1. Improved coordination amongst funding bodies, policy makers and leaders of Grid initiatives
- Develop a comprehensive compendium of national and EU initiatives including an analysis of strengths, weaknesses and gaps at EU level; provide an inventory and stock taking of national and EU Grid initiatives and projects.
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Individuate common interests and synergies, leading to cooperation incentives, collaboration among the funding authorities and eventually the planning of common initiatives to overcome fragmentation and avoid duplication of efforts and build the necessary critical mass. The identification of common interests and synergies will lead to better exchange and sharing of results, best practices and evaluation methods, as well as a more coherent approach towards standardisation and international collaborations. The approach will lead to a better understanding of funding models and programme management approaches, increased efficiency in planning, more appropriate utilisation of available funds and resources.
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Provide a regular forum at which participants from national funding authorities and leaders of national Grid initiatives can meet at 6 monthly intervals to establish synergy between the different projects and programmes. Because of the necessity of broadening of the use of Grid technologies beyond e-Science, towards its use in business and industry, actions will be defined towards supporting take-up and transfer of technology and knowledge from early adopters to other industrial or business sectors. The open forum will contribute to awareness rising in the field of Grid technologies for funding bodies and policy and decision makers in science, industry and business. National and EU priorities will be presented and discussed with the aim to find the best use of all available resources, reinforcing thereby both Community and national research activities.
2. Enhanced collaboration among researchers and users of Grid technology
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Organise general and thematic workshops to ease information exchange by bringing together present and future users of Grid technology, encourage the use of tools for application migration, identify research and collaboration opportunities, ensure appropriate exploitation of results, establish links with industrial players.
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Organise specific workshops and activities for Grid researchers to find communalities in the diversity of approaches on a wider scale than previous support actions, share expertise and experience to discover strengths and weakness of current approaches, find out concentration and consolidation of efforts leading to recommendations for setting up of Excellence / Competence Centres, identify opportunities for new coordinated research initiatives and collaborations.
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Promote and organise dissemination / education / training initiatives both for users and for research centres/universities, including the possibility to share research products; promote technology transfer to industry, business and society. Develop and execute a plan for community outreach that includes application use cases and demonstrations of significant new capabilities to attract participation and continued support.
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Investigate the status of standardisation activities in Grid computing and devise a strategy concept for European activities in standardisation.
3. Development of Grid R&D Programme views and road maps
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Develop a coherent and innovative Grid R&D Programme view in Europe taking into account cohesion, considering present achievements and the multinational character of Grid R&D in Europe. This task will address the strategic research issues identified by the EU Expert Group on Next Generation Grids (June 2003) and the UK Gap Analysis report (May 2003), which have been substantially stimulated by several current national and European research initiatives and/or collaborations at international level.
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Develop Grid R&D road maps based on the Grid R&D Programme view. Common goals of different national and EU initiatives will be identified and coordinated or joint initiatives will be suggested, where appropriate. The Road Map will be developed and validated in a series of workshops on key topics. Because of the necessity of broadening of the use of Grid technologies beyond e-Science, towards its use in business and industry, the Road Map will integrate industrial requirements and identify actions that will support the take-up and transfer of technology and knowledge from early adopters to other industrial or business sectors.
Vision and Roadmap
