Thematic repositories and e-infrastructures

Overview

Data e-Infrastructures that participate in the D4Science-II Ecosystem will not be isolated but will dynamically interoperate and influence each other as the components of the ecosystem. Interoperability will foster the coordination of otherwise autonomous application-level infrastructures and infrastructural services into a true Knowledge Ecosystem. Particular attention will be given to the identification of interoperability solutions that preserve as much as possible the autonomy of the participating data e-Infrastructures.

The D4Science-II Ecosystem will initially include the GENESI-DR and DRIVER repository e-Infrastructures (created in the EC framework of FP7 projects), and important thematic multi-type repositories maintained by large international organizations, e.g., INSPIRE and AquaMaps. The goal is to attract many other European and international prominent e-Infrastructures as well.

These data services manage several millions of information objects of different types, ranging from metadata and textual documents, to maps, sensor, statistical and GIS data. Close collaboration with standardization bodies, such as W3C, OGF, and ETSI, together with early adoption of new emerging standards will ensure that the interoperability solutions identified will have wide applicability.

D4Science as a linchpin of a knowledge ecosystem

This figure shows the Knowledge Ecosystem envisioned, i.e., interoperable data e-Infrastructures, repositories, and scientific communities exploiting the services provided. It also illustrates the dual role played by D4Science e-Infrastructure, i.e., virtual aggregator of resources available in interoperable e-Infrastructures, and provider of these resources back to the participating e- Infrastructures and, through those, to complex VREs serving cross-domain scientific communities.

Policies and procedures

The D4Science production infrastructure will evolve into a knowledge ecosystem of collaborating e-Infrastructures. This will be done with the enhancement of its enabling technology, gCube, but also through new policies and procedures governing the interoperation with collaborating scientific infrastructures, repositories and services.

Policies and procedures are needed for the definition of agreements that clarify relationships and responsibilities between the D4Science-II knowledge ecosystem and other data infrastructures sharing services, clients, and resources. They will define which part of another infrastructure will be accessible by D4Science services (e.g. access to copyrighted resources is permitted in restricted contexts only) and how (e.g. only local elaborations of data, security policies, frequency of updates, etc.). A formal resource sharing policy will have to regulate the overall sharing and usage of the interfaced community specific resources, as well as the access and allocation of the D4Science computing resources.