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Food Cloud demonstrators

 

Proposals shall advance the EOSC in different scientific areas that relate to FNS (e.g. agri-food sciences and engineering, nutrition sciences) by building and implementing Food Cloud demonstrators, and by ensuring their long term sustainability. Proposals shall address the federation, networking and co-ordination of research infrastructures and scientific clouds for the purpose of increasing data findability, accessibility interoperability, and reusability improving the services provided to research communities and facilitating re-use of data by a wider user community. Particular attention shall be paid to reducing fragmentation of existing governance models, through model integration and involvement of research user communities, training, monitoring and measuring awareness, interest, uptake and added value. Proposals shall stimulate collaboration between researchers in the food and nutrition domain and ICT/data specialists. Proposals shall support a food systems approach to research and innovation for FNS, focus on use cases that can significantly contribute to the priorities defined in the European Commission Staff Working Document FOOD 2030[[European Research and Innovation for Food and Nutrition Security, SWD(2016)319. http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/10102/2016/EN/SWD-2016-319-F1-EN-MAIN.PDF]] and that address researchers' needs especially in data intensive fields such as microbiome research. The Food Cloud demonstrators will build on progress of relevant projects (e.g. e-ROSA[[http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/206339_en.html]] EOSCPilot[[ http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/207500_en.html]] ENPADASI[[European Nutritional Phenotype Assessment and Data Sharing Initiative by JPI HDHL (http://www.enpadasi.eu )]], RICHFIELDS[[http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/200239_en.html]]), integrate existing communities, and make use of relevant learnings from parallel thematic initiatives being developed under Horizon 2020 (e.g. Blue Cloud[[Topic BG-08-[A]-2019-The Future of Seas and Oceans Flagship Initiative - Blue Cloud Services]]). Proposals shall also rely on effective global standards, and build on best practices regarding governance and financing.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of the order of EUR 10 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) will federate existing and emerging research data infrastructures, and provide researchers with services for Open Research Data (ORD) storage, management, analysis and re-use across disciplines. The move towards a thematic EOSC section for food and nutrition security (FNS) - or Food Cloud - would accelerate and support the ongoing transition to a more Open Science and Open Innovation model for food and nutrition systems, stimulate intra- and interdisciplinary research, and increase the impact and efficiency of research investments and infrastructures. It would address the increased complexity of data sharing and analysis as well as reproducibility within and across scientific disciplines, as well as the sharp growth in data volumes. Although the components needed to create a first generation Food Cloud are largely there, they are fragmented, spread over EU Member States and across different scientific communities, and lack interoperability. There is a lack of widespread awareness of the value of open research data and of incentives and possibilities for data sharing. There is no dedicated and mandated effort or instrument to co-ordinate EOSC-type activities within the area of FNS research.

In the framework of SDG1, 2, 9, the EU's Bioeconomy Strategy, and FOOD 2030 SWD, proposals should assess their impact on:

  • In the short term (by 2025), improved data management tools, practices and skills in selected scientific areas that relate to FNS based on better understanding between e-infrastructure providers/ operators and scientific domain specialists/users;
  • Also in the short term (by 2025), a proven governance and business model for the Food Cloud based on best practices, on broadly supported policy choices, and on effective global standards;
  • In medium term (by 2030), improved data management skills, and increased awareness of the benefits of open research data among FNS researchers;
  • In the short to long term, increased data sharing and re-use among FNS researchers.
  • Move available solutions from TRL 4-5 to TRL 6-7