CHAIN – Coordination and Harmonization of Advanced e-Infrastructures is
an FP7 project that was funded by EC and aimed to coordinate and leverage
recent efforts and 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 elaborated a strategy and
defined the instruments in order to ensure coordination and interoperation of
the European Grid Infrastructures with other external e-Infrastructures.
The CHAIN consortium, consisting of leading organizations in all the
regions addressed by the project, ensured global coverage, European leadership,
and most efficient leveraging of results with respect to preceding regional
initiatives. First, the project defined a coherent operational and
organizational model, where a number of EU countries/regions would possibly act,
in collaboration with EGI.eu, as bridges/gateways to other Regions/Continents.
Further, the project validated this model by supporting the extension and
consolidation of worldwide virtual communities, which increasingly required distributed facilities (large instruments, distributed data and databases,
digital repositories, etc.) across the regions for trans-continental research.
Finally, the project acted as a worldwide policy-watch and coordination
instrument, by exploring and proposing concrete steps for the coordination with
other initiatives and studying the evolution of e-Infrastructures.
Implementation of CHAIN project focused on three main areas:
1. Define a strategy and a model for external collaboration, in close
collaboration with EGI.org, which enable operational and organisational
interfacing of EGI and external e-Infrastructures. This strategy took into
account current organizational models, while, regarding operational models, a
peering model was defined between Europe and other continents. Regarding
some external e-Infrastructures the European partners could also act as
"tutors" or "advisors" using the European background and supporting
interoperable/standard solutions. This sub-objective aimed to ensure the
continuity of actions taken so far via separate regional projects and avoid a
disruption of the services that have been developed and deployed at that time.
2. 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. Examples of these communities are LHC, Radio Telescopes, Earth
Sciences, Health, Emerging Diseases, etc. – all of these requiring the linking
of the European researchers with the corresponding communities in multiple
regions across the world. The support for the users of such existing
communities was 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.
3. Explore and propose concrete steps forward towards the coordination
with other projects and initiatives (e.g. EGI.eu, EUMEDGRID-Support,
EUIndiaGrid2, LinkSCEEM, PRACE, National Knowledge Network, etc.). The project acted as a worldwide policy-watch and coordination instrument, by exploring
and proposing concrete steps for the coordination with other initiatives and
studying the evolution of e-Infrastructures towards not only Grids and HPC but
also Cloud Computing, Virtualisation, Voluntary Computing and other trends that
may emerge. This interaction with other Infrastructures also implied a
strong commitment to standards' adoption.
