D4Science-II is an European e-Infrastructure project, co-funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. It constitutes a continuation of the DILIGENT and D4Science projects. D4Science-II aims to provide mechanism for facilitating interoperation of the D4Science e-Infrastructure with diverse other data e-Infrastructures that are running autonomously thus creating the core of an e-Infrastructure Ecosystem. These e-Infrastructure Ecosystems will serve a significantly expanded set of communities dealing with multidisciplinary, scientific and societal challenges.

To set up a prototypical instance of such an ecosystem, D4Science-II will bring together several scientific e-Infrastructures established in areas such as biodiversity, fishery resources management and high energy physics.  This will support several critical scientific scenarios - initially, this core will include: AQUAMAPS, DRIVER, GENESI-DR and INSPIRE- that are distinct but also feed into and enrich each other. In collaboration with appropriate international bodies and initiatives, D4Science-II will take steps to ensure sustainability of the Knowledge Ecosystem.  

This figure above shows the Knowledge Ecosystem envisioned, i.e., interoperable data e-Infrastructures, repositories, and scientific communities exploiting the services provided. It also illustrates the dual role played by D4Science e-Infrastructure, i.e., virtual aggregator of resources available in interoperable e-Infrastructures, and provider of these resources back to the participating e- Infrastructures and, through those, to complex VREs serving cross-domain scientific communities.

The D4Science-II enabling technology is gCube an innovative service-based, autonomic, Virtual Research Environment (VRE) management system. It supports the declarative and interactive creation of transient VREs that aggregate and deploy on-demand content resources and application services by exploiting computational and storage resources of a grid infrastructure.

Project partners

Project duration

10.2009 - 09.2011

Project website

http://www.d4science.eu/

Project manager and contact person

Donatella Castelli (ISTI-CNR)

Funding

European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development

Project budget

5.44 million  €