EOSC-ENTRUST: A European Network of TRUSTed research environments

Project Information

EOSC-ENTRUST

Grant agreement ID: 101131056

DOI

10.3030/101131056

EC signature date 3 November 2023

Start date 1 March 2024

End date 28 February 2027

Funded under

• Research infrastructures

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 4 218 809,75

Coordinated by

EUROPEAN MOLECULAR BIOLOGY LABORATORY
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EOSC-ENTRUST (EOSC-ENTRUST: A European Network of TRUSTed research environments)

Reporting period: 2024-03-01 to 2025-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The endeavour of building a research data ecosystem for Europe will not be complete if it fails to address the complex needs of sensitive data.
Much of the data needed for fundamental and policy-relevant research and analysis is highly sensitive. For example, data such as individuals' health and socio-economic status, the habitats of vulnerable species, geo-spatial locations of sensitive sites and sampling of potential pathogen outbreak are critical for research and European preparedness. These data are managed in secure - trusted - research environments (TRE) within the member states. However, the emerging European landscape is fragmented: a common European reference architecture (“blueprint”) that enables connectivity between TREs is missing.
The EOSC-ENTRUST project will create a network of these environments that, via a common blueprint, allows transnational access and analysis of sensitive data in pan-European projects. In addition, EOSC-ENTRUST includes the LUMI and Mare-Nostrum sites of Europe's next-generation exa-scale computers and future AI factories with the ambition to establish how this processing power can be securely used for constructing e.g. advanced artificial intelligence models on sensitive datasets.
EOSC-ENTRUST set out in 2024 with four overarching objectives to address this landscape (1) to create a European network of Trusted Research Environments to enable transnational collaborative research on sensitive or restricted data, (2) Trusted Research Environment providers implement, validate, and promote their capabilities using common standards and shared legal, operational and technical language, (3) national funders and governments understand the network of TRE capabilities serving their needs, and (4) the European Network of Trusted Research Environments is embedded in the European Open Science Cloud and the European Data Spaces and fosters an ecosystem of public, private and joint-venture providers of TRE services.
These objectives align to a single aim; enabling a Europe-wide future-looking capability for research across all types of data, by leveraging the investment and expertise developed at institutional and national level over many years.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The EOSC-ENTRUST project has adopted an agile, iterative approach based on annual development cycles and after 18 months has already produced a first reference version of its key outputs and is in the process of validating and refining them.
The EOSC-ENTRUST TRE Providers Forum has been brought together to consolidate existing expertise in TRE delivery and good practices for the common interoperability blueprint. Beyond the consortium partners, it represents an established European network of national and institutional TRE Providers with over thirty members across Europe. The participants and capabilities of the network have been published in two eiditions (2024, 2025) of the machine readable TRE provider catalogue.
A portfolio of Multidisciplinary Drivers informs and validates the blueprint, across human genetic and molecular research (genomics), social sciences, clinical trials and public-private use of personal data. A ‘starter pack’ of exemplar projects to demonstrate how networks of TREs can address European research priorities and will act as reference material for future activities. Prototypes for each of the four drivers demonstrate use cases that showcase the EOSC-ENTRUST Blueprint for federated data access and analysis.
The network seeks to adopt common standards and best in class technologies as a foundation of the Federation. A service blueprint that allows technical interoperability between TREs based on the EOSC Interoperability framework has been delivered and an annual update and refinement is in progress. The challenge of Audit & Accounting requirements in TRE federations is addressed in an Authentication, Authorisation, & Accounting/Audit Infrastructure (AAAI) blueprint and training material for TREs describing standards and best practices for end users, community managers and service providers. Work is now underway to deliver technologies for solving the AAA requirements. The project has delivered a deployable demonstrator for federated data discovery, showing how the project’s approach enables researchers and software developers to deploy across multiple TREs via secure FAIR digital objects and workflows.
The blueprints, technology and network already in place by the midpoint of the project provide a platform to engage beyond the project with Europe’s Data Spaces and research communities.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Already, EOSC-ENTRUST has delivered a vision for a federated European TRE capability that didn’t exist before and the backbone of the network which will deliver it.
In European collaboration, a European network of Trusted Research Environments (TREs) is expanding EOSC’s access to resources and valuable data sets for research.
In European connectivity, delivering a Blueprint for connecting TREs into large-scale networks for federated data via a standard set of methods, and for AAAI as an enabling technology, represent significant steps towards a Federation for secure processing of sensitive data.
In FAIR data workflows, the project has demonstrated secure and reproducible cross-TRE analysis of sensitive data and will provide a framework for this to be delivered routinely by the time that becomes a requirement of future research projects and the implementation of the EHDS.
The willingness of Europe’s TRE providers to work together trans-nationally is on track to allow general solutions for complex multi-national research projects based on federated analysis of data from multiple jurisdictions.

EOSC-ENTRUST WP Diagram