During the past few years, the ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) roadmap has boosted several projects relating to research infrastructure. The NEERI event strives to help these projects to find a more uniform total image from the future scenarios of European electronic research infrastructure (e-Infrastructure). “The emerging novel research methods utilizing state-of-the-art IT resources, data collections, and scientific tools are revolutionizing the scientific method. It is important that the change be adopted in Europe to help it maintain its competitiveness and meet societal expectations,” says Director Pirjo-Leena Forsström, CSC, Data Services for Science and Culture.

“Research infrastructures are often discipline-specific, but they all have in common the same increasing need for information technology. We need to find solutions for implementing this e-infrastructure. One of the essential goals of NEERI was to provide a forum for representatives from different disciplines, and hence to increase collaboration in order to develop the services needed,” says Kimmo Koski, Managing Director of CSC.

The strategy plan created by the Partnership for Accessing Data in Europe (PARADE) consortium was published at the event; the white paper document evaluates the data management challenges and proposes solutions to improve effectiveness. Europe will need extensive collaboration in order to be able to meet the increasing challenges of managing scientific information (processed raw data, consisting of information, knowledge and know-how). “One of the major questions puzzling researchers is how we can guarantee the preservation of data (raw data) for tens or hundreds of years ahead,” says Koski. “Repeatedly we face the fact that European collaboration is inadequate and it is usually based on projects scheduled to last for a couple of years. We lack permanent European structures that can guarantee the continuance of services.”

“A number of strong European organizations have worked together to write a strategy plan on how to improve international collaboration,” says Koski. “There are several dozen research infrastructures implemented in Europe, not to mention the new projects waiting to be launched. They all share the same need for data storage and processing. If we do not succeed in building sufficient collaboration to bridge the different fields of science, several incompatible data management systems will be generated, and it will be difficult or impossible to integrate them later. This situation must be avoided to maintain the international competiveness of European research.”

The activities of the PARADE consortium are based on the actual needs of users. “One clear conclusion is that we are not dealing with merely scientific data storage but a complete service package to increase the accessibility and usability of the data. This means that, more clearly than ever before, we need to consider the data’s entire life cycle and potential for use, and we must create and support solutions, standards, and practices that will allow a wide gamut of uses for it,” says Forsström.

“Data processing and management is important for CSC, because Data Services for Science and Culture is one of the fastest growing and most demanding fields at CSC. Through international collaboration we can improve inter-operability and quality of our systems. The development of data infrastructure is essential for Finland also because Finland is considered to be an excellent country for data storage due to its suitable climate and favorable bedrock. In the future, Finland may be a major host country for different types of data centers,” says Koski.

Tiina Raivo