Digital Infrastructures for Research 2016: the start of a new level of collaboration between European e-infrastructures revolving around “trust”

Digital Infrastructures for Research 2016: the start of a new level of collaboration between European e-infrastructures revolving around “trust”

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The need for integration and collaboration across European eInfrastructures has been among the top priorities of both research communities and infrastructure providers for a long time. The Digital Infrastructure for Research (DI4R), the first joint event organised by the major European e-Infrastructure initiatives with the aim to increase mutual understanding and ultimately ensure that researchers can really influence the services developed by the infrastructure providers, has finally answered that call.

The DI4R 2016, organised by European eInfrastructures EGI, EUDAT, GÉANT, OpenAIRE and RDA took place in Krakow, Poland, from 28th to 30th September 2016, hosted by ACC Cyfronet AGH, Kraków's academic computing centre. The event offered three full days of brainstorming and discussions between researchers and infrastructure providers, spanning across 4 main hot topics (Challenges facing users and service providers, Services enabling research, A changing environment, changing research and Working with data) integrated with workshops, training sessions, plenary sessions and co-located events.
 
DI4R was expected to represent “an important step towards greater collaboration between e-Infrastructures, which is very much required by research communities who want to be able to access network, data and computing resources in a seamless way” said Damien Lecarpentier, EUDAT Project Director. As emerged during the event, this cooperation however revolves around a concept that goes beyond the mere ICT sector: the concept of trust. Regardless of the number and types of agreements and services, this concept is the true glue between e-infrastructures and end-users, hence the key to a successful joint collaboration.
 
Being greatly involved in the data-e-infrastructure scenario –with initiatives and projects such as EUDAT, BlueBridge, RDA Europe- and jointly working with the DI4R co-organisers, Trust-IT’s effort concurred to laying the foundations for concrete collaboration between eInfrastructures in order to reach the point where researchers have easier access to all the distributed resources they need (also thanks to the creation of a joint service catalogue, already in the pipeline).
 
While dialogue between European eInfrastructures will continue and new collaborations will be enhanced, DI4R’s outcomes will definitely be relevant in relation to the upcoming European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and DI4R could become an annual fixture for providers and their customers.
 
Click here to find the DI4R's programme and download the presentations.
 
Publication date: 07 Oct 2016