Difference between revisions of "IMarine Liaisons"

Revision as of 19:12, 1 February 2013

This page realizes D2.5; Reports on interactions with FP7 projects and other R&D national/international programmes on inter-project coordination and collaboration.

It is due at Month 15 aka January 2013

For each collaboration the following information are reported:

1. A description of the Project/Initiative and its Objectives;
2. The description of the Community of PracticeA term coined to capture an "activity system" that includes individuals who are united in action and in the meaning that "action" has for them and for the larger collective. The communities of practice are "virtual", ''i.e.'', they are not formal structures, such as departments or project teams. Instead, these communities exist in the minds of their members, are glued together by the connections they have with each other, as well as by their specific shared problems or areas of interest. The generation of knowledge in communities of practice occurs when people participate in problem solving and share the knowledge necessary to solve the problems. served/involved;
3. A description of the established collaboration agreement;
4. The detailed plan and dates, if this is available.

The initiatives are then summarized in an overview table.

Inter project coordination and collaboration

Collaboration plan

The plan at the start of the project for collaboration is described in the third iMarine objective:

"(iii) the extension, adaptation and deployment of a rich set of software components that implement these services. Instrumental in the activities of iMarine will be the establishment of an active set of collaborations with other international initiatives. The aim will be to reuse and render interoperable existing policies, technologies, and e-infrastructures. By leveraging on these collaborations and by taking advantage of additional funding that these organizations invest in the project, the number of available resources brought into play will be maximized."

Collaboration opportunities that were already identified at project inception were ...

EGI

ERINA+

EU OpenBio

VLIZ

NEAFC

New opportunities for collaboration

many collaboration opportunities emerged during P1 of the project, and this dynamic list is expected to grow substantially towards project completion. Not all opportunities are listed here, but only those where a collaboration or coordination action was discussed at WP level or above. In addition, some collaborations were discussed but not pursued due to non-disclosure agreements, software incompatibilities, or other blocking issues. Only real "prospects" are included.

The collaboration opportunities and the co-ordination thereof collected here summarize the effort. Where the collaboration has resulted in concrete activities, these are described elsewhere. This deliverable documents the collaboration at high-level only.

Each Collaboration is first described by the names, the entities involved, the goal and objectives, and some activities. A brief overview of the activity table is given, and also the intended type of collaboration is mentioned. These types go from a loose, consumption like collaboration, to a full sharing of project resource development. In a short overview as presented in this page, a detailed classification of collaboration types is not feasible, and they have to be summarized as follwos:

1. Data sharing; exchange data programmatically between infrastructures;
2. VREVirtual Research Environment. Exploitation; deliver a VREVirtual Research Environment. to a new community;
3. Software development; share the development of services between frameworks;
4. Software integration; convert existing code to execute on to e-InfrastructureAn operational combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data and services), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organizational structures needed to support research efforts and collaboration in the large., e.g. in gCube;
5. Co-development; write software and share code to execute on the e-InfrastructureAn operational combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data and services), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organizational structures needed to support research efforts and collaboration in the large..

Ultimately, also the status of the collaboration is activity is reported, which can be only one of :

1. Aborted; The collaboration was not achieved;
2. On-hold; The activities are on hold, pending
3. Planning; The collaboration plan is being drafted;
4. Development; the collaboration resources are being developed for implementation;
5. Validation; the delivered components (or resource, or the exploitation of existing resources) is being validated by collaboration partners;
6. Implemented; the collaboration is active.

Progress table

Inter-projects Coordination

The inter-projects activities may not only result in collaboration (i.e. partaking in a shared activity), but can also result in a co-ordination effort. This can manifest itself in bundling resources to approach external communities, reduce overlap in development effort by aligning activities, and avoid duplication of effort by building on components from other projects. This is mainly an activity of negotiating and information exchange.

Another aspect of inter-project coordination is the planning and scheduling of collaboration activities. This is not detailed for each individual case, rather an approach was adopted where roles were distributed between the iMarine Board, the Steering Board, and the wider EA-CoPCommunity of Practice.. Where appropriate, a note is made in the collaboration activity list below. Important cases where iMarine participates in co-ordination efforts, but where collaboration is not the objective are:

FLUX;

SMX-Steering Committee;

ABNJ;

Collaboration priorities

From the above initiatives, several priority collaborations emerge that are pursued with more vigor than the others. They promise to deliver clear advantages to the the project consortium and will be important to achieve a sustainable solution for iMarine functionality, the underlying D4ScienceAn e-Infrastructure operated by the D4Science.org initiative. infrastructure, and the gCube technologies.

iMarine technology collaboration priorities

EMI

ERINA+

EUBRazilOpenBio

EA-CoPCommunity of Practice.

VLIZ The sub-contract with VLIZ aims to reduce the data-management burden for VLIZ, while increasing the quality (indicators)

NEAFC

EMODNet The collaboration with EMODNet is given shape through a collaboration with VLIZ. The consumption of Species data by the infrastructure allows biodiversity data managers to harmonize and upgrade the quality of their data products. The collaboration is currently at the level of aligning standards, but when effective products are made available in the e-InfrastructureAn operational combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data and services), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organizational structures needed to support research efforts and collaboration in the large., this may result in collaboration at service and VREVirtual Research Environment. level.

FishFinder The collaboration with the FAO Species Identification and has as working title [FishFinder]. The collaboration allows the e-InfrastructureAn operational combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data and services), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organizational structures needed to support research efforts and collaboration in the large. access to a rich resource of species information, while the group will be equiped with a reporting environment to add Species Identification Sheets. the Toolset evidences the value of the iMarine reporting tools, including the work-flow and templating functions.

VocBench The collaboration with the VocBench aims to enrich the e-InfrastructureAn operational combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data and services), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organizational structures needed to support research efforts and collaboration in the large. with vocabulary management tools. The need is in the management of code lists of relevance to the iMarine EA-CoPCommunity of Practice.; Local Species names, Gears, Ports, etc. To this end, the VocBench is enriched by the project with specific facilities, this collaboration, known as [Cotrix] started in Jan 2013, and FAO oversees the activities. A first result is expected in early April 2013, after which the mapping between code lists and data will be added. The priority is high.

TunaAtlas The collaboration with the Tuna Atlas data managers in FAO aims to establish an interconnected network of geospatial data. This will enable the seamless consumption of FAO species distribution maps by iMarine services, and vice, versa, allow the re-use of iMarine geospatial products in FAO. The collaboration aligns the metadata registration in the respective GeoNetwork instances, and has high priority.

Data.fao.org The collaboration with data.fao.org is a key if iMarine manages to position itself a a data suite for resource poor initiatives. This would enable a cost-effective means to geographically dispersed institutions to share their data with FAO and the world at large. Collaboration at this stage is at the level of aligning to FAO standards and protocols; i.e. low-level.

Eurostat FAO has a long-term collaboration with Eurostat through the SEIF project. This has resulted in the alignment of codes, and the sharing of data using SDMX. The integration of SDMX in the e-InfrastructureAn operational combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data and services), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organizational structures needed to support research efforts and collaboration in the large. will enable a collaboration also at the level of software development and work-flow support. Priority is medium, as most of the components have already been delivered.

VME-DB FAO is a strong partner in the Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem Data Base project, where it also proposed the exploitation of iMarine services for e.g. data management, species taxonomy and occurrence data, maps and reporting. The project has yet to decide on the software infrastructure, but the exploitation of one or more VREVirtual Research Environment.'s is foreseen. The priority is high.

Finally, the iMarine capabilities have been demonstrated to a large number of other initiatives, and /or interested individuals. Several of these have expressed an interest to become involved, and early negotiations have started with e.g. GOLD and BestTuna to offer services for these initiatives, also with a view on future sustainability.