Galaxy Powers FAIR Data: The BERD@NFDI B-Plan Use Case Shines at EOSC Symposium 2025
At the EOSC Symposium 2025, a standout example was the BERD@NFDI B-Plan use case, a project demonstrating how the Galaxy Europe platform provides the analytical engine to transform complex, unstructured planning data into FAIR research assets for the entire European research community.
At EOSC Symposium 2025, there was an interesting lightning talk about "BERD@NFDI – Galaxy Project B-Plan Use Case," presented in a compelling screencast and a dedicated Lightning Talk by Dr. Felicitas Sommer. This project tackles a difficult challenge: making the regulatory information from thousands of unstructured dataset such as land-use plans accessible for interdisciplinary research. For the Galaxy Project, this use case is a promising story of collaboration, demonstrating how our open platform serves as a critical engine for data analysis and FAIR data-practices in new research domains.
The presentation showcases a complete workflow that enables interdisciplinary and reliable research, highlighting two key integrations:
- A data-processing workflow connecting the BERD Data Portal with the Galaxy Europe analysis platform.
- The integration of the resulting data into the Resource Hub of the EOSC EU Node, making them discoverable across Europe.
Watch the full screencast below to see the workflow in action:
The Galaxy Role: From Unstructured Text to Actionable Insights
The challenge, as outlined by Dr. Felicitas Sommer and Hope Ewudor from the GreenDIA research network, is that binding land-use plans (critical for sustainable development) are often locked away in PDF documents. These documents contain a mix of maps, legal text, and regulatory details (like building types or environmental rules) that are vital for research but impossible to query at scale.
This is where Galaxy's power becomes visible. The project, described in the presentation slides as "The BERD Galaxy Infrastructure," uses Galaxy Europe as its core analytical workbench.
Here is how Galaxy helps:
- Data Connection: The workflow connects to the BERD Data Portal, which hosts the raw planning documents.
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Automated Analysis: Galaxy runs a multi-step workflow that automates the "FAIR-ification" of this data. The workflow employs:
- Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tools like Tesseract to extract text from scanned PDF images.
- Text Mining and LLM tools for sophisticated keyword and pattern extraction.
- Reproducible Science: This entire process is captured in a transparent, shareable, and reproducible Galaxy workflow. This allows researchers without programming expertise to systematically process and organize thousands of complex spatial planning documents.
Galaxy provides the intuitive, scalable, and open-source framework that empowers domain scientists to perform complex data analysis and create new, structured, and usable datasets from previously unusable information.
A True Collaboration for Open Science
This project is more than just a use case; it's a model of true collaboration. The video and slides credit the development to Felicitas Sommer and Hope Ewudor, with "essential support from Björn Grüning, Janne Jensen, Ahmed Saleh, and Anja Busch".
The active participation of the Galaxy team, including Björn Grüning and Daniela Schneider, underscores our commitment to supporting the scientific community. By providing both the platform and the expertise, the Galaxy Project is helping to build the next generation of FAIR data infrastructures, supporting vital research into societal, economic, and environmental challenges.
This "B-Plan Use Case" is a perfect example of how open infrastructures like the BERD Data Portal and Galaxy Europe can be combined to create value, demonstrating the very momentum that the EOSC Symposium set out to celebrate.
View the full presentation slides here:
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