A data infrastructure is a digital infrastructure promoting
data sharing
Data sharing is the practice of making data used for scholarly research available to other investigators. Many funding agencies, institutions, and publication venues have policies regarding data sharing because transparency and openness are consid ...
and consumption.
Similarly to other
infrastructures
Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...
, it is a structure needed for the operation of a society as well as the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function, the data economy in this case.
Background
There is an intense discussion at international level on
e-infrastructure United States federal research funders use the term cyberinfrastructure to describe research environments that support advanced data acquisition, data storage, data management, data integration, data mining, data visualization and other computin ...
s and data infrastructure serving scientific work.
The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) presented the first European roadmap for large-scale Research Infrastructures.
These are modeled as layered hardware and software systems which support sharing of a wide spectrum of resources, spanning from networks, storage, computing resources, and system-level middleware software, to structured information within collections, archives, and databases. The
e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG) has proposed a similar vision.
In particular, it envisions e-Infrastructures where the principles of global collaboration and
shared resource
In computing, a shared resource, or network share, is a computer resource made available from one host to other hosts on a computer network.
It is a device or piece of information on a computer that can be remotely accessed from another compu ...
s are intended to encompass the sharing needs of all research activities.
In the framework of the
Joint Information Systems Committee
Jisc is a United Kingdom not-for-profit company that provides network and IT services and digital resources in support of further and higher education institutions and research as well as not-for-profits and the public sector.
History
T ...
(JISC) e-infrastructure programme, e-Infrastructures are defined in terms of integration of networks, grids,
data center
A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunic ...
s and
collaborative environments, and are intended to include supporting operation centers, service registries, credential delegation services,
certificate authorities, training and
help desk
A help desk is a department or person that provides assistance and information usually for electronic or computer problems. In the mid-1990s, research by Iain Middleton of Robert Gordon University studied the value of an organization's help desks ...
services. The Cyberinfrastructure programme launched by the US
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
(NSF) plans to develop new research environments in which advanced computational, collaborative, data acquisition and management services are made available to researchers connected through high-performance networks.
More recently, the vision for “global research data infrastructures” has been drawn by identifying a number of recommendations for developers of future research infrastructures.
This vision document highlighted the open issues affecting data infrastructures development – both technical and organizational – and identified future research directions.
Besides these initiatives targeting “generic” infrastructures there are others oriented to specific domains, e.g. the
European commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
promotes the
INSPIRE
The following is a thematic list of European Union directives:
For a date based list, see the :European Union directives by number
Numbering
From 1 January 1992 to 31 December 2014, numbers assigned by the General Secretariat of the Council ...
initiative for an e-Infrastructure oriented to the sharing of content and service resources of European countries in the ambit of
geospatial data
Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position).
It is also ca ...
sets.
Related Projects
*
D4Science
D4Science is an organisation operating a Data Infrastructure offering a rich array of services by community-driven virtual research environments.
In particular, it supports communities of practice willing to implement open science practices.
Th ...
*
OpenAIRE
The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP1 to FP9, are funding programmes created by the European Union/European Commission to support and foster research in the Europea ...
[OpenAIRE Website http://www.openaire.eu/]
EUDATGRDI2020EPOS
See also
*
Hybrid Data Infrastructure
Hybrid may refer to:
Science
* Hybrid (biology), an offspring resulting from cross-breeding
** Hybrid grape, grape varieties produced by cross-breeding two ''Vitis'' species
** Hybridity, the property of a hybrid plant which is a union of two dif ...
*
Information Infrastructure
An information infrastructure is defined by Ole Hanseth (2002) as "a shared, evolving, open, standardized, and heterogeneous installed base" and by Pironti (2006) as all of the people, processes, procedures, tools, facilities, and technology whic ...
*
Research Infrastructure
Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...
*
Spatial Data Infrastructure
References
{{reflist
What is data infrastructure?
Information systems
IT infrastructure
Data