Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RELIANCE (REsearch LIfecycle mAnagemeNt for Earth Science Communities and CopErnicus users in EOSC)
Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2021-12-31
The EU-funded RELIANCE project seeks to extend the EOSC's capabilities with an enhanced support for various research activities, in alignment with the EOSC Interoperability Framework. It aims to enhance the discovery of and access to research data, including the mechanisms to recreate and use efficiently large Earth Observation (EO) datasets (e.g. from Copernicus), to extract relevant information from scientific text, and to manage the research lifecycle as a first-class entity while promoting findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability – FAIR – as well as open science principles. To achieve that, RELIANCE proposes a research lifecycle management service ecosystem based on research objects (ROs) as the overarching mechanism to manage scientific research activities, relying upon ROHub platform as the reference service. Research objects in RELIANCE rely on Data Cubes for efficient and scalable EO data access and discovery via the Advanced geospatial Data Management (ADAM) platform, and on text mining services that rely on expert.ai’s AI-based NLP/U platform to extract and enrich research objects with machine-readable metadata from scholarly communications and other scientific text, providing researchers with means to discover scientific information at scale and structure their own research. By adopting a holistic research management approach, RELIANCE will enhance EOSC support for multidisciplinary research and the scientific endeavor across the different stages of research, particularly involving Earth Science communities, improving European science as a whole.
RELIANCE services will benefit primarily EU scientists/researchers by providing research enabling and interconnected services with an added value to their communities, which are integrated in EOSC. RELIANCE services will act as a bridge between various EOSC services, connecting the data used by researchers, the methods used to process such data and the final results published, as well as the Research Infrastructures used and the researchers involved.
The proposed added-value services can be further customized to impact other private and public actors, also outside the EOSC framework, e.g. in the food and drink industry RELIANCE services can demonstrate the fairness of production processes and chains, or in the public administrations RELIANCE could support national or regional public administrations in their activities and decisions in several fields, from the definition of sustainable and innovative strategies for tourism to intelligence and defense topics.
To sum up, RELIANCE objectives can be summarized as follows:
● The provision of a rich suite of services for Research Lifecycle Management in accordance with FAIR principle based on Research Objects, Data Cubes and Text Mining
● The integration and onboarding of RELIANCE research enabling services in EOSC, leveraging and connecting with other complementary EOSC services
● The demonstrate of the RELIANCE services and value proposition via a set of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary case studies involving Earth Science and non-Earth Science domains.
● To foster the adoption of Copernicus data and EOSC services in those scientific communities
RELIANCE services will benefit primarily EU scientists/researchers by providing research enabling and interconnected services with an added value to their communities, which are integrated in EOSC. RELIANCE services will act as a bridge between various EOSC services, connecting the data used by researchers, the methods used to process such data and the final results published, as well as the Research Infrastructures used and the researchers involved.
The proposed added-value services can be further customized to impact other private and public actors, also outside the EOSC framework, e.g. in the food and drink industry RELIANCE services can demonstrate the fairness of production processes and chains, or in the public administrations RELIANCE could support national or regional public administrations in their activities and decisions in several fields, from the definition of sustainable and innovative strategies for tourism to intelligence and defense topics.
To sum up, RELIANCE objectives can be summarized as follows:
● The provision of a rich suite of services for Research Lifecycle Management in accordance with FAIR principle based on Research Objects, Data Cubes and Text Mining
● The integration and onboarding of RELIANCE research enabling services in EOSC, leveraging and connecting with other complementary EOSC services
● The demonstrate of the RELIANCE services and value proposition via a set of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary case studies involving Earth Science and non-Earth Science domains.
● To foster the adoption of Copernicus data and EOSC services in those scientific communities
During the first year of the project, the consortium carried out the tasks to set up appropriate teams, discuss inter-relations and dependencies between the Work Packages, achieve the first milestones and deliver the work promised in the GA for the first year of the project. The consortium carried out bi-weekly meetings and had three consortium meetings. Additionally, RELIANCE met with the External Advisory Board in a dedicated meeting.
All the RELIANCE services are in production and have been integrated with other EOSC services, even ahead of schedule, and it has leveraged more EOSC services than originally envisioned. The dissemination activities were focused on promoting the project and services in different events, and in reaching the target audiences with the instrumental support of the RELIANCE research communities, as well as the creation of a series of info/promo videos to facilitate the engagement of new scientists.
RELIANCE produced 17 deliverables and achieved its first five milestones, including the release of the project communication plan, the management handbook, the Website, the data management plan, the first version of services onboarded in EOSC, the release of data models, the multidisciplinary case study report, the business plan and exploitation strategy.
Additionally, RELIANCE was very active during the first year regarding its participation and contribution to different working groups and task forces in EOSC, as well its collaboration with other EOSC related projects, with a major focus on other InfraEOSC07 and the EOSC Future projects. Some of these activities include the contribution to the definition of the EOSC Future & INFRAEOSC-07-2020 Collaboration Agreement, the co-leading and participation in different EOSC task forces and working groups, and supporting the EOSC future demoes to EC about the integration of services in EOSC.
All the RELIANCE services are in production and have been integrated with other EOSC services, even ahead of schedule, and it has leveraged more EOSC services than originally envisioned. The dissemination activities were focused on promoting the project and services in different events, and in reaching the target audiences with the instrumental support of the RELIANCE research communities, as well as the creation of a series of info/promo videos to facilitate the engagement of new scientists.
RELIANCE produced 17 deliverables and achieved its first five milestones, including the release of the project communication plan, the management handbook, the Website, the data management plan, the first version of services onboarded in EOSC, the release of data models, the multidisciplinary case study report, the business plan and exploitation strategy.
Additionally, RELIANCE was very active during the first year regarding its participation and contribution to different working groups and task forces in EOSC, as well its collaboration with other EOSC related projects, with a major focus on other InfraEOSC07 and the EOSC Future projects. Some of these activities include the contribution to the definition of the EOSC Future & INFRAEOSC-07-2020 Collaboration Agreement, the co-leading and participation in different EOSC task forces and working groups, and supporting the EOSC future demoes to EC about the integration of services in EOSC.
RELIANCE advanced the state of the art in different aspects. It delivered a set of complementary and interconnected services that extends EOSC’s capabilities to support the management of the research lifecycle, particularly within Earth Science Communities and Copernicus Users. The services have been interconnected, deployed and are operating in production environments, using research objects as the connection point. The services have been onboarded in EOSC and integrate other EOSC services. The results of these integrations enable access to various EOSC services using the same authentication mechanism and account, the possibility of implementing more complex publishing working, as well as providing researchers with scalable resources both in terms of storage and computing power.
Over 50 datasets from Copernicus have been made available as data cubes, and initial pipelines for processing Copernicus data have been designed and deployed. Additionally, over 1000 ROs have been generated via manual and automatic processes, and about 1500 existing ROs are being migrated into the latest ROHub.
RELIANCE services may stimulate a different way of thinking among companies and commercial organisations on digital science. Indeed, potential market environments for RELIANCE have been identified: i) Private companies (e.g. food and drink companies); ii) Decision makers (e.g. in public administration). Also, engagement activities with the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs programme are being carried out and talks are ongoing with The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). On top of these, joint dissemination activity with the INFRAESOC 07 project and EOSC Future project are ongoing.
Results expected for the next period include, among others, the connection with additional EOSC services, continue the capacity building and outreach with the launch and implementation of the open challenge, the second delivery of RELIANCE services and their validation via the scientific scenarios, and continue the collaboration with other InfraEOSC07 and EOSC future projects.
Over 50 datasets from Copernicus have been made available as data cubes, and initial pipelines for processing Copernicus data have been designed and deployed. Additionally, over 1000 ROs have been generated via manual and automatic processes, and about 1500 existing ROs are being migrated into the latest ROHub.
RELIANCE services may stimulate a different way of thinking among companies and commercial organisations on digital science. Indeed, potential market environments for RELIANCE have been identified: i) Private companies (e.g. food and drink companies); ii) Decision makers (e.g. in public administration). Also, engagement activities with the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs programme are being carried out and talks are ongoing with The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). On top of these, joint dissemination activity with the INFRAESOC 07 project and EOSC Future project are ongoing.
Results expected for the next period include, among others, the connection with additional EOSC services, continue the capacity building and outreach with the launch and implementation of the open challenge, the second delivery of RELIANCE services and their validation via the scientific scenarios, and continue the collaboration with other InfraEOSC07 and EOSC future projects.