.

2019 - CSDM was released

CSDM, designed as a proof-of-concept, is a custom-made portal for specialised users in the government sector with shared responsibilities and interests in listed threatened species. Similar to BCCVL, the platform offers a point-and-click environment where users can access trusted curated data sets, as well as upload their own data in a secure workspace, and run customised analyses to inform the needs of governmental users. The CSDM also gives users the ability to publish model outputs and collaborate on results.

2022 - EcoCommons is scheduled for launch

EcoCommons built on the success of virtual laboratories like BCCVL and ecocloud. The team re-engineered the core functions of both into a new, unified platform, offering enhanced functionality, high-performance models, and free cloud storage.

2024 - EcoCommons moves to QCIF

The EcoCommons team at QCIF is currently expanding datasets, developing new functionalities, integrating with other platforms, and building new collaborations.

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Our partners

EcoCommons Australia partners with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), which is supported by funding from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) https://doi.org/10.47486/PL108.