"HELIX NEBULA - THE SCIENCE CLOUD", A EUROPEAN SCIENCE DRIVEN CROSS-DOMAIN INITIATIVE IMPLEMENTED IN VIA AN ACTIVE PPP SET-UP.

Abstract:

Helix Nebula, a European science cross-domain initiative building on an active PPP, is aiming to implement the concept of an open science commons[1] while using a cloud hybrid model[2] as the proposed implementation solution. This approach allows leveraging and merging of complementary data intensive Earth Science disciplines (e.g. instrumentation[3] and modeling), without introducing significant changes in the contributors’ operational set-up. Considering the seamless integration with life-science (e.g. EMBL), scientific exploitation of meteorological, climate, and Earth Observation data and models open an enormous potential for new big data science.

The work of Helix Nebula has shown that is it feasible to interoperate publicly funded infrastructures, such as EGI [5] and GEANT [6], with commercial cloud services. Such hybrid systems are in the interest of the existing users of publicly funded infrastructures and funding agencies because they will provide “freedom and choice” over the type of computing resources to be consumed and the manner in which they can be obtained.

But to offer such freedom and choice across a spectrum of suppliers, various issues such as intellectual property, legal responsibility, service quality agreements and related issues need to be addressed. Finding solutions to these issues is one of the goals of the Helix Nebula initiative.

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[1] http://www.egi.eu/news-and-media/publications/OpenScienceCommons_v3.pdf

[2] http://www.helix-nebula.eu/events/towards-the-european-open-science-cloud

[3] e.g. https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/sentinel-data-access

[5] http://www.egi.eu/

[6] http://www.geant.net/

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