D4Science-II - Towards an e-Infrastructure Ecosystem for Science

D4Science-II started on October 1st 2009 as one of the main European e-Infrastructure projects, involving 10 participants such as the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Co-funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, the D4Science-II project will hold its kick-off meeting 13-16 October 2009 in Pisa, Italy.

D4Science-II aims to continue the path that the GEANT, EGEE, DILIGENT and D4Science projects have initiated towards establishing networking, grid-based and data-centric e-Infrastructures. The ultimate goal of this chain of work is to provide scientists with Virtual Research Environments for unlimited generation and dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge.

The project will bring together several scientific e-Infrastructures established in the areas of e.g. biodiversity, fishery and aquaculture resources management, and high energy physics, to set up a prototypical instance of an e-Infrastructure ecosystem.

According to Donatella Castelli, Scientific Coordinator, CNR, "Individual resources will be harnessed and aggregated for a multiplicative effect on information availability, processing power, and more importantly scientific perspective: the much desired Knowledge Ecology finally obtains life within and is fed by e-Infrastructure ecosystems".

The D4Science-II ecosystem will include among others, the GENESI-DR and DRIVER repository e-Infrastructures, and important thematic repositories maintained by international organisations, e.g. INSPIRE and AquaMaps. The project will create Virtual Research Environments that will offer significantly enhanced services to scientists without incurring high development and maintenance costs.

The primary clients of these Virtual Research Environments serving specific scenarios will be researchers, decision-makers, international and government officers, and non-governmental organisations worldwide.

Scientific coordination of D4Science is headed by CNR while the management of the project is ensured by ERCIM, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics.

Contact: Donatella Castelli
E-mail: donatella[dot]castelli[at]isti[dot]cnr[dot]it

[15-10-2009 Published on AlphaGalileo: http://www.alphagalileo.org/PrintView.aspx?ItemId=61957&CultureCode=en ]