Knowledge Creation through Cross-Border Sharing of eInfrastructure
Report on NeIC’s Implementation of the Nordic e-Science Action Plan 2.0
This document reports on the work by NeIC from 2016 through most of 2020 on the Nordic e-Science Action Plan, 2.0, which has ten concrete actions in e-science and e-infrastructure intended to spur “action to maintain and further strengthen the competitiveness of Nordic eScience and education.”
The Nordic e-Science Action Plan 2.0 was published in 2015 and has a set of ten concrete actions in e-science and e-infrastructure that were intended to respond to the rapid changes in tools and techniques in the research landscape and to spur “action to maintain and further strengthen the competitiveness of Nordic eScience and education.” It was recognized that collaborations across the region are essential to “lead the way in strategic areas of research in implementing new modes of science also in the digital age.” This emphasis on the value of Nordic cooperation has retained its prominence and has been highlighted by the Nordic Council of Ministers “Our Vision 2030” in August 2019. This has been and will continue to be of strategic value for the region and NeIC is a leading contributor.
The Nordic e-Science Action Plan 2.0 included the following three Action Lines:
- A: Creating a Higher Education Arena for eScience,
- B: Enabling eScience as an Omnipresent Tool in Research and
- C: Knowledge Creation through Cross-Border Sharing of eInfrastructure.
Action Line C: Knowledge Creation through Cross-Border Sharing of eInfrastructure contained five e-infrastructure Actions highly relevant to the work of the NeIC collaborations. NeIC has worked to identify and enhance the Nordic added value of these collaborations. The collaborations were justified by their value to the national e-infrastructure providers and e-infrastructure developers in the research communities that came together in the collaborations.
Each of the five Actions had closely related activities in NeIC during the 2016 to mid-2020 time period with several on-going plus with new initiatives beginning in 2020. The outcomes are significant steps that advance the state of knowledge and understanding, and the levels of cooperation. The topics and ideas in each of the Actions have added to the sustainability of Nordic e-infrastructure and increased the competitiveness of the region. Each of the five concrete actions have made significant contributions to Nordic added value. Please find a short summary of NeIC’s engagement with the five Actions below. You can also read and download the full report here.
Action 6: Nordic Sharing and Exchange of eInfrastructure Resources
The Dellingr project provided access for 29 pilot projects and contributed to the sharing of resources for the sensitive data and federated cloud projects, the EOSC-Nordic project (EU funding 6 M€) and will benefit the NeIC Puhuri project supporting LUMI, the EuroHPC project.
Action 7: A Nordic Federated Cloud
The Nordic cloud project, Glenna, was driven by the needs of the Nordic researchers to set best practices on managing cloud services and has jump started work on AI/ML for a numerical weather prediction project. Joint development of technologies reduced the duplication of effort, resulting in strong national cloud capabilities and expertise, and contributed to EOSC-Nordic and Géant GN-4.3.
Action 8: Nordic High Performance Computing Collaboration
The LUMI collaboration is led by Finland for a EuroHPC pre-exascale supercomputer (total budget >200 M€) that is to be installed in Kajaani, Finland. The collaboration includes the five Nordic countries and Estonia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Poland, and Switzerland. LUMI’s usefulness to Nordic researchers is being extended by the NeIC Puhuri project.
Action 9: Nordic eInfrastructure for Sensitive Data
The NeIC project involving the ELIXIR nodes in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden has been developing state-of-the-art scalable infrastructure for safe, efficient, ethical, and legal storage, analysis and sharing of sensitive personal data for biomedical research between countries. This facilitates access to all of the Nordic ELIXIR nodes and improves interoperability between them. Connections to the European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) infrastructure as federated nodes are being put in place.
Action 10: Nordic eInfrastructure for Scientific Software
Five scientific software projects have been directly connected to research community groups in sensitive data, natural language processing, biodiversity, earth systems modeling, and numerical weather prediction. A sixth project trains students and researchers in all domains on how to write better code and provides research groups with e-infrastructure tools for software development.
You can read the full report here.