e-IRG Workshop under Czech EU Presidency

Starts
Ends
(Timezone - Europe/Berlin)
Hotel Diplomat (Prague, Czechia )

Hotel Diplomat

Prague, Czechia
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, now the e-IRG Workshop under Czech EU Presidency will be organized as a face-to-face event bringing together all e-IRG stakeholder in Prague. Still, remote participation will be possible. In both cases, registration is required (free of charge).

1. Session 1 - "Coordination and collaboration among European e-Infrastructures - The e-IRG White Paper 2022"
The pre-final version of the e-IRG White Paper 2022 will be presented comprising an analysis of responses to a questionnaire prepared by e-IRG on coordination and collaboration among EU e-Infrastructures.  The questionnaire was sent to the major EU e-Infrastructure initiatives. Further inputs from them will be presented during the session, while feedback from the e-IRG major audiences, namely, the policy makers and funders (including the EC, DG RTD and DG Connect), the e-Infrastructures themselves (commenting also on each others’ views), and the end users.

2. Session 2 - "Energy crisis and e-Infrastructures"

The current energy crisis as a result of the war in Ukraine has an impact on all areas of life and thus also on the Research Infrastructures and e-Infrastructures. RIs and e-Infrastructures are recognised as critical infrastructures, because Research and Innovation (R&I) ecosystems are more and more linked with societal challenges, local economies and the citizens, and are also enablers for development and economic growth. The increasing costs for operations (high energy prices and inflation) and also maintenance (including rising costs for equipment) need to be better understood and addressed. Also, capital expenses are also growing. Projections are difficult and the initial approach of RIs and e-Infrastructures is to reduce their operation time, which has a direct negative impact on R&I. Smaller players such as computing and data centres of universities, research centres and libraries may be in a more difficult situation as their budgets are in many cases limited and their operations are less cost effective than specialised centralised, national or European centres. Also the topic of Green IT and energy efficient data centres is becoming even more relevant. The speakers of this session will reflect on the above topics.

3. Session 3 - "Data Infrastructures and Data Spaces"

Since Data Infrastructures, Spaces and Repositories are indispensable parts of the e-Infrastructure(s) serving the users and accomplishing the European Open Science policy, a dedicated session at the e-IRG Workshop is organised. The presentations will span from policies to the implementation. A main focus will be on the upcoming (thematic) Common European Data Spaces and their interconnection with the existing data infrastructure landscape in the research domain, including EOSC (as the main horizontal Data Space for research and science).


4. Session "Interlinking - interaction between data, publications and PIDs"

Research Data Management (RDM) highlights the (best) practices referring to data-related activities, mostly tied to scientific publications where the data have been used, and contain relevant information such as software, hardware and policies ruling their use and decisions. Data Management Plans (DMPs) capture RDM activities along with the tools, actors and outputs that have managed and produced them, thus gathering all necessary information for research to be explainable and reproducible. FAIR principles, and PIDs in particular, provide unique means for registration, findability and provenance of data and other research outputs. Knowledge Graphs grow by consuming such information in a contextualized manner that allows proper indexing, retrieval, and links to be created across collected scientific information. The session will discuss possible approaches of interlinking and interconnecting services, workflows and outputs in evolving Open and FAIR ecosystems focusing on automations and machine actionability. Experts will reflect on all these topics and on policy approaches for their harmonisation and interoperability. 

 

Looking forward to a fruitful workshop

Paolo Budroni, e-IRG Chair, Jan Gruntorad, e-IRG co-Chair, 

Fotis Karayannis, Jan Wiebelitz, e-IRG Support Project 

e-IRG (@eirgeu) / Twitter

(1) #eirg - Twitter Search / Twitter

 

A short Communique with a summary of the presentations and discussions of the Workshop can be found below and on Zenodo.

Registration
e-IRG Workshop under Czech EU Presidency
Participants
  • Alicia Gomez
  • Alrun Hauke
  • Anna Cattani-Scholz
  • Anna Dědinová
  • Christine Dijkstra
  • Dejan Dvorsek
  • Elise Harder
  • Eliška Kačerová
  • Fulvio Galeazzi
  • Jan Burian
  • Jan Růžička
  • Jana Kolar
  • Jana Lukešová
  • Jiri Chocholousek
  • Jiri Petrak
  • Jiří Dědina
  • Jiří Veselý
  • János Mohácsi
  • Marie Kahounová
  • Marko Bonac
  • Michail Maragkakis
  • Michal Jirkovsky
  • Michal Krsek
  • Miroslav Pavlovský
  • Pavel Mánek
  • Penny Labropoulou
  • Petr Cermak
  • Petr Rybin
  • Toivo Räim
  • Tomáš Vítek
  • Zdenek Gütter
  • Ülar Allas
  • Štěpán Hubáček
  • +105
  • Monday, December 12
    • 1:30 PM 3:30 PM
      Coordination and collaboration among European e-Infrastructures - the e-IRG White Paper 2022

      The session will be used to present the pre-final version of the e-IRG White Paper 2022, which comprises the analysis of responses to the guiding questions on coordination and collaboration between European e-Infrastructures. The Guiding Questions were sent to the e-Infrastructure initiatives and the analysis of their inputs will be presented. The session will be used to request further feedback from the e-IRG major audiences, namely, the policy makers and funders (including the EC, both DG RTD and DG Connect), the e-Infrastructures themselves (commenting also on each others’ views), and the end users. This workshop will act as the final round of consultation before the publication of the e-IRG White Paper 2022 and the inputs received will be integrated into its final version that will be released after the e-IRG Workshop.

      • 1:30 PM
        Opening and Welcome 10m

        Opening and Welcome by the Deputy Minister of Education, Youths and Sports of the Czech Republic, the e-IRG Chair and the Czech Republic Delegation

        Speakers: Jan Gruntorad (e-IRG vice Chair, Czech e-IRG Delegate), Prof. Radka Wildová (Deputy minister of Education, Youths and Sports of the Czech Republic), Paolo Budroni (e-IRG Chair)
      • 1:40 PM
        e-IRG White Paper 2022 15m
        Speakers: Paolo Budroni (e-IRG Chair), Dr Fotis Karayannis (e-IRGSP7, e-IRG White Paper editor)
      • 1:55 PM
        Short statements from the e-Infrastructures and ESFRI 50m

        Jana Kolar (ESFRI)

        Speakers: Cathrin Stöver (GEANT), Sergio Andreozzi (EGI), Antti Pursula (EUDAT), Natalia Manola (OpenAIRE), Philippe Segers (PRACE), Josephine Woods (tbc) (EuroHPC), Ignacio Blanquer (EOSC-A), Volker Beckmann (MESR), Jana Kolar (ESFRI)
      • 2:45 PM
        Statements from the EC 15m

        DG RTD, DG CNECT

        SCHOUPPE Michel Michel.Schouppe@ec.europa.eu

        Speaker: Michel Schouppe (EC)
      • 3:00 PM
        Panel discussion 30m
    • 3:30 PM 4:00 PM
      Coffee Break 30m
    • 4:00 PM 6:00 PM
      Energy crisis and e-Infrastructures

      The current energy crisis has an impact on all areas of life and thus also on the Research Infrastructures and e-Infrastructures. RIs and e-Infrastructures are recognised as critical infrastructures, because research and innovation ecosystems are more and more linked with societal challenges, local economies and the citizens, and are also enablers for development and economic growth. Nevertheless the increasing costs for maintenance and operation need to be addressed. The following questions will be addressed in this session:
      * What is / are the main risks from the energy crises and corresponding cases for e-Infrastructures?
      * How can the awareness about the risk case be raised? (and at what level?)
      * Which entity is deciding about the financial flows towards the e-Infrastructures?
      * What is the logic behind such decisions?
      * About the role of the Funders: what is more important for their decisions:
      ** the possible lack of energy
      ** the inflation
      ** the fragmentation of the many e-Infrastructures servers?
      * Is “securing operations” the priority number 1 issue or are there priorities?
      * What can we learn from commercial providers of e-Infrastructures (and related services)? Do we need a dialogue with them? (lessons learned dialogue)
      * What could be the recommendations about efficiency?
      * How strong is the impact of the “Energy crisis and its impact on e-Infrastructures” on the research processes?
      * How much energy do the e-Infrastructures consume?

      • 4:00 PM
        Introduction to the topic 5m
        Speaker: Stefan Hanslik (Austria e-IRG delegate)
      • 4:05 PM
        Cost of e-Infrastructures: Rising energy costs (OPEX), impact of inflation 15m

        The presentation discusses the effects of energy cost and inflation on OPEX and CAPEX of e-Infrastructures and makes suggestions on the challenges raised.

        Speaker: Sandra Cohen (Athens University of Economics and Business)
      • 4:20 PM
        Energy crisis impact on Universities and Research data centres 20m

        Ülar Allas: There are three major HPC service providers in Estonia. The energy crisis affects the operation of HPC centers, making it more expensive. The presentation provides an overview of how Estonian HPC centers cope in difficult times.

        Speakers: Martin Střelec (University of West Bohemia, Pilsen), Ülar Allas (University of Tartu), Slaven Mihaljević (University of Zagreb, University Computing Centre (SRCE))
      • 4:40 PM
        Energy crisis impact on major national or European e-Infrastructure provider 20m

        Presentation gives a short overview of the situation in Czech e-Infrastructure and outlines interesting challenges and opportunities for the infrastructure provider.

        Speakers: Jan Růžička (CESNET), János Mohácsi, Mirjam van Daalen (Paul Scherrer Institute)
      • 5:00 PM
        Report from EOSC Task Force Financial Sustainability 15m
        Speaker: Jan Meijer (Norwegian e-IRG delegate)
      • 5:15 PM
        Energy crisis impact on Research & Innovation 15m

        Moving on from the pandemic, the RIs find themselves in a difficult situation, facing delays from the pandemic, increased inflation and energy prices at extreme levels. It is unlikely that governments in the short term will be able to compensate the large increase in costs. This causes the RIs to once again adapt to a new situation, which can be tackled in different ways and in which the solution is not a simple one but a complex combination of savings, projects put on hold and even complete shut-downs. However, the energy crisis also pushes a strive towards more energy sufficient approaches for the facilities, and the circumstances could potentially lead to a big leap in technology advancement and result in a more sustainable situation for research infrastructures in the future.

        Speaker: Anna Malkoch (Swedish e-IRG Delegate)
      • 5:30 PM
        Panel discussion 30m
        Speakers: Stefan Hanslik (AT e-IRG Delegate and e-IRG chair elect), Norbert Meyer (PCSS)
  • Tuesday, December 13
    • 10:00 AM 12:00 PM
      Data Infrastructures and Data Spaces

      Since Data Infrastructures including Data Repositories and EU Data Spaces are indispensable parts of the e-Infrastructure(s) serving the users and contributing towards the European Open Science policy,, a dedicated session at the e-IRG Workshop is organised to discuss the current state of affairs. Views for possible cross-fertilisation or interlinking of these efforts will be debated. The presentations will focus mainly on policy and strategy-related approaches, but operational aspects can be also tackled. Emphasis will be given on the upcoming thematic European Data Spaces and their interconnection with EOSC and the existing data infrastructure landscape in the research domain.

      • 10:00 AM
        Opening and Welcome 10m
        Speakers: Prof. Paolo Budroni (e-IRG Chair), Jan Gruntorad (Czech e-IRG Delegate)
      • 10:10 AM
        Short introduction to Common European Data Spaces 10m
        Speakers: Chris de Loof (belnet), René Buch (tbc)
      • 10:20 AM
        Data Act / Data Governance Act relevance for the building up of the data spaces 15m
        Speaker: Federico Milani (CNECT G1)
      • 10:35 AM
        A thematic Data Space: European Health Data Space (EHDS) 15m

        The regulation for the European Health Data Space (EHDS) has been under discussion between the European Commission (DG SANTE, DG-CNECT, DG-RTD) and the EU member states this year. Its main objectives are to ensure EU individuals to have increased control over their health data and to provide a consistent, trustworthy and efficient set–up for the use of health data for research, innovation, policy-making and regulatory activities. I will highlight lessons learnt from the discussions around this regulation.

        Speaker: Volker Beckmann (MESR)
      • 10:50 AM
        Language Data Space 15m
        Speaker: Franciska de Jong (CLARIN)
      • 11:05 AM
        Common European Data Spaces: challenges and opportunities 15m

        We will discuss ongoing work in the context of data.europa.eu, exploring existing and emerging developments and initiatives around data sharing with data spaces (e.gInternational Data Spaces Association, GAIA-X and OPEN DEI) to identify data holders of open data who are involved in ongoing data space implementations; and reflect on the role that open data portals could play in these implementations.

        Speaker: Elena Simperl
      • 11:20 AM
        Panel discussion: Coordination across Common European Data Spaces and the European Open Science Cloud 30m
        Speakers: Jan Hrušák, Ingrid Dillo
      • 11:50 AM
        Closing 10m
        Speaker: Prof. Paolo Budroni (e-IRG Chair)
    • 1:30 PM 3:45 PM
      Interlinking - interaction between data, publications and PIDs

      Data, scholarly information about their exploitation from publications and all kinds of identifiers need to be interlinked to provide an ecosystem that is machine-actionable and ”FAIR”-enough. Thus, the session will be used to discuss possible approaches on such interlinking and interactions. The status of affairs in each of the related areas will be reviewed and views on their interlinking will be proposed. For example, Knowledge Graphs provide structured information and means to interconnect different types of research artefacts (e.g. publications, data, software, samples, instruments). Whereas Data Management Plans provide information about the data itself and where they are stored. Persistent identifiers are also crucial in providing unique means for registration, findability and provenance of such artefacts. Experts will reflect on the interlinking of all these topics and on policy approaches for their harmonisation and interoperability.

      • 1:30 PM
        Opening and Welcome 5m
        Speaker: Prof. Paolo Budroni (e-IRG Chair)
      • 1:35 PM
        FAIRDO Conference outcome 15m

        This talk reviews the lead-up to the first FAIRDO conference this past October, including the problems that the Forum was created to address and the short history of the Forum to date, followed by a description of the conference, its outcomes, and the future intentions and goals of the Forum.

        Speaker: Larry Lannom
      • 1:50 PM
        Experiences with the Earth System Science Data 15m

        This talk summarizes 10 years of experience – successes and bottlenecks – with the linking of journal articles and datasets (with a brief excursus on the linking ecosystems of publishers). The publisher’s early attempts at enabling “executable research compendia” offer a peek into what will be expected of the global e-infrastructure.

        Speaker: Hans Pfeiffenberger (Alfred Wegener Institut)
      • 2:05 PM
        PID Graph 15m

        Persistent identifiers and their associated metadata form a graph. This presentation will introduce the PID Graph developed by DataCite and will discuss how the community can both contribute and benefit from this important infrastructure.

        Speaker: Gabriela Mejias (Datacite)
      • 2:20 PM
        Machine-Actionable DMPs 15m

        In this talk I will outline the key differences between traditional DMPs and machine-actionable DMPs. You will get to know what the current status is and in what way maDMPs can improve the current practice of research data management.

        Speaker: Tomasz Miksa (TU Wien)
      • 2:35 PM
        The OpenAIRE DMP Argos tool and the OpenAIRE Research Graph 15m
        Speaker: Natalia Manola (OpenAIRE)
      • 2:50 PM
        FAIR scientific information with the Open Research Knowledge Graph 15m

        Scientific information is buried in natural language text documents. The reuse of scientific information is therefore insufficiently supported by machines. The Open Research Knowledge Graph (ORKG) aims to shape a future scholarly publishing and communication where the contents of scholarly articles are FAIR research data. This presentation will introduce ORKG and motivate its development.

        Speaker: Markus Stocker
      • 3:05 PM
        Panel discussion 30m
      • 3:35 PM
        Closing 10m
        Speakers: Paolo Budroni (TU Vienna), Jan Gruntorad (Czech e-IRG Delegate)