The development of the ENVRI Reference Model provides the ESFRI Environmental Research Infrastructures with a common ontological framework for description and characterisation of computational and storage infrastructures, and provides them a community standard to help achieve greater levels of interoperability between their heterogeneous resources.
The Reference Model defines a conceptual model that captures computational requirements and state-of-the-art design experiences. In a sense, the model reveals a snapshot of the existing landscape of the ESFRI environmental science research infrastructures at a high level of abstraction.
In order to help Reference Model users map the abstraction to concretions, so as to better apply the knowledge in their daily practices, we prepare this guideline that introduces our own experiments with the Reference Model, and in doing so reveal the principles of usage. These principles are neither bound nor enforced. They are not mandatory for users to follow. The intention is to provide users with a way of thinking, which may lead to exploration of the model itself and inspire the discovery of various way of using the model.
Rather than going through each model term and explaining the meaning of it, we use a set of practical examples, each of them illustrating some aspects of the usage of the reference model as well as introducing a number of model concepts.
Initially, examples are selected with the aim to serve Intended Audience within the community of ESFRI Environmental Research Infrastructures. We use scenarios that are familiar to our users, and include information that may be of interest to the community and perhaps benefit their work.
To collect these examples, we used a template with 5 questions:
These questions proved to be helpful in organising investigation activities. We encourage readers also to use this template to structure newly developed stories and share them with us so as to inspire others.
With limited resources, only few examples are included; these will be extended when more resources are available for future investigations.
A collection of examples demonstrating usage of the ENVRI Reference Model is given below. Different examples may serve different purposes. Some of them merely illustrate a different way of using the reference model (e.g., Example 5), while others also intend to introduce model concepts where many terms are highlighted with clickable links. Please click those highlighted concepts that will re-locate you to the related definitions and specifications in the Reference Model. Be sure to go through all terms marked with 
-- some of them, though repeated, will guide you to a different part of the model. By visiting all linked contents, you will have explored 90% of the most important model content. (Note, terms marked with 
are also model concepts which link to content you might have visited before.)
Example 1: Using the Reference Model to Guide Research Activities (EISCAT 3D - EGI)
Example 2: Using the Reference Model as an Analysis Tool (EUDAT)
Example 3: Using the Reference Model in documentation (EMSO)
Example 4: Using the Reference Model as design reference (EPOS)
Example 5: Using the Reference Model to drive implementations of common services (WP4 practices)
Using a number of examples, we have shown that by using the Reference Model, a ESFRI ENV RI could benefit from:
When future resources become available, we will conduct more investigations, including:
