e-IRG Workshop under French EU Presidency

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(Timezone - Europe/Berlin)
Description

The e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG) organises two open workshops every year, each under the auspices of the corresponding EU presidency. During the last years, the e-IRG Workshops have been organised as virtual events due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Given the success of the virtual events, the e-IRG Workshop in the framework of the French EU Presidency will be also organised as a virtual event and will be conducted as a series of three webinars (in the future hybrid events may be considered). Each of the webinars is addressing key challenges for the further development of e-Infrastructures in the Europe Research Area and beyond, linked also with EU Presidency priorities. In this workshop, the following topics are addressed:

  • Session 1: Towards a sustainable EOSC - The role of e-Infrastructures
  • Session 2: The twin “green and digital” transition in e-Infrastructures
  • Session 3: Cross-e-Infrastructure collaboration and coordination (network, computing, data)

Each session starts with presentations to stimulate the discussion on the topics and encourages the audience to an active participation.

1. Session "Towards a sustainable European Open Science Cloud - The role of e-Infrastructures"
The session is jointly organized with the EOSC Steering Board

The goal of this session is to raise awareness on the required sustainability analysis in the e-Infrastructure community and make the first steps in this area, shedding some light on the above elements, with the aspiration that e-IRG recommendations on policies coming out of such an analysis and work, can be brought to the EOSC SB for implementation.

Questions for the four breakout groups (each group will address the same questions):

  1. Do you see important gaps in the European policy landscape for e-infrastructures apart from the policy issues under discussion (skills and competences, EOSC and the private sector, data sovereignty) at the EOSC Steering Board ?
  2. Which are the most crucial elements to consider when preparing policies on these topics?
  3. What’s the most appropriate way to influence the national and European policy landscape?
  4. How can good practices or failures on developing and implementing policies at national level help progress implementation by other MSs and ACs? And how a European-wide implementation benefits all users?

2. Session "The twin “green and digital” transition in e-Infrastructures"

This session will deal with the corresponding urgency of twin transition for EU, national and institutional e-Infrastructures. It will raise awareness on key e-Infrastructures initiatives in the area along with thematic paradigms.

3. Session "Cross-e-Infrastructure collaboration and coordination"

The aim of this session is to address the topic of the effective collaboration and coordination of all the e-Infrastructure components, i.e. networking, computing (both HTC and HPC) and data infrastructures, and reflect on some possible approaches, paradigms and impacts. 

 

Looking forward to a fruitful workshop

Paolo Budroni, e-IRG Chair, Volker Beckmann, e-IRG co-Chair, 

Fotis Karayannis, Jan Wiebelitz, e-IRG Support Project 

e-IRG (@eirgeu) / Twitter

(1) #eirg - Twitter Search / Twitter

Registration
e-IRG Workshop under French EU Presidency
Participants
  • Adriana Kviklienė
  • Arnaud Gingold
  • Barbara Bolgan
  • Birgit Ploetzeneder
  • Catalin Condurache
  • Dirk Helbing
  • Francesca Paoletti
  • Giulia Lodi
  • Lorisa Andreoli
  • Lynn Kaack
  • Margareth Gfrerer
  • Martin HAMMITZSCH
  • Mojca Kotar
  • Nenitha Dagslott
  • Peter Wittenburg
  • Raymond Oonk
  • Roberta Faggian
  • Serkan Üçer
  • Silvia Zabeo
  • Sofia Ribeiro
  • Todor Gurov
  • Yordanka Deyanova
  • +118
    • Towards a sustainable European Open Science Cloud - The role of e-Infrastructures

      EOSC focuses on the data layer and related services, and has not dealt at a great extent with the underlying e-Infrastructures (e.g. computing, networking) that provide essential services to EOSC. The full EOSC service delivery model, besides the EU level, includes also the national and institutional levels. Thus, a close collaboration between EOSC and the underlying e-Infrastructures is required for the sustainability analysis of EOSC. The EOSC sustainability analysis should assess the “data market” and estimate the costs of both the data infrastructure/services and the underlying storage and computing infrastructure costs. This includes both capital and operational costs and the very important component of the growing energy costs along with the projection for the infrastructure growth.
      This session is jointly organised between the EOSC Steering Board and e-IRG, following a first meeting between representatives of the two bodies, who reflected on these topics. e-IRG has links to all the e-Infrastructure layers (networking, computing, data) and can contribute to the EOSC sustainability and the required analysis, which includes all the involved levels, i.e. institutional, national, (regional) and European ones. Given the EOSC shift towards an operationalised and procurement-based environment, understanding the data market and underlying costs is essential.
      The goal of this session is to raise awareness on the required sustainability analysis in the e-Infrastructure community and make the first steps in this area, shedding some light on the above elements, with the aspiration that e-IRG recommendations on policies coming out of such an analysis and work, can be brought to the EOSC SB for implementation.

      Questions for the four breakout groups:
      1. Do you see important gaps in the European policy landscape for e-infrastructures apart from the policy issues under discussion (skills and competences, EOSC and the private sector, data sovereignty) at the EOSC Steering Board?
      2. Which are the most crucial elements to consider when preparing policies on these topics?
      3. What’s the most appropriate way to influence the national and European policy landscape?
      4. How can good practices or failures on developing and implementing policies at national level help progress implementation by other MSs and ACs? And how a European-wide implementation benefits all users?

      Convener: Mr Volker Beckmann (Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche et de l'Innovation (MESRI))
      • 1
        Opening of the Workshop
        Speakers: Laurent Crouzet (Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche et de l'Innovation (MESRI)), Paolo Budroni (e-IRG Chair (TU Wien)), Volker Beckmann (Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche et de l'Innovation (MESRI))
      • 2
        EOSC Steering Board monitoring of national contributions to the EOSC

        Survey motivation
        · Open Science, EOSC and ERA context
        · Benefits for communities and e-infrastructures
        · Status of the survey

        Results:
        · EOSC-relevant policy coverage in Europe
        · Open Science, Open Data, Open Source, Skills & Competences, …
        · EOSC-relevant financing in 2020 related (or not) to policies

        Next steps
        · extended survey (late 2022)
        · additional areas surveyed
        · collaboration with other partners >> possibilities to influence survey evolution
        · EOSC Observatory and ERA dash- and scoreboard
        · How will e-infrastructures benefit from the monitoring

        Speaker: Thomas Neidenmark (EC, RTD)
      • 3
        Discussion
      • 4
        Policy development relevant for EOSC and e-infrastructures: e-IRG perspective

        e-IRG is a policy advisory body composed of national delegates with the aim to facilitate integration in the area of European e-Infrastructures and connected services, within and between Member States, at the European level and globally. e-IRG is overlooking the whole e-Infrastructure spectrum, from networking and computing to data and other services (such as middleware, software and related tools/services), covering not only short-term but also longer-term aspects, advising both Member States and the European Commission.
        e-IRG has established informal liaison with the EOSC Steering Board. There has been a meeting between two sub-groups of the two bodies, which came up with some initial areas of cooperation and potential gaps (see below). This initial (setting the scene) meeting is being followed-up with this open e-IRG Workshop session jointly organised between the two bodies, while there have been a few more preparatory meetings for this session.
        Some of the areas of cooperation between the two bodies and potential policy gaps relevant to EOSC that have been identified are the following:
        - EOSC is mainly focusing on data and thus the links with the underlying networking and computing infrastructures which e-IRG is representing are less evident. Overall, the (almost 20 years of) experience of e-IRG over so many years in providing advice/recommendations and supporting policy making is vital for a sustainable EOSC ecosystem. And the e-IRG recommendations worked out together with EOSC can be brought for implementation via the EOSC SB.
        - The role of institutional, national (regional) and EU levels that e-IRG is working on, which are required for a proper analysis and the envisaged sustainability of the infrastructure ecosystem and of its services. The national mandates from the e-IRG delegates need to be also taken into account.
        - The need to have better understanding of data and the underlying e-Infrastructure costs in EOSC, both Capital Expenditures (CapEx) and Operational Expenditures (OpEx), as we are moving towards the next phase of the operationalized EOSC that will be come out of a tender, including agreed methodologies and common approaches across Europe.
        - Several countries’ e-Infrastructures are expanding their services beyond research, into the provision of services for the digital governance (education, health, culture, other public sector areas/citizens etc.) and digital transition and this may be an opportunity but also a threat for EOSC.

        Speaker: Ignacio Blanquer (Polytechnic University of Valencia, e-IRG member, Spain)
      • 5
        Policy development relevant for EOSC and e-infrastructures: EOSC perspective

        The EOSC Steering Board expert group (E03756) assists the strategic coordination between the Commission and EU Member States and countries associated (AC) to the Horizon Europe framework programme on questions relating to the implementation of Union legislation, programmes and policies related to Open Science and EOSC. The ambition is to foster the convergence of European and national open science policies and initiatives.
        The work includes mapping of national contributions by MS/AC to further develop the EOSC. This is done in synergy with the implementation of the EOSC Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) on a European level and aims at a collective understanding of how to assess these contributions. The joint capacity to monitor the EOSC implementation progress together with the transition to open science is the EOSC Observatory.

        As part of its EOSC SB work (including its sub-groups) the following policy aspects have been identified relevant to e-IRG:
        · Supporting data related skills and competences through (national) policies.
        · The role service providers from the private sector could and should play in the EOSC.
        · Data sovereignty: Independent of where data are stored (may be a cloud infrastructure beyond the country created/ collected) they are subject to the laws and governance of the country created/collected. Data sovereignty is thus closely connected with cloud computing, data protection regulations and data privacy, cross border data transfers and international data spaces.

        Background:
        Information about the EOSC-SB expert group (ToR, sub-groups, minutes, etc.) https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/expert-groups-register/screen/expert-groups/consult?lang=en&groupID=3756
        EOSC SRIA: https://www.eosc.eu/sria
        The EOSC Observatory is a tool to collect, analyse, and visualise information.

        Speaker: Giorgio Rossi (University of Milan, EOSC SB member, Italy)
      • 6
        Breakout Session (3-4 rooms)

        As introduced in the previous talks from EOSC SB and e-IRG members, there have been some main points identified:
        · Gaps in the policy landscape for e-Infrastructures relevant to EOSC (see e-IRG talk), such as the inherent focus of EOSC on data (and less on e-Infrastructures), the lack of methodologies and processes for identification of underlying costs, etc.
        · Aspects to consider from the e-Infrastructure point of view related to the 3 topics of the EOSC SB subgroup (skills, role of private sector and data sovereignty). In particular:
        · Supporting data related skills and competences through (national, institutional, EU?) policies. Furthermore, research/e-infrastructure providers and research performing organisations have a hard time retaining their data experts in their organisations, as industry usually offers better salaries.
        · The role service providers from the private sector could and should play in the EOSC. Relevant to this is also the discussion whether the research community should acquire (lease) resources (e.g. computing, storage) from commercial providers.
        · Data sovereignty: Independent of where data are stored (may be a cloud infrastructure beyond the country created/ collected) they are subject to the laws and governance of the country created/collected. Data sovereignty is thus closely connected with cloud computing, data protection regulations and data privacy, cross border data transfers and international data spaces.

        All groups will be discussing the same questions, each starting from a different question as time is short.

        Group 1:
        1. Do you see important gaps in the European policy landscape for e-infrastructures apart from the policy issues under discussion (skills and competences, EOSC and the private sector, data sovereignty) at the EOSC Steering Board ?
        2. Which are the most crucial elements to consider when preparing policies on these topics?
        3. What’s the most appropriate way to influence the national and European policy landscape?
        4. How can good practices or failures on developing and implementing policies at national level help progress implementation by other MSs and ACs? And how a European-wide implementation benefits all users ?

        Group 2 :
        1. Which are the most crucial elements to consider when preparing policies on the topics raised by the speakers? (skills and competences, EOSC and the private sector, data sovereignty)
        2. What’s the most appropriate way to influence the national and European policy landscape?
        3. How can good practices or failures on developing and implementing policies at national level help progress implementation by other MSs and ACs? And how a European-wide implementation benefits all users ?
        4. Do you see important gaps in the European policy landscape for e-infrastructures apart from the policy issues under discussion (skills and competences, EOSC and the private sector, data sovereignty) at the EOSC Steering Board ?

        Group 3
        1. What’s the most appropriate way to influence the national and European policy landscape?
        2. How can good practices or failures on developing and implementing policies at national level help progress implementation by other MSs and ACs? And how a European-wide implementation benefits all users ?
        3. Do you see important gaps in the European policy landscape for e-infrastructures apart from the policy issues under discussion (skills and competences, EOSC and the private sector, data sovereignty) at the EOSC Steering Board ?
        4. Which are the most crucial elements to consider when preparing policies on these topics?
        :
        Group 4 :
        1. How can good practices or failures on developing and implementing policies at national level help progress implementation by other MSs and ACs? And how a European-wide implementation benefits all users ?
        2. Do you see important gaps in the European policy landscape for e-infrastructures apart from the policy issues under discussion (skills and competences, EOSC and the private sector, data sovereignty) at the EOSC Steering Board ?
        3. Which are the most crucial elements to consider when preparing policies on these topics?
        4. What’s the most appropriate way to influence the national and European policy landscape?

      • 7
        Reporting from the breakout session
      • 8
        Wrap-up and Closing
        Speaker: Paolo Budroni (e-IRG Chair (TU Wien))
    • The twin “green and digital” transition in e-Infrastructures

      The Green Deal is one of key EU priorities in this decade aiming at reaching the climate goals by 2030. On the other hand, the digital transition is a key requirement for Europe’s competitiveness in the global race. Thus, the combination of the green and digital transition, the so-called “twin transition” is a key requirement for the EU. This session will deal with the corresponding urgency of twin transition for EU, national and institutional e-Infrastructures. It will raise awareness on key e-Infrastructures initiatives in the area along with thematic paradigms.

      Convener: Mr Peter Wittenburg
      • 9
        Opening and Welcome
        Speakers: Paolo Budroni (e-IRG Chair (TU Wien)), Volker Beckmann (Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche et de l'Innovation (MESRI))
      • 10
        DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN EUROPE: an environmental life cycle approach

        We too often tend to think that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) would have as little environmental impact as they seem virtual. However, the reality is here:
        At European level alone, ICTs are responsible each year for 40% of the EU's Green House Gas (GHG) budget to stay below 1.5°C of global warming.
        Similarly, at the European level, ICT spends 40% of Europe's sustainable budget in terms of the use of mineral and metal resources.
        35% of the sustainable budget concerning ecotoxicity in fresh water.
        26% of the sustainable budget on fossil resources.
        The magnitude of the results shown by this study raises - once again - the alarm.
        No, digital is not virtual. Its impacts are very real. They can and should be measured through Life Cycle Analysis (LCA).
        The objective of this presentation is, beyond the observation, to provide solutions to address both the challenges of resilience and mitigate the environmental impacts of the technologies: adopt a posture of digital sobriety and slow tech and, operationally, eco-design and reuse.
        https://www.greens-efa.eu/opinions/digital-technologies-in-europe/

        Speaker: Lorraine de Montenay
      • 11
        HPC at the service of energy efficiency

        After a short introduction to EDF’s activities and the group's commitment to energy transition, an inventory of EDF's infrastructures and areas of use for HPC are presented. Then, the impacts of energy transition on the infrastructures, the home-made codes and the studies that are carried out are addressed. Finally, the options to make users aware of the energy sobriety of the simulations and data produced are presented.

        Speaker: Cyril Baudry (Électricité de France (EDF) R&D, France)
      • 12
        Digitalisation for energy

        The European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) identified several cross-cutting activities that should be reinforced within the energy sector, being digitalisation a paramount one as it is changing the way in which research and innovation is being carried out. As a result, the transversal Joint Programme ‘Digitalisation for Energy’ was launched as a transversal activity pilot in Fall 2020 and officially approved by the 2022 General Assembly. In this talk, the different activities that have been carried out, the planned roadmap, and the specific implication with the e-Infrastructure domain are presented.

        Speaker: Rafael Mayo-García (CIEMAT)
      • 13
        MeluXina: next-generation EuroHPC supercomputing, boosting industry and research
        Speaker: Valentin Plugaru (Université de Luxembourg)
      • 14
        Panel Discussion
        Speakers: Cyril Baudry, Lorraine de Montenay, Peter Wittenburg, Rafael Mayo-Garcia, Valentin Plugaru
      • 15
        Digitization, Sustainability and Planetary Health: How to Avoid a Dystopian Future
        Speaker: Dirk Helbing (ETH Zurich)
      • 16
        Destination Earth digital twin

        How will the impact of severe weather and climate change affect your country or your region and how will you manage the risks of environmental extremes?

        To address the need for enhanced prediction capabilities, the European Union has set in motion Destination Earth (DestinE), a visionary initiative to create Digital Twins of the Earth system supporting climate change adaptation policies and decision-making for reducing the impacts of extremes. DestinE will contribute to revolutionising the European capability to monitor and predict our changing planet and complement existing national and European services.

        The individual digital twins will produce near real-time, highly detailed and constantly evolving replicas of Earth, including the impact of human activities. Ultimately, the twins will be combined to build a single, highly complex replica of the Earth system that will be more detailed than anything seen before, providing prediction capabilities with an unprecedented level of detail and reliability but also an infrastructure to interact with models and data in new ways.

        Speaker: Thomas Geenen (ECWMF)
      • 17
        AI and Climate Change

        How will the impact of severe weather and climate change affect your country or your region and how will you manage the risks of environmental extremes?

        To address the need for enhanced prediction capabilities, the European Union has set in motion Destination Earth (DestinE), a visionary initiative to create Digital Twins of the Earth system supporting climate change adaptation policies and decision-making for reducing the impacts of extremes. DestinE will contribute to revolutionising the European capability to monitor and predict our changing planet and complement existing national and European services.

        The individual digital twins will produce near real-time, highly detailed and constantly evolving replicas of Earth, including the impact of human activities. Ultimately, the twins will be combined to build a single, highly complex replica of the Earth system that will be more detailed than anything seen before, providing prediction capabilities with an unprecedented level of detail and reliability but also an infrastructure to interact with models and data in new ways.

        Speaker: Lynn Kaack (Hertie School, University of Governance, DE)
      • 18
        Panel Discussion
        Speakers: Dirk Helbinger, Lynn Kaack, Peter Wittenburg, Thomas Geenen
      • 19
        Wrap-up and Closing
        Speaker: Paolo Budroni (e-IRG Chair (TU Wien))
    • 12:15 PM
      Lunch break
    • Cross-e-Infrastructure collaboration and coordination (network, computing, data)

      Research infrastructures require strong underlying e-Infrastructures, which are well-coordinated. Such coordination encompasses the 3 main pillars of the EC European Cloud Infrastructure (ECI), namely the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), the European Data Infrastructure (EDI) with networking, supercomputing/HPC and Cloud infrastructures, and the expansion towards the public sector and industry. This session is closely linked with the next iteration of the e-IRG White Paper that will be produced in 2022, and the inputs and feedback collected during the workshop will feed the e-IRG White Paper 2022. This topic is also linked with the heterogeneous funding programmes and initiatives for e-Infrastructures, ranging from EuroHPC, EOSC, the Digital Europe Programme, Connecting Europe Facility 2, and the entire Horizon Europe, along with national routed funding programs, and then also initiatives from the private sector and industry.
      The aim of this session is to address the topic of the effective collaboration and coordination of all the e-Infrastructure components, i.e. networking, computing (both HTC and HPC) and data infrastructures, and reflect on some possible approaches, paradigms and impacts. The ultimate goal of bridging the gaps across e-Infrastructures is to provide integrated user-friendly services towards researchers, easing their work and deliver to them added value, so that they can focus on the disciplinary or cross-disciplinary research, and not on the infrastructures and tools.

      Convener: Mr Ignacio Blanquer (e-Infrastructure Reflection Group)
      • 20
        Opening and Welcome
        Speakers: Paolo Budroni (e-IRG Chair (TU Wien)), Volker Beckmann (French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI))
      • 21
        EOSC presentation on cooperation with other e-Infrastructures
        Speaker: Ute Gunsenheimer (EOSC Association)
      • 22
        EuroHPC presentation on cooperation with other e-Infrastructures
        Speaker: Joséphine Wood (EuroHPC JU)
      • 23
        GÉANT presentation about cooperation with other e-Infrastructures
        Speaker: Cathrin Stöver (GÈANT)
      • 24
        Panel Discussion

        Discussion on the first part of the session and interaction with the audience

        Speakers: Cathrin Stöver (GÉANT), Deborah Testi (EUDAT), Ignacio Blanquer (UPV/e-IRG Spain), Joséphine Wood (EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU)), Natalia Manola (OpenAIRE), Peter Brönnimann (SBFI/e-IRG Switzerland), Tiziana Ferrari (EGI.eu), Ute Gunsenheimer (EOSC Association)
      • 25
        New ERA Policy Agenda
        Speaker: Sergej Mozina (ERA Forum, Member States co-Chair, Slovenia)
      • 26
        Key Performance Indicators across e-Infrastructure components
        Speaker: Gareth O’Neill (Technopolis Group)
      • 27
        EuroCRIS - research information exchange and aggregation across institutions, regions, countries

        One of the main goals of the euroCRIS member association is to promote system interoperability and information exchange across institutional, regional, national, funder and international research information systems in order to allow this info to be aggregated and comprehensively analysed. The CERIF standard (Common European Research Information Format), endorsed by the EC, is the main tool to achieve this interoperability. Due to the ever-growing amount of information around research datasets and its associated metadata that are being collected in CRIS systems of all kinds, these could gradually become a key infrastructure for EOSC data provision purposes.

        Speaker: Pablo De Castro (EuroCRIS Board member)
      • 28
        Panel Discussion
        Speakers: Gareth O'Neill (Technopolis), Ignacio Blanquer (UPV), Pablo De Castro (EuroCRIS), Peter Brönnimann (SBFI), Sergej Mozina (ERA Forum)
      • 29
        Wrap-up and conclusion
        Speaker: Paolo Budroni (TU-Wien)