CORDIS launches revamped Research Infrastructures service
CORDIS, the Community Research and Development Information Service, has launched a newly revamped information service on 'research infrastructures', referring to facilities and resources that provide essential services to the research community, whether academic or industrial. The new-look service provides a list of the projects funded so far under this activity area of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), organised according to the five support activities: 1. Transnational Access (TA) to major research infrastructures; 2. Integrating Activities: Integrated Infrastructures Initiatives (I3) and Coordination Actions (CA); 3. Communication Network Development (CND) such as GEANT and Grids; 4. Design studies (DS) that contribute to studies and preparatory for new infrastructures; 5. Construction of new infrastructures (CNI) that provide European added value. Furthermore, the service includes background information on each of these activities, and a set of project management guidelines to aid participation in these support actions. The new additional information helps to explain this highly complex policy area. Research infrastructures in this context can refer to a single resource at a single location, a network of distributed resources, including Grid-type architectures, or even 'virtual' services that are provided electronically. They can include singular large-scale research installations (such as the large hadron collider, LHC, at CERN), museum collections, special habitats, libraries, databases, arrays of small installations, communications networks such as Géant, Grid networks, and infrastructural centres of competence. The overall objective of the activity, based on the needs expressed by the research community, is to promote the development of a fabric of research infrastructures of the highest quality and performance in Europe, and their optimum use on a European scale, ensuring that European researchers have access to the infrastructures they need for their research, and providing support for European development of new research infrastructures. The service includes policy documents such as those relating to the European strategy forum on research infrastructures (ESFRI), set up in 2002 under the auspices of the EU to investigate all issues relating to large-scale infrastructures within the European Research Area (ERA).