Long-term sustainability of a distributed RI: the EPOS case

Abstract

The European Plate Observing System (EPOS) is a distributed research infrastructure (RI) with the mission to establish and maintain sustainable and long-term access to solid Earth science data and services by integrating the diverse national research infrastructures under a common federated framework governed by EPOS ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium). This paper presents the EPOS approach to ensure financial viability and to tackle the challenge of long-term sustainability of the RI during its operational phase. The EPOS approach to sustainable operation considers the scientific impact and the promotion of scientific research as the preconditions to achieve long-term sustainability. Enabling scientific excellence implies that high-quality data and services are provided reliably and continuously to establish the RI as the enabler of investigations to solid Earth scientists. The strategic approach and the solutions adopted by EPOS ERIC to address the long-term sustainability of a pan-European distributed RI are discussed in this paper focusing on the governance structure, considered as the qualifying dimension that gathers and connects the financial, legal and technical dimensions. The governance and the financial models are discussed to delineate the legal framework necessary to operate the EPOS RI relying on the implemented technical solutions. A sufficiently stable investment environment is necessary to allow the RI to concentrate on providing high quality services for their user communities. This paper discusses the current actions and challenges to be addressed for achieving this goal.

Integrating geological data in Europe to foster multidisciplinary research

“…To follow the path taken internationally by this very same community since 20 years, TCS GIM decided early in the EPOS-IP project that it would base its IT work solely on the ISO, OGC, IUGS/CGI, INSPIRE, W3C and RDA published identified standards and best-practices baseline. This philosophy has applied from this point in the following steps of the EPOS Operational Phase [Cocco et al, 2022;Saleh Contell et al, 2022]. When needed, this work also contributed to the evolution of these standards.…”

“…Depending upon the scope of the supporting projects, the geographical extension ranges from pilot study areas to the European continent. As part of the EPOS-IP project (2014-2019) 2 [Cocco et al, 2022;Saleh Contell et al, 2022], the geological information working group selected a subset of these data to be used as reference knowledge and background by the data and products services of other EPOS thematic groups, such as seismology, near fault observatories and volcanoes. These are (i) the geological map of Europe at 1:1,000,000 scale, (ii) boreholes (geotechnical and scientific drilling, underground water, mineral resources exploration), (iii) mineral occurrences and mines and (iv) 3D geological models.…”

Data Management in Distributed, Federated Research Infrastructures: The Case of EPOS

“…First, concerning the Integrated Core Services Central Hub, EPOS ERIC has set up a multi-year partnership agreement (MYPA) with Hosting Organisations to regulate the technical, legal, financial and governance aspects of the hosting infrastructure (Contell et al 2022). This agreement contains a technical annex that specifies the conditions to ensure continuous availability of the EPOS Data Portal, including resources and procedures for continuous and uninterrupted provision of the services, incident management, backup and restore.…”

“…Second, to ensure the provision of data and products, the EPOS solution has been to establish legal agreements (Collaboration Agreements) (Contell et al 2022) between EPOS ERIC and research organisations representing each thematic node (TCS). In particular, collaboration agreements cover: TCS Governance and Coordination and TCS Data and Service provision.…”