The collaborative projects under the HORIZON Europe framework programs of the European Union typically involve a large number of partners from different countries. The data-centric projects amongst them often require integration of multiple data sources, diverse data formats in different modes of data collection, which leads to complex data management architectures and policies. This article explores some of the design decisions, organisational principles, and technological solutions for addressing them by focusing on integration and hybridization. The research has been conducted while working on DiverSea, a project dedicated to the analysis of the biodiversity dynamics along the shores of Europe from the Black Sea,
along the entire Mediterranean from East to West and all the way up to the North Sea, but the takeaways are important for many other collaborative projects, which face similar issues not only in the water, but also on the land and in the air.
Keywords: Data spaces, Data integration, Data storage and indexing, Visualization and data services, AI technologies.