New project to tackle data deluge: EUDAT – Towards a pan-European Collaborative Data Infrastructure
On 1 October 2011, the EUDAT project was launched to target a pan-European solution to the challenge
of data proliferation in Europe's scientific and research communities. Aiming to contribute to the
production of a Collaborative Data Infrastructure driven by researchers’ needs, the project is coordinated
by CSC - IT Center for Science, Finland, and co-funded by the European Commission’s Framework
Programme 7.
EUDAT aims to provide Europe’s scientific and research communities with a sustainable pan-European
infrastructure for improved access to scientific data. Burgeoning volumes of valuable and complex data –
newly available from powerful new scientific instruments, simulations and digitization of library
resources – represents a fantastic opportunity for science, but has created new challenges related to
data management, access and preservation. EUDAT aims to address these challenges and exploit the
opportunities using its vision of a Collaborative Data Infrastructure.
The EUDAT consortium comprises 25 European partners, including data centers, technology providers,
research communities and funding agencies from 13 countries, who will work together to deliver a
Collaborative Data Infrastructure that can sustainably meet future researchers’ needs.
“EUDAT will fill an important gap in the current European e-Infrastructure landscape,” said Dr. Kimmo
Koski, CSC Managing Director and EUDAT Project Coordinator. “We aim to develop a generic
infrastructure for scientific data management that can used by a diversity of research communities and
existing infrastructures.”
“This can only be achieved through a systematic and focused approach covering the entire life cycle of
data objects, and by encouraging collaboration between the various stakeholders and in particular
between the communities involved in designing specific services and the data centers willing to provide
generic solutions,” said Dr Koski. “Our ultimate aim is to develop a high-quality, cost-efficient and
sustainable pan-European data ecosystem, driven by European research needs and user communities.”
Multi-disciplinary collaboration and data sharing
The EUDAT partners include key representatives from research communities in linguistics (CLARIN), earth
sciences (EPOS), climate sciences (ENES), environmental sciences (LIFEWATCH), and biological and
medical sciences (VPH), all of which have been allocated project resources to help specify their
requirements and co-design related services. Other communities have joined EUDAT as associate
members, representing 15 research disciplines across all major fields of science.
EUDAT Scientific Coordinator Peter Wittenburg, from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics at
Nijmegen, the Netherlands, said EUDAT will open considerable new opportunities for research
communities. “Beyond offering common services such as data hosting and preservation, EUDAT is paving
the way towards integrated and interoperable access to data and, in doing so, will facilitate new science
and allow efficient knowledge creation,” said Wittenburg. “It is this double opportunity that makes the
EUDAT initiative so interesting for research communities and infrastructures.”
Wittenburg stressed, however, that the challenges of integration, interoperability, data life cycle
management and trust building would involve a continuous and global discussion process. “EUDAT is
calling for the contributions of all stakeholders interested in adapting their solutions or contributing to
the design of the CDI. The EUDAT user forums and the Data Access and Interoperability Task Force
(DAITF) already provide some opportunities to join in the discussion.”
More information is available from www.eudat.eu
Contacts:
Kimmo Koski, EUDAT Project Coordinator (Kimmo.Koski at csc.fi)
Peter Wittenburg, EUDAT Scientific Coordinator (Peter.Wittenburg at mpi.nl)
Damien Lecarpentier, EUDAT Project Manager (Damien.Lecarpentier at csc.fi)
