From CSC’s perspective, the situation concerning ESFRI looks brighter: e-infrastructure is needed in all scientific research. The big challenges for research infrastructures include management of generated data, its long-term preservation, and making the data easily accessible for researchers. These issues necessitate a powerful and functional electronic infrastructure. Amongst other needs are grid environments, functional IC network, computing and archiving services, and services relating to preservation and use of extensive data. These are all central areas of expertise at CSC.

“Research e-infrastructures are needed, and being developed and funded also independently of the ESFRI roadmap projects,” says CSC’s Collaboration Director Leif Laaksonen. “To some extent, CSC is able to develop services needed for national research e-infrastructure even without the linkage to a particular ESFRI project.”

Indeed, compared with universities or research institutes, CSC has a different approach to the ESFRI projects. “One could say that CSC is the supplier of partial services and involved with building the e-infrastructure within a known extensive research infrastructure. Hence, e-infrastructure is only one part of research infrastructure, like one piece in a big jigsaw puzzle. It is a vital part, absolutely, but nevertheless, just one piece,” Laaksonen emphasizes.

“If Finland were to join a research infrastructure project to build a major research institute, a substantially larger financial investment would be needed than the one for building merely e-infrastructure. Therefore, Finland and CSC may be able to participate in several ESFRI projects. Large research infrastructures require considerably more funds,” says Laaksonen.

Of the current ESFRI roadmap projects, CSC participates in PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), ELIXIR (European Life Science Infrastructure for Biological Information), and CLARIN (Finnish Language Resource Consortium). ESFRI projects also have a major impact on the employment situation: currently CSC employs roughly 20 people due to its involvement in these projects.

Tiina Raivo

Thirteen proposals on the Finnish roadmap associated with ESFRI’s roadmap:

• Finnish Language Resource Consortium (FIN-CLARIN)
• European Social Survey (ESS)
•  Council of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA)
• e-science and technology infrastructure for biodiversity data and observatories (LIFEWATCH)
• Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS)
• The European infrastructure for phenotyping and archiving of model mammalian genomes (Infrafrontier)
• European Advanced Translational Research Infrastructure (EATRIS)
• European Life Science Infrastructure for Biological Information (ELIXIR)
• Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure (BBMRI)
• Jules Horowitz Materials Testing Reactor (JHR MTR)
• European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF)
• Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR)
• Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE)

Proposals needing urgent decision-making:

• Linguistic materials and technology
• Data archives in the social sciences
• Infrastructures of the environmental and atmospheric sciences
•  Infrastructures of the biomedical and life sciences
• The renewal of European synchrotron radiation equipment
• European infrastructure for nuclear and particle physics
• Project entity of the CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd.

Reference: National-level research infrastructures: Present state and roadmap.