The design of a flexible web-based analytical platform for urban research

In this paper, we present the functional capabilities scoping for a novel eResearch infrastructure providing urban researchers with access to datasets and analytical tools. The AURIN portal provides a "lab in a browser" environment, leveraging a complex, loosely-coupled internal architecture and a growing number of federated data sources. Datasets can be "shopped" for, visually explored and analyzed using a growing number of analytical capabilities orchestrated in a workflow environment. While spatial analytical tasks are at the heart of most targeted research disciplines, AURIN aims to reach beyond the scope of traditional GIS and map-based portals. In this paper, we discuss how the functional requirements of AURIN can be realized to enable exploratory and confirmatory data analysis supported by high performance Web based infrastructure.