First EUDAT User Forum in Barcelona

The pan-European EUDAT project aims to establish a collaborative data infrastructure (CDI) to serve the needs of a wide variety of research communities, including those in the roadmap released by the European Strategy Forum on Infrastructures (ESFRI).

In Barcelona from 7-8 March, EUDAT held its first user forum together with more than 60 participants including representatives of 18 ESFRI projects and other research communities. The requirements for a set of initial cross-disciplinary data services the EUDAT CDI aims to deliver were discussed in four different user forum tracks. The user communities presented their different data model approaches and research activities from a wide range of scientific disciplines.

The deployment of cross-disciplinary EUDAT services is driven by the strong demand from research communities. Several EUDAT user communities (CLARIN, ENES, EPOS, VPH) identified a common need to replicate their scientific data from their community centres to data centres (CINECA, CSC, JSC, RZG, SARA) in a safe way, leading to a better accessibility of the data. The demands of the user communities and the capabilities of the data centres are aligned in task forces. These activities are coordinated by the 'replication task force' that is led by JSC. The initial approach for data replication was presented at the user forum in order to get feedback and discuss possible extensions for further user communities. The task force aims to provide pilot services in autumn 2012. At the same time, the requirements from user communities attending the user forum will be assessed to pave the way for new communities.
(Contact: Morris Riedel, m.riedel@fz-juelich.de)

from JSC News No. 203, 14 April 2012