A Step Forward in the Trustworthiness of Distributed Big Data Applications: How the EU Brazil Collaboration Can Benefit Outcomes in the ATMOSPHERE Project

On 11 December, the great value of the toolboxes and federation services developed during the 24 months EU-BR collaboration project was recognized by the European Commission and the Brazilian Government gathered in Brasilia.

21 January 2020

With the increasing trend towards data processing in the cloud (79% in 2019[1] and 94% expected in 2021[2]), the need for security, privacy, fairness, and transparency in big data applications looms ever larger in the public consciousness. The Big Data Applications should comply with security and other trustworthiness properties, namely privacy, fairness, and transparency, to avoid collateral damage. This is where ATMOSPHERE comes into play.

Over a 24 month period, the ATMOSPHERE project (www.atmosphere-eubrazil.eu), funded by the European Commission and the Brazilian Government, designed and developed a set of toolboxes and federation services to build and evaluate trustworthy data analytics applications in federated clouds. The ATMOSPHERE platform makes life easier for different experts dealing with digital data. As a result, data owners, system administrators, application developers & managers, and data scientists can now develop more trustworthy and secure cloud computing applications while being General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant on both sides of the Atlantic.

Services Deployed

Under the savvy and experienced management and technical coordination of the University of Valencia and the University of Campina Grande, the fifteen partners of the ATMOSPHERE consortium developed eight services which, together, support an entirely new spectrum of trustworthy services usable by a diverse set of organisations from different business sectors: DNAt, Fogbow, IM-TOSCA/EC3, LEMONADE, Capacity Planner, SCONE, TMA and Vallum.

An additional service, the RHD screening Artificial Intelligence tool, focuses on the health sector and enables the secure and efficient processing of medical images, metadata, and clinical information, with the ability to evaluate trustworthiness in performance, privacy, availability, robustness, and dependability. It processes a large set of medical images, along with additional metadata and clinical information, efficiently and securely, leading to better and quicker disease diagnosis.

Technology Transfer & Industry Exploitation

Assets are already being used by research and business organisations in both Europe & Brazil. These include Dell, Vodane, Talkdesk, INDRA, was well as EGI Foundation and the Brazilian National Education and Research Network (RNP). In addition, funded initiatives such as PRIMAGE, RESECA-CPS, EOSC Synergy and TETRAMAX will apply the services in their work plan. and yet others are expected to use the assets, particularly those available in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) marketplace portal.

The exploitation path is available in the report D8.3 “Exploitation and Sustainability Strategy Plan” available here for download

Towards a EU-BR Collaboration in a Strong & Innovative Transatlantic ICT Market

Trust-IT has considerable expertise in European and Brazilian ICT cooperation and is currently active in numerous e-Infrastructure related projects.

As part of its support for dissemination & exploitation activities in the ATMOSPHERE project, Trust-IT contributed to the “Final Research & Innovation Research Priorities” report, proposing 3 research topics for future joint-initiatives between the regions with high potential economic impact in both. The topics are Big Data and Advanced Analytical Techniques, 5G for Time-sensitive IoT Applications, and Support of Research Collaboration for Entrepreneurship).

Trust-IT was also at the forefront of the organisation of the Cloudscape Brazil series, that in 2019 brought 170 participants to Belém in Brazil. Thanks to a communication effort focused on social media and newsletters, along with the careful agenda design and agreements with institutional supporters, the ATMOSPHERE website achieved peak numbers of visitors, and new inputs were collected for the “Final Research & Innovation Research Priorities” report. The event also showcased multiple success stories across a number of sectors and organisations, highlighting common priorities in Brazil and Europe to facilitate consensus on actions that matter for economies and socio-economic aspects. In addition, it provided an opportunity for Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and EU-BR research projects to demonstrate their ICT tools and services, setting the scene for a successful and long-lasting transatlantic cooperation. ).

ATMOSPHERE capitalised on the results of previous funded-projects and brought the long story of collaboration in ICT between Europe and Brazil, started back in 2010, to the next level. To break things down visit www.atmosphere-eubrazil.eu.