Nordic e-Infrastructure
Collaboration
Facilitating development and operation of
high-quality e-Infrastructure solutions of joint
Nordic interest
2001
2002
2003
2006
2012
Mission
• Supporting collaboration on e-Infrastructure in the
Nordic region
• Providing added value to researchers and national
funders
• Contributing to more cost-efficient development and
deployment of e-Infrastructure services
• Supporting the national e-Infrastructure providers in
terms of
– competence building
– task sharing
– joint operation of services
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NeIC ‘Owners’
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NeIC Board
NeIC Director
NT1
GEN
BMS
ADM
Area Coordinator
Area Coordinator
Area Coordinator
Area Coordinator
User
Forum
Project
Provider
Forum
Project
Operations
Project
User
Forum
Project
Project
Project
Project
Project
Operations
Bottom-up project initiation
Top-down: by research councils or e-infrastructures
NeIC
Bottom-up: by research communities.
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Idea
Collaborator
Memo
NeIC XT
Project
directive
YES
Stakeholder
forum
Rev. project
directive
NO
YES
Co-funding
partners
Collaboration
agreement
NO
NO
YES
We have a
project!
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Collaboration model
NeIC – on behalf of the partnership
Service Agreements
Employer
Institution:
Project
Manager
Employer
Institution:
Project
Personnel
Employer
Institution:
Project
Personnel
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Project organization
Steering group
Partners, NeIC chairing
Reference group
Researchers
Project manager
Reference group
National providers
Project team
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Bio- and Medical Sciences
BMS Area established by NeIC Board
– In response to Letters of Interest from Nordic research communities
• Project on Sensitive BMS Data – Tryggve
– In response to “Nordic” ELIXIR, BBMRI, Eurobioimaging communities
– strongly connected to ELIXIR (ESFRI)
• Relevant to BBMRI, bio-imaging and others
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Background: Sharing of BMS data
Public
Metadata such as %males in study,
contact info, tissue types (cf MIABIS).
Shareable
Anonymized or non-identifiable data.
Must conform to signed terms of use.
Non-shareable
Non-anonymized or directly identifiable
data; gene sequences, images of faces,
keys connecting e.g. “donor001” to the
real identities of people.
In reality, sharing is often done by enlarging the project team
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Background: Current practice for sharing sensitive data
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Discover data, and track legal custodianship
Do legal work to conform to terms of use
Send contracts around for signature
Save data on encrypted CD
Send CD and encryption key separately
Store CD in safe, in locked room, only signed parties have access
Work with data in environment that meets these standards
Mistakes are possible, but illegal:
• Saving data to USB stick
• Working with data on laptop
• …
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NeIC BMS project on sensitive BMS data - Tryggve
Aims for Tryggve
• Change current practice for sharing sensitive data, give scientists
more time for science
• Create environment where it is easier not to break the law
• Ensure that only authorized people can use data
Aims are not
• To change legal framework
• To change who gets to use data
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High performance computing - Cognitus
In response to NeIC Board
• Coordinating evaluation of
– Nordic HPC project (Iceland facility)
– Use of PRACE
• Follow up through science case for Nordic collaboration on HPC
– What are the needs of research communities
– How do needs translate into technical requirements?
– What national-Nordic-international ecosystem can cater for needs?
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Nordic Cloud for research
In response to national e-Infrastructure providers
• Creating a Nordic federated cloud service driven by need of Nordic
researchers
• Computing and data management on any national cloud resource
• Common trusted access infrastructure (KALMAR2)
• Sharing knowledge and technology on cloud management
• Sharing user experiences for service improvement
• Sharing data - enabling new research and avoiding data lost
• Infrastructure for sharing – transparency of accounting, billing,
funding
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Data services - B2Share Nordic
In response to: national e-Infrastructure providers
• B2Share: European data service (EUDAT)
• Long-term store and share, persistent identifiers
• Customizing B2Share for Nordic communities
–
–
–
–
–
–
BBMRI
EISCAT
ICOS - Integrated Carbon Observation System
CLSi – Computational Life Science initiative (UoOslo)
INCF – International Neuroinformatics Initiative
NRM – Naturhistoriska riksmuseet
• Project ends 2014
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Interest from Nordic research communities
• Letters of Interest received 15. May, 2014
–
–
–
–
–
Physics
Climate science
Language science
Biosciences
Archeology
• New strategic areas
• NeIC 2016-20
• Open door: National e-Infrastructure providers & affiliates
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In Conclusion
1. Small national silos of e-infrastructures are
– expensive
– non-sustainable
– non-interoperable
2. This claim holds for both Nordics and Baltics
3. Untapped potential for e-Infrastructure collaboration
4. NeIC@Norden provides a framework for facilitating collaboration
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Software for Scientific Applications - ARC
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
NorduGrid consortium
Related, but not NeIC
Nordics, Baltics and beyond
A Nordic success story, initiated by NCM funds
Increasing uptake in high-energy physics
Sustainability for multi-national scientific software?
This is also infrastructure…
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Evaluating the Nordic use of PRACE
• Commissioned by the NeIC Board
• Coordinated by NeIC
• Mandated to international expert committee
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Evaluation highlights
• Nordic research groups have been very successful in PRACE
• Transparency is an issue
• Nordic needs ~25% of a PRACE Tier-0 system
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Nordic Cloud
• Sharing knowledge and setting best practices on management of
cloud services
• Creating a Nordic federated cloud service driven by the need of
the Nordic researchers
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Project goals
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Enable the Nordic researchers to compute and manage data on any
Nordic Cloud resource
Enable easy access through the KALMAR2 federated trust service
Share technologies to improve quality and security of cloud services
Share user experiences on a Nordic level to improve quality and to
increase the available set of services
Share cloud administrative work – improve the service availability to
the users
Enable data sharing (enabling new research) and – increase overall
availability and security of data (avoiding data loss)
Create a resource sharing solution to simplify the usage and sharing of
Nordic Cloud resources
Enable billing and accounting within the Nordic Cloud – to create a fair
sharing of resources and funding. This will give better alignment with
external research funding.
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Expected benefit
•
Easier collaboration for researchers
– Analysis can be done where the data is
– Smoothing peaks and valleys between resource demand and capacity in
the countries
•
•
•
•
•
•
Reduces the work needed in each country
Improves security and broadens the possibility for development
Supports multinational research programs by making it easier to use
and fund services provided by several national resource centers
Simplifies compensation of possible resource usage imbalances
between countries for NeIC. In addition, the Nordic Cloud
Marketplace enables projects with external users (industry and nonNordic users)
Co-ordination and interface point towards European cloud initiatives
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NeIC Budget 2014 (kNOK)
NordForsk
10 500
Denmark
3 219
Finland
3 219
Norway
3 219
Sweden
3 219
Iceland
194
In kind from partners
10 288
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