User-driven e-infrastructure innovation

Deadline: Mar 30, 2016  
CALL EXPIRED

Topic Description

There is a need to support user-driven design and prototyping of innovative e-infrastructure services and applications to meet the needs of those communities that push the envelope in scientific and technological domains requiring top-of-the range capacity in the long term. It is also important to promote multi-domain community-driven approaches to fully exploit core e-infrastructure services with high economic innovation potential. With the support of, for example, independent software vendors, engineering companies, innovation clusters and Research and technology organisations, e-infrastructures should open up to innovative stakeholders, including researchers, citizens and SMEs, to exploit a wide range of technology developments, research results and data.

Opening e-infrastructures to develop and test innovative functionalities and advanced technology entails the support to Open Science and stairways for excellence to increase citizen's trust in science, bridging the gap between the leading research and education communities and the wider population.

Proposals will address only one of the points below. At least one proposal for each point will be selected:

Exploitation of e-infrastructures for user-driven innovation and pilots responding to community specific challenges

(1) Proposals are expected to support, through open e-infrastructure resources, specific requirements of European initiatives addressing societal challenges (e.g. on environment and marine sustainability, agriculture and biodiversity, health and human brain etc.). e-Infrastructures should enable fast prototyping and development of innovative networking, data and computing intensive application and services promoting adaptation, extension and repurposing of basic services. Special attention should be devoted to standardisation to make data and software reusable across the board. The network, data and computing services should lead to economies of scale and facilitate access to resources by innovators.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 2 and 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

(2) Proposals are expected to stimulate the innovation potential of innovative actors, SMEs in particular, either as suppliers of technologies and services for e-infrastructures or as users of e-infrastructures to improve their own product and service offering. The proposals shall involve actions led by innovative actors (notably SMEs) for which financial support will be granted (minimum 80% of the EU funding requested by the proposal)[[In line with the conditions set out in Part K of the General Annexes.]]. If the maximum financial support per innovative actor exceeds EUR 60.000 (it should however never go beyond EUR 150.000) the proposal should explain why this is necessary for the objectives of the action.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 5 and 6 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts. It is expected that one proposal will be selected.

(3) Development of a pan-European identity federation services for researchers, educators and students, in compliance with existing identity inter-federation efforts (including Eduroam and Edugain). Stimulate AAI services supporting communities involved in the emerging data-rich science era to manage and share their resources. It shall respond to requirements of cybersecurity and information assurance towards integrated identity management across-disciplines and be interoperable at global level.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 2.5 and 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts. It is expected that one proposal will be selected.

Innovation for Open Science e-infrastructures and services

(4) Reuse and improve (performance, quality, reputation, etc) the open access repository and publishing platform infrastructure for prototyping new infrastructure services in support of open science (e.g. new forms of publishing, machine-assisted knowledge extraction services from heterogeneous data resources and strengthening of machine readability and other discovery services). Prototyping of open review and research certification services engaging researchers, educators and students. Also registration and archiving services can be targeted. Developing further and widening the scope of the European Open Science e-infrastructure. Proposals should address an open scientific knowledge management infrastructure in which scientific and educational information repositories and publishing platforms form a visible part of an inter-connected and global knowledge system. Proposals can target any relevant parts of the scientific information ecosystem to enhance the links between literature, data, software, models and other digital objects. The proposed prototypes should have the potential to become part of an interoperable framework in order to enable more efficient digital science as well as transparent evaluation of research and reproducibility of results. Proposals should consider barriers (including legal) to data sharing in the context of these new services and assess the possibility of using pan-European authentication and authorization infrastructures.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 1 and 2 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Exploitation of e-infrastructures for user-driven innovation and pilots responding to community specific challenges: These actions will accelerate the development of innovative data and computing intensive services in areas of social relevance such as Health, Environment monitoring and management. It will foster the use of open e-infrastructures eco-systems to innovative use promoting smooth collaboration among and between the large European Policy data intensive initiatives. It will bridge the gap between adjacent but not connected scientific communities and promote wide dissemination of data including to the citizens engaged in science. It will support collaboration in data provision and exchange across regional and national related infrastructures allowing the integration of data from a myriad of resources and research communities.

Successful proposals will increase the number of SMEs that are aware of available e-infrastructures resources and services and become active innovators as users and or suppliers of e-infrastructures. Stronger links between e-infrastructure operators and other actors in the innovation chain, such as independent software vendors, innovation clusters and Research and technology organisations, will be put in place. The value of existing scientific information infrastructures will increase with the addition of new interoperable and/or integrated services. Successful proposals will have an impact in making European and global intellectual capital available to researchers, business and citizens. This will support scientific advances now and generate innovation with economic impact leveraging e-infrastructures such as GÉANT. The knowledge capital will be better preserved for further exploitation by future digital-born generations.

Innovation for Open Science e-infrastructures and services: successful proposals will support the objectives of Open Science and contribute, with innovative services, to the modernization of the underlying e-infrastructures and improve access to content and resources through federated management.