Document Link: [ e-Infrastructure Concertation Meeting 2010-11 Report (PDF) ]

NA3.2 Sustainability and Collaboration

• 1 Introduction
  • The two day meeting included discussions on the socio‐economic evaluation of e‐Infrastructures, the e‐Infrastructure of simulation software as well as presentations from the new projects funded in Call 7 and a training session on OpenAIRE
  • Colleagues at CERN also arranged a visit of the ATLAS control room for conference delegates. The event provided an ideal opportunity for e‐Infrastructure projects to learn more about each other, to network and build relationships that could lead to future collaborations.

• 2 Socio-Economic Evaluation of E-Infrastructures
  • 2.1 Conclusions
    • There are many ways to measure impact including: bibliometrics, collection of statistics, feedback from collaborators, case studies, peer review (ECB Report)
    • Challenges for assessing the impact of e-Infrastructures include:
      • a) knowing who your users are;
      • b) measuring the contribution of using the e-Infrastructure and its importance to the final science output;
      • c) identifying the added value of the infrastructure investment;
      • d) capturing the data over long periods of time.
  • 2.2 Recommendations
    • Evaluation in this area should include a complex post-evaluation exercise to measure benefits to research, development, education, sustainability, economic, social and environmental impact (ECB Report - impact analysis case)
    • Projects should start collecting qualitative and quantitative information from the start, and often beyond the life of a project, and know their user base to facilitate impact assessment. (ECB Report - closer user contact case)

• 3 E-Infrastructure Of Simulation Software
  • The session on the e-Infrastructure of Simulation Software debated the future of simulation software services in Europe and the creation of a pan-European computational software infrastructure for research.
  • 3.1 Conclusions
    • Existing SSS service provision models from the HPC/DCI centres, such as simulation labs, can be developed further to make the service provision more universal and complete. For the HPC representatives the big centres are the ones who have to provide this service.
    • The creation of integrated teams with computational expertise blended into the scientific communities is a way to match up the scientific community’s needs and the services provided by HPC/DCI. The new roles that could be created in the centres and the communities need to be defined so as to create a clear career path that will attract new professionals. (ECB Report - application enabling case)
    • The communities shall focus on the development of SSS tools/libraries that will allow them to adjust the e-Infrastructure to their needs. Thus the infrastructure will behave “as a cloud” with seamless services for them. The focus shall be kept on the consolidation and maintenance of the services rather than the development of new services.
    • Sustainability cannot be maintained with EC funds only. National funds shall be joined under a European strategy for SSS provision in Europe. (ECB Report - Mobilize National Contacts Case)
    • Europe has the lead in application software. The diversity of the existing communities gives Europe a competitive advantage but the underlying infrastructure falls behind.
  • 3.2 Recommendations
    • SSS provision shall be supported by the EC and member states. These services shall be discovered, integrated, coordinated, operated and maintained at an EU level for the user communities. (ECB Report - Mobilize National Contacts case)
    • Integrated teams shall be created and the new roles within the communities shall be evident. (ECB Report - Application enabling case)
    • Work more on the involvement of industry and SME’s and define appropriate licence schemes. (ECB Report - Involve Industry case)
    • Create target calls and initiatives for the consolidation of project results. Target an increase in the usage of existing DCI’s and focus on user support.

• 5 Statistics
  • These included a general welcome to the meeting, information and a call for suggestions about the conference blog and a discussion on how to evaluate the impact of e-Infrastructures.
  • However none of these three posts attracted replies either during or after the meeting, despite advertisement of the forum on the event website and in the opening plenary.

• 7 Conclusions
  • However the online forum was much less successful. This may be due to lack of publicity for the forum.
  • Additionally conference delegates appear to make the most of their time networking face-to-face at these meetings and may not have the time or inclination to network online via the discussion forum as well.

NA3.3 Standardization and Integration

• None