VISUALIZATION

The ESFRI roadmap (see IP/06/1431) identifies 35 large-scale infrastructure projects at various stages of development. This Memo gives brief details of the projects concerned. The full text of the roadmap, which contains longer descriptions of the projects can be found at: at its Web site.European High-Performance Computing Service: European strategic approach to high-performance computing, concentrating the resources in a limited number of world top-tier centres in an overall infrastructure connected with associated national, regional and local centres, forming a scientific computing network to utilise the top-level machines. This overall architecture will respond both to Capability (high-performance) and Capacity Computing (high-throughput) needs. Environmental Sciences Seven Pan-European research facilities have been identified to answer three main challenges. Current emphasis in Earth system research is on the prediction of climate, ecological, earth and ocean systems changes, and on tools and technologies for monitoring, prevention and mitigation of environmental risks and pressures. For Environmental monitoring, natural hazards and natural resources, single-sited and distributed infrastructures are needed to understand how physical, chemical biological and human behaviour contribute to the dynamics of the earth system. Biodiversity research infrastructures are required to support cross-sectoral policies depending on the sustainable use of biodiversity, support the ecosystem approach to the management of fisheries, aquaculture, forests and agricultural systems, and develop and assess methods to achieve sustainable lifestyles. AURORA BOREALIS research vessel Aurora Borelalis will be a powerful research Icebreaker vessel (31,000 tonnes displacement 196 metres long) with 50 Megawatt azimuth propulsion systems and deep drilling capability for use in extreme conditions in excess of 4000m water depth. It will have high ice performance to penetrate autonomously into the central Arctic ocean with 2.5 metres of ice cover, during all seasons. European Multidisciplinary Seafloor Observation (EMSO) EMSO deep sea-floor observatories are deployed on specific sites off the European coastline to allow continuous monitoring for environment and security. They will be organised in a unique management structure at European level (and part of a global endeavour), for long-term monitoring of environmental processes related to ecosystem life and evolution, global changes and geo-hazards. EMSO will be a key component of the Global Monitoring and Environment System (GMES) and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). European Fleet for Airborne Research (EUFAR) The European Fleet for Airborne Research consists of a Heavy-Payload Long-Endurance Tropospheric Aircraft to complete the European fleet for airborne research in Environmental and Geo-Sciences. Ocean Observation System EURO-ARGO This array is the European component of a world-wide in situ global ocean observing system, based on autonomous profiling floats. The objective is to develop a global array of floats throughout the ice-free areas of the deep ocean. Some 3000 floats will be required to reach this objective. The floats are battery powered, with a life of between ¾to 5 years (about 800 floats must be deployed per year to maintain the target array). Data will be transmitted in real time by satellite to data centres for processing, management, and distribution. Integrating routine aircraft measurements into global earth observation (IAGOS-ERI) The Integration of routine Aircraft measurements uses, as platforms, commercial passenger aircraft and proposes an integration of routine aircraft measurements into a Global Observing System, to establish and operate a sustainable distributed infrastructure for regular observations of atmospheric composition from a fleet of initially 10-20 in-service aircrafts. This will be achieved by installing autonomous instrument packages, certified for commercial aircraft. Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) The Integrated Carbon Observation System is an infrastructure for coordinated, integrated, long-term high-quality observational data of the greenhouse balance of Europe and of adjacent key regions of Siberia and Africa. Consisting of a centre for coordination, calibration and data handling in conjunction with networks of atmospheric and ecosystem observations, ICOS is designed to create the scientific backbone for a better understanding and quantification of greenhouse gas sources and sinks and their feedback with climate change. LIFE WATCH for biodiversity LIFE WATCH will construct and bring into operation the facilities, hardware, software and governance structures for research on the protection, management and sustainable use of biodiversity. It will consist of facilities for data generation and processing, a network of observatories, facilities for data integration and interoperability, virtual laboratories offering a range of analytical and modelling tools and a Service Centre providing special services for scientific and policy users, including training and research opportunities for young scientists. Social Sciences and Humanities The challenge in the field of social sciences and humanities is to create pan-European systems which will enable a better use of the vast amount of data and information already existing or that will be generated. The majority of these resources are currently country- or region-specific and are produced to meet national requirements. They are collected by means of nation- and language-specific instruments based on local methodologies and classifications and rarely published for general use outside the country of origin. Also, national access restrictions are often in place. Answers to part of these challenges can be identified in six projects which have been considered under this roadmap. Council of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) The Council of European Social Science Data Archives is a distributed infrastructure that facilitates researchers’ access to high quality data. The network of organisations currently extends across 21 countries in Europe. It holds some 15,000 data collections and provides access to over 20,000 researchers already operating within a global data environment. Data access arrangements and agreements are already in place with other data holding organisations worldwide. Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN) The Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure is a pan-European coordinated effort to make language resources and technology available and useful to scholars of all disciplines, in particular the humanities and social sciences. It will overcome the present fragmented situation by harmonising structural and terminological differences, based on a Grid-type infrastructure and by using Semantic Web technology. Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) The Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities will be based upon an existing network of Data Centres and Services. The model is however open and will be able to embrace new fields. It will also profit from European Cultural Heritage Online (ECHO), an Open Access Infrastructure to bring essential cultural heritage online, of which the MPG is the host. European Resource Observatory for the Humanities and the Social (EROHS) The European Resource Observatory for the Humanities and the Social Sciences will operate both as a central and distributed facility with a strong physical hub working in close conjunction with a number of spokes across Europe, harnessing European expertise through a coordinated yet decentralised network. It will be organised to promote and ensure cooperation and integration of data, technologies and policies. The European Social Survey The ESS was set up in 2001 to monitor long term changes in social values throughout Europe and produce data relevant to academic debate, policy analysis and better governance. It now covers 27 European countries. A major upgrade is now sought to fill debilitating gaps in the present programme. SHARE The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe is a data infrastructure for fact-based economic and social science analyses of the on-going changes in Europe due to population ageing. The original 8-country survey, already expanded to cover two new Member States, ideally will cover all 25 member states of the EU. Energy The approach to the energy problems must be systematic and address the production, transport, transformation and final uses of energy. All these aspects rely on a multitude of test facilities and research infrastructures. The EU needs to have a strong base in these aspects, to be able to maintain the lead in the global search for energy solutions. At present, only three projects have been identified in the areas of Nuclear energy and Fusion. Regardless of future trends, existing installations, based on fission, will continue to be operated and test facilities are needed to develop aspects such as the reliability of construction materials, or the management of radioactive waste in a safe and environmentally sound manner. At the same time Fusion has the potential for promising safety and environmental properties but still needs many years to reach the energy market. Strong R&D in recent decades has made it possible to design an experimental reactor as part of the world fusion programme. Jules Horowitz Reactor This new research reactor will allow high flux irradiation experiments dedicated to the study of the materials and fuel behaviour under irradiation with sizes and environment conditions relevant for nuclear power plants in order to optimise and demonstrate safe operations of existing power reactors as well as to support future reactors design. The International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF) The International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility is an accelerator-based, very high flux neutron source utilizing the deuteron lithium-stripping reaction with the aim to provide timely a suitable data base on irradiation effects on material needed for the construction of a fusion reactor. Although IFMIF does not rely on aggressive innovative technologies, its beam power of 2 x 5 MW is by far the most intensive that has ever been built. High Power Experimental Research (HiPER) The High Power Experimental Research facility will be a large scale laser system designed to demonstrate significant energy production from inertial fusion, whilst supporting a broad base of high power laser interaction science. This is made feasible by the advent of a revolutionary approach to laser-driven fusion known as “Fast Ignition”. Biomedical and Life Sciences The massive restructuring and expansion of Biomedical and Life Sciences in what has been called “the century of Biology” is accompanied by major infrastructural requirements. A symbol of this realisation is the degree to which new or upgraded infrastructures for the Life Sciences are coming to dominate the infrastructure investment plans in other continents e.g. Australia, where the major focus in the government’s plans is on the life sciences. The six infrastructures identified are often (but not invariably) multi-sited. Instead of massive physical projects or collections of new instruments, they are mainly collection of data and resources, storage and access systems which not only require long term maintenance and operation, but also continuous upgrades. European Advanced Translational Research Infrastructure in Medicine (EATRIS) The European Advanced Translational Research Infrastructure in Medicine will first establish a small number of research centers distributed in Europe, with the task of translating basic discoveries into clinical practice. Each centre will include cutting edge technologies for translational research and will cover one of the major disease fields: cardiovascular diseases, cancer, metabolic syndrome, brain disorders and infectious disorders. In later steps, additional dedicated centers are expected to join the EATRIS partnership. European biobanking and biomolecular resources The infrastructure, a pan-European and broadly accessible network of existing and de novo biobanks and biomolecular resources, will include samples from patients and healthy persons (with links to epidemiological and health care information), molecular genomic resources and biocomputational tools to make the best possible use of this resource for global biomedical research. Mouse models for life sciences (INFRAFRONTIER) Infrafrontier will organise two complementary and interlinked distributed infrastructures. “Phenomefrontier”: a platform equipped with the latest technologies, in particular in vivo imaging and data management tools, for the phenotyping of medically relevant mouse models. “Archivefrontier”: a resource for state of the art archiving and dissemination of those mouse models and will consist in a major upgrade of the European Mouse Mutant Archive (EMMA). Infrastructures for clinical trials and biotherapy This infrastructure will connect existing national networks of clinical research centres and clinical trial units and will upgrade or create new facilities for the evaluation of innovative biotherapy agents. It will also make available professional data centres allowing high quality data management across the EU and will establish connections with disease-oriented patients associations and registries, and disease-oriented investigators networks in order to foster patients’ enrolment. Integrated Structural Biology Infrastructure This will be a network of distributed centres for integrated structural biology, linked into a network. All centres will maintain a set of core technologies such as protein production, NMR, crystallography, and different forms of microscopy. However, each centre will have a specific biological focus. The network will be organised in order to obtain multi-scale structural data and translate these data into functional knowledge. Upgrade of European Bioinformatics Infrastructure The infrastructure will be a secure but rapidly evolving platform for data collection, storage, annotation, validation, dissemination and utilisation, for the life sciences. It will be based around a substantial upgrade to the existing European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) handling primary data resources. It will however also integrate secondary data resources that are distributed across Europe. Materials Sciences Most material science techniques are available in relatively small laboratory environments (such as the atomic force microscope, or the atomic-layer deposition chambers), but when it comes to operating with increasing definition on larger pieces of materials, it is necessary to be able to “illuminate and reach” all atoms of the materials under investigation. This requires large facilities capable of providing the adequate “brilliances”, much like the need for a strong light to explore a dark environment. Light photons are only one, but the most flexible, of the many complementary “probes” which can be used. On the other hand, the use of neutrons as a probe of matter is strongly complementary to photons. Seven Research Infrastructures have been identified to address the needs in this area. Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI ) Extreme Light Infrastructure will be open to European scientists dedicated to the investigation and applications of laser matter interaction at the highest intensity level. ELI will comprise three branches: Ultra High Field Science, Attosecond Laser Science and the High Energy Beam Facility. ELI will have a large social benefit in medicine, material sciences and environment. European Synchrotron Radiation Facility Upgrade The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), located in Grenoble, is a joint facility supported and shared by 17 European countries and Israel. It operates the most powerful high energy synchrotron light source in Europe and brings together a wide range of disciplines including physics, chemistry and materials science as well as biology, medicine, geophysics and archaeology. There are many industrial applications, including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, petrochemicals and microelectronics. European Spallation Source for producing neutrons ESS will be the world’s most powerful source of neutrons. Its built-in upgradeability (more than the initial 20 instruments, more power, more target stations) makes it the most cost-effective top tier source for 40 years or more. A genuine pan-European facility, it will serve 4000 users annually across many areas of science and technology. European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) The European X-ray Free Electron Laser will be a world leading facility for the production of intense, short pulses of X-rays for scientific research in a wide range of disciplines. ILL 20/20 Upgrade to produce slow neutrons The reactor-based laboratory at the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) is recognised as the world’s most productive and reliable source of slow neutrons for the study of condensed matter, and its overall upgrade is the most cost-effective response in the short to medium term to users’ requirements. Free Electron Lasers The development of Free Electron Lasers allows a new, virtually unexplored, regime of coherent light flashing with femto-second pulses. The IRUVX Consortium will join the resources now in construction and planned in Europe into a unique Research Infrastructure, allowing novel and powerful complementary instruments for the microscopic and the dynamical study, as well as an optimal service to users, prioritising the development and location of the specific beam lines. Pan-European Research Infrastructure for Nano-Structures (PRINS) The Pan-European Research Infrastructure for Nano-Structures is the Research Infrastructure arm of a broader initiative, the ENIAC European Technology Platform. PRINS will bridge the area between research and market-driven applications and will provide Europe with the ability to master the revolutionary transition from Microelectronics to Nano-electronics, i.e. down to the level of individual atoms. Astronomy, Astrophysics Nuclear and Particle Physics Through the years, scientific progress has generated many new fundamental questions which are today on the agenda of astronomy, astrophysics, nuclear and particle physics, and are in many ways interconnected. In astronomy the challenge of the new fundamental questions require still larger collecting area and angular resolution. Modern nuclear physics has two main aims: At the larger scale one wants to understand the limits of nuclear stability by producing exotic nuclei with vastly different numbers of neutrons and protons. At the smaller scale one wants to explore the substructure of the constituent neutrons and protons. Particle physics stands on the threshold of a new and exciting era of discovery. The next generation of experiments will explore new domains & probe the deep structure of space-time. European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) The European Extremely Large Telescope will advance astrophysical knowledge allowing detailed studies of inter alia planets around other stars, the first objects in the Universe, super-massive Black Holes, and the nature and distribution of the Dark Matter and Dark Energy which dominate the Universe. This project will reinforce Europe’s position at the forefront of astrophysical research. Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) FAIR will provide high energy primary and secondary beams of ions of highest intensity and quality, including an "antimatter beam" of antiprotons allowing forefront research in five different disciplines of physics. The accelerator facility foresees the broad implementation of ion storage/cooler rings and of in-ring experimentation with internal targets. Two superconducting synchrotrons will deliver high intensity ion beams up to 35 GeV per nucleon for experiments with primary beams of ion masses up to Uranium and the production of a broad range of radioactive ion beams. Deep-sea neutrino telescope KM3NeT This deep-sea research infrastructure in the Mediterranean Sea will host a cubic-kilometre sized deep-sea neutrino telescope for astronomy based on the detection of high-energy cosmic neutrinos and giving access to long-term deep-sea measurements. Square Kilometre Array (SKA) SKA is the next generation radio telescope. With an operating frequency range of 0.1 - 25 GHz and a collecting area of about 1.000.000 m2, it will be 50 times more sensitive than current facilities. With its huge field-of-view it will be able to survey the sky more than 10,000 times faster than any existing radio telescope. The SKA will be a machine that transforms our view of the Universe. Isotope beams with SPIRAL 2 The project aims at delivering rare (radioactive) isotope beams with intensities not yet available with present machines. SPIRAL 2 will reinforce European leadership in the field of nuclear physics based on exotic nuclei. Computation and Data Treatment An overriding theme in the context of research infrastructures is to improve the access to computation and data storage across the full range of scientific research, and to rationalise the efforts needed for building the software and for curation of the data. These require integrated provision of resources, improved networking, sharing of software efforts, and lowering of barriers between groups participating in the development of scientific computing.