Co-ordination and Harmonisation of Advanced e-Infrastructures

Federico Ruggeri, INFN Rome, Italy

Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, INFN, Italy
Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas Medioambientales y Tecnológicas - CIEMAT, Spain
Greek Research & Technology Network, GRNET, Greece
CESNET, Zajmove Sdruzeni Pravnickych Osob, Czech_Republic
The UBUNTUNET Alliance for Research and Education Networking, Malawi
Cooperación Latino-Americana de Redes Avanzadas CLARA 
Institute of High Energy Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences, IHEP, China
Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, India

Telephone: +39-0657337232
Fax: +39-0657337059

The CHAIN project aims to coordinate and leverage the efforts made over the past 6 years to extend the European e-Infrastructure (and particularly Grid) operational and organisational principles to a number of regions in the world. CHAIN uses their results with a vision of a harmonised and optimised interaction model for e-Infrastructure and specifically Grid interfaces between Europe and the rest of the world. The project will elaborate a strategy and define the instruments in order to ensure coordination and interoperation of the European Grid Infrastructure with those emerging in other regions of the world (Asia, Mediterranean, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa).
The CHAIN consortium, consisting of leading organisations in all the regions addressed by the project, will ensure global coverage, European leadership, and most efficient leveraging of results with respect to preceding regional initiatives.

e-Infrastructures community and Virtual Reseacrh Communities

Define a strategy and a model for external collaboration, in close collaboration with EGI.eu, which will enable operational and organisation interfacing of EGI and external e-Infrastructures. This strategy will take into account current organisational models, while, regarding operational models, a peering model will be defined between Europe and other continents.

Validate this model, as a proof-of-principle, by supporting the extension and consolidation of worldwide Virtual Research Communities, which work on common areas (Bioinformatics, Chemistry, etc.) and/or increasingly require distributed facilities (e.g., large instruments, distributed data and databases, digital repositories, etc.) across the regions for trans-continental research. The limited support for such existing communities will be complemented by a coordinated activity of support for the international expansion to other prospective communities that have not exploited yet the full benefits of large intercontinental e-Infrastructures.