WP2 (NA1): Governance, Sustainability and Innovation

WP2/NA1 addresses the objective for IS-ENES3 to purse integration of the community and prepare for sustainability through relationships with stakeholder partners and governance and leading the IS-ENES3 strategy on innovation.

More specifically, WP2/NA1 addresses these issues with four interlocking tasks:

Governance and Task Forces will ensure that the project has a route to obtaining independent advice and communications with both stakeholders and other major projects and infrastructures. It will involve replacing the existing ENES board with two new bodies: a Stakeholders Board representing both the infrastructure providers and the infrastructure users, and an independent Science Advisory Board. The existing task forces will continue to retain the responsibility for the two task forces which provide interfaces to key European organisations (such as PRACE and the EOSC) as well as to existing major international projects (such as ESGF) and which coordinate community actions (such as shared bids for resources).

Innovation is focused on the strategic aspects of widening the exploitation of the IS-ENES infrastructure, both in terms of innovative uses of the infrastructure, and innovation around the technology used (e.g. by working with cloud providers). It will involve developing strategic metrics of innovation, coordinating pull-through from individual innovation activities in NA2-NA4, and addressing the interfaces with major external organisations (such as Copernicus).

Sustainability addresses how the community can establish and maintain an infrastructure which can evolve in response to requirements without ad-hoc project funding such as that delivered via I3 investments from the commission. Some investigation on possible mechanisms was carried out in IS-ENES2, and the mid-term foresight update stressed the strategic importance of a sustainable approach to the European climate science community.

This task will deliver a clearer understanding of what needs to be sustained, how it might be done, and initial steps towards the implementation of an ENES-Research Infrastructure (ENES-RI).

Strategy will revise the ten-year ENES Infrastructure Strategy for 2022-2032. During the course of IS-ENES3 we will see major changes in underlying technology (e.g. increased heterogeneity in computing, further uptake of cloud, new storage paradigms), new European facilities (e.g. the European Open Science Cloud) alongside the normal on-going evolution of scientific aspirations – it will be time to revisit from first principles a European strategic approach to Earth System simulation infrastructure.

Together with the community engagement in WP3/NA2, the project leadership team, and the internal governance processes associated with the software components, this WP will provide the primary scientific integration of the shared European infrastructure.