Keith G. Jeffery

From Open Data to Data-Intensive Science through CERIF

OGD (Open Government Data) is provided from government departments for transparency and to stimulate a market in ICT services for industry and citizens. Research datasets from publicly funded research commonly are associated with the open scholarly publications movement. However, the former world commonly is derived from the latter with generalisation and summarisation. There is advantage in a user of OGD being able to ‘drill down’ to the underlying research datasets. OGD encourages cross-domain research because the summarized data from different domains is more easily relatable. Bridging across the two worlds requires rich metadata; CERIF (Common European research Information Format) has proved itself to be ideally suited to this requirement. Utilising the research datasets is data-intensive science, a component of e-Research. Data-intensive science also requires access to an e-infrastructure. Virtualisation of this e-infrastructure optimizes this.

Interoperability Oriented Architecture: The Approach of EPOS for Solid Earth e-Infrastructures

EPOS is an e-Infrastructure for solid Earh science in Europe. It integrates many heterogeneous Research Infrastructures (RIs) using a novel approach based on the harmonization of existing service and component interfaces. EPOS is designed to provide an architectural framework for new Research Infrastructures in the domain, and to interface with increasing sophistication of existing RIs working with them in co-development from their present state to a future integrated state. The key is the metadata catalogue based on CERIF which provides the virtualization required for EPOS to provide a homogeneous view over the heterogeneity. Architectural concepts together with a plan for integration and collaboration with EPOS nodes in order to interoperate are presented in this paper.

EPOS: a novel use of CERIF for data-intensive science

One of the key aspects of the approaching data-intensive science era is integration of data through interoperability of systems providing data products or visualization and processing services. Far from being simple, interoperability requires robust and scalable e-infrastructures capable of supporting it. In this work we present the case of EPOS, a plan for data integration in the field of Earth Sciences. We describe the design of its e-infrastructure and show its main characteristics. One of the main elements enabling the system to integrate data, data products and services is the metadata catalogue based on the CERIF metadata model. Such a model, modified to fit into the general e-infrastructure design, is part of a three-layer metadata architecture. CERIF guarantees a robust handling of metadata, which is in this case the key to the interoperability and to one of the feature of the EPOS system: the possibility of carrying on data intensive science orchestrating the distributed resources made available by EPOS data providers and stakeholders.

Using Open Research Data for Public Policy Making: Opportunities of Virtual Research Environments

Governments and publicly-funded research organisations increasingly make research data available openly. Researchers can use this data in Virtual Research Environments (VREs) to conduct multidisciplinary data-driven research and to obtain new insights potentially for governmental policy-making. However, the requirements for such a VRE are not yet clear. The objective of this study is to elicit and define requirements for a multidisciplinary VRE that integrates Open Government Data (OGD) and open research data for public policy making. Based on a VRE case study, we elicit 13 VRE requirements related to data storage, data accessing, data curation and other aspects, and describe a use case of open data for governmental policy-making. Meeting the requirements results in a VRE that 1) overlays the existing e-Research Infrastructures to provide researchers with integrated open data from different domains, 2) offers OGD in combination with data from publicly-funded research, and 3) stimulates innovation and research collaboration.

Mapping Solid Earth Data and Research Infrastructures to CERIF

EPOS is a Research Infrastructure plan that is undertaking the challenge of integrating data from different solid Earth disciplines and of providing a common knowledge-base for the Solid-Earth community in Europe, by implementing and managing a logically centralised catalog based on the CERIF model. The EPOS catalogue will contain the information about all the participating actors, such as Research Infrastructures, Organisations and their assets, in relationship with the people, their roles and their affilitation within the specific scientific domain. The catalogue will guarantee the discoverability of domain specific data, data products, software and services (DDSS) and enable the EPOS Integrated Core Services system to perform - on behalf of a end user advanced operations on data as for instance processing and visualization. It will also foster the homogenisation of vocabularies, as well as supporting heterogeneous metadata. Clearly, the effort of accomodating the diversities across all the players needs to take into account of existing initiatives concerning metadata standards and institutional recommendations, trying to satisfy the EPOS requirements by incorporating and profiling more generic concepts and semantics. The paper describes the approach of the EPOS metadata working group, providing the rationale behind the integration, extension and mapping strategy to converge the EPOS metadata baseline model towards the CERIF entities, relationships and vocabularies. Special attention will be given to the outcomes of the mapping process between two elements of the EPOS baseline - Research Infrastructure and Equipment - and CERIF, by providing detailed insights and description of the two data models, of encountered issues and of proposed solutions.

Quality Aspects in CLOUD Computing

CLOUD Computing is surrounded by hype and commercial supplier claims. However, there is emerging experience of real benefits and alongside a set of challenges for CLOUD Computing to reach wide acceptance. Major problems concern performance, security, privacy and interoperation -- all of which have strong quality aspects. CLOUD Computing faces not only technical challenges but also legal, business (economic) and environmental (green) challenges. Quality concerns are pervasive.