DEFINITION OF AN E-INFASTRUCTURE
A shared definition of the concept of "e-infrastructure" is key for the project e-ROSA. According to the European Commission, an e-infrastructure is usually described as:
a combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data, services, digital libraries), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organisational structures needed to manage them.
They are keys in future development of research infrastructures, as activites go increasingly "online" and produce vast amounts of data and are at the heart of the Digital Agenda of the European Commision to support Open Science and the link between researchers, citizens or private companies.
They are becoming a part of the research infrastructure.
Whereas these definitions are shared by the members of the e-ROSA project, it is strongly felt that the definition has to be both broadened and specified.
As general considerations the infrastructure should:
Make sure that connected scientific devices, instruments, software can become discverable & share the data that they generate & manage.
Make sure that it provides the storage, computing and connectivity facilities that will make data & device discoverability possible.
Make sure that it provides the core operational services & standards that will ensure that different systems may talk to each other & exchange data.
Make sure that the devices, data & services that join are entitled to do so & follow the minimum agreed set of standards required (rules of engament) .
Make sure that it is up & running (almost) 24/7 providing an agreed quality of service through an agreed SLA.
Infrastructures are generally community based. A city has an infrastructure, the same goes for a region or a country. Infrastructures are strongly or loosely coupled. Even within an infrastructure there will be networks of institutions with more or less binding collaboration agreements. These collaboration agreements might contain:
Without an agreed governance and a clear business model no infrastructure is sustainable. Governance and business model need to clarify the roles of the different components of the community and the revenue streams that can sustain the infrastructure
High speed Cloud and Grid connectivity
Services have to facilitate a Web environment for the creation, sharing and publication of FAIR agricultural data as well as the tools and methods to process them and transform them into actionable knowledge that will enable to address the big agricultural challenges. Services within an Infrastructure include the entire range of from production to elaboration, storage, analysis and archive of data. They constitute a sustainable virtual working environment consisting of e-/webservices (data, computing, storage, processing, analytics, etc.) that supports full, data-intensive work processes for end-users in a specific domain or specific type of work.Services within an Infrastructure can be offered by partners as part of their business operations or by facilities maintained by the community with a business and sustainability model for any service to function:
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