IN-SKA has supported critical work towards the realisation of the SKA. SKA is a project that encompasses many challenges; scientific, technical, political and social. The project was designed to facilitate the detailed design work needed to construct the SKA on the ground. The infrastructure requirements for the observatory are hugely demanding, requiring novel technologies and advanced design. IN-SKA's work sat within a much broader global technical programme, where the infrastructure was required to be designed alongside novel receiver systems (also being designed in parallel) and to enable the deliver of vast datasets from remote locations to the science community around the world. It has enabled that successfully by providing essentially all the critical inputs to the SKA's infrastructure design review process.
In terms of socio-economic impact, one can view IN-SKA in two ways.
Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, it has assisted with the realisation of the SKA itself. Without the infrastructure work completed through the project, the SKA's deployment would be compromised, if not impossible. SKA's expected impacts lie in a range of areas. In science, it will sit as one of a small set of global research infrastructures, and one of an even smaller set of astronomy megafacilities. Its requirements set new challenges to be met in engineering, IT, communications technologies and basic electronics. New standards are being set for performance in all of these areas that are already starting to spread into other domains. In the IT area, the vast complexity and volume of the SKA's data production demands novel electronics and techniques. Many major industry partners are already engaged, partly because of the inherent interest, and partly because SKA is a real-world challenge in which they can push the envelope of their products. Products that will be in the open market in times to come. People and expertise are both needed to support such work - again, driven and inspired to come and work with the SKA, but in the longer term taking their experience and knowledge into other areas.
The more specific impact from IN-SKA is in the project itself. The participants have enabled work on novel construction techniques and approaches, with impact on construction and design of infrastructure in challenging environments and locations. Being able to design cost-effective, but stable building and construction foundations in harsh environments is one obvious outcome. More broadly though, the involvement of a team of people, working with local staff in country produces a series of benefits that are difficult to quantify, but are present. SKA will be build in locations where there are indigenous communities. The project and through the contractors involved, industry, has worked hard to place the work in a broader picture of engagement: a picture that shows that a major research infrastructure can offer opportunities for local people, enabling them to be trained in new skills, taking those skills elsewhere in some cases, and perhaps in others, becoming part of a broader ecosystem of employment focused around the infrastructure.
