1. Implementation of the European Plate Observing System (EPOS) Infrastructure
Kirsten Elger1, Jörn Lauterjung1, Damian Ulbricht1, Massimo Cocco2, Kuvvet Atakan3, Daniele Bailo2, Helen Glaves4, Keith Jeffrey5
1: GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, 2: INGV Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica y Vulcanologia, 3: Universitetet Bergen, 4: British Geological Survey, 5: Keith G Jeffery Consultants

2.
EPOS is a long-term plan to facilitate integrated use of harmonized data, data products, and facilities from distributed research infrastructures for solid Earth science in Europe.
Funded by the Horizon 2020 ESFRI-Research Infrastructure Programme of the European Commission
EPOS is developing a holistic, sustainable, multidisciplinary research platform to provide coordinated access to harmonized and quality controlled data from diverse Earth science disciplines, together with tools for their use in analysis and modelling.

3. EPOS Partners

4. Make the EPOS service platform operational
EPOS Timeline
2015
EPOS PP - agreement on:
(1) technical design of the EPOS architectural framework
(2) Legal governance and financial models
Make the EPOS service platform operational
Sustainability as EPOS ERIC
(European Research Infrastructure Consortium)
Funded by member fees of participating countries
The EPOS Preparatory Phase was key for the implementation of the pan-European research infrastructure for solid Earth science that EPOS will become.
The EPOS Preparatory Phase project had the ambitious goal of creating the conditions for the integration of existing and future national and international research infrastructures (RIs) in Europe with the final goal of improving access to data, products and services.
EPOS PP achievements:
the technical design of the Thematic and Integrated Core Services has been shared and agreed with the communities, successfully engaged during the preparatory phase;
the legal, governance, and financial models have been discussed and agreed with the governmental representatives and research institutions successfully engaged during the preparatory phase;
It succeeded in integrating the solid Earth European scientific community providing a global perspective and an effective possibility to exploit results;

5. EPOS functional architecture
NRI: National Research Infrastructures (disciplinary): main data providers
TCS: Thematic Core Services: disciplinary, integration of NRI and other data
ICS: Integrated Core Services: Central Hub (ICS-C) and Distributed Services (ICS-D)
ECO: Executive Coordination Office

6. The EPOS Implementation Project concept and approach
Disciplinary Workpackages (10/17):
Seismology
Near-Fault Observatories
GNSS Data & Products
Volcano Observations
Satellite Data
Geomagnetic Observations
Anthropogenic Hazards
Geological Information & Modeling
Multi-scale Laboratories
Geo Energy Test Beds for Low Carbon Energy

7. TCS Thematic Core Services
Community-driven
Disciplinary (development of standardised disciplinary metadata if not yet existing)
Harmonisation of metadata within the workpackages (which data are interesting and suitable for EPOS?)
Harmonisation across workpackages describing the same type of data (e.g. near-fault observatories have seismic data)
Metadata exchange with ICS required (central or distributed servers with API)

8. ICS Integrated Core Services
The heart of EPOS: ICS Central user interface/ Web Portal for data discovery and access to data, data products, software and services
including access to external services like HTC computing facilities and visualisation services (ICS-D)
the user interface (or web portal), where the integrated set of DDSS provided by TCS, the computational and visualization tools, and the collaborative functionalities are made available and accessible to end-users (i.e. scientists, policy maker, citizens);
the API layer, which ensures programmatic access to EPOS ICS-C functionalities by providing a machine-to-machine interface;
the Metadata Catalogue, which contains all the information needed to run the EPOS ICS-C system (i.e. metadata about Users, Software, Resources, Data). The metadata catalogue is the view of the ICS-C system over the outer world;
the system management software is a set of software modules (e.g. system orchestrator, message bus and others) that provide the functionalities required to satisfy users requests;
the interoperability layer is a set of technologies, partially provided by TCS (e.g. web-services to access TCS data or data products) and partially provided by ICS (e.g. connectors to map TCS web services response to the ICS metadata catalogue), that enable the ICS-TCS communication and in particular the exchange of metadata and other information. Such layer is also intended to integrate visualization and computational resources from ICS-D (see next section).

9. EPOS functional Architecture Metadata Registration
community-specific integration
novel e-infrastructure
Adaption
Division of responsibilities
Data generation
Data collection
Responsibility of sustainability and operation
Data curation
Metadata Registration
Community Services
Standardization
Data policies
Metadata registry
Processing
Aggregation
Data discovery
Visualization

10. Challenges for EPOS
To manage heterogeneity in data access across disciplines (i.e. data streams vs. data files)
To harmonise data and metadata standards
To harmonise vocabulary
To bridge the gap between different maturity of data management and data curation across the diciplines

11. Example: TCS Seismology
ORFEUS: Observatories and Research Facilities for European Seismology, EIDA: European Integrated Data Archive; EMSC European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre; EFEHR European Facilities for Earthquake Hazard and Risk,
Fully standardised data and metadata, large data streams
Global intitiatives (e.g. FDSN)
NRIs: ORFEUS (including EIDA), EMSC, EFEHR
Products and Services:
Data Services: e.g. seismic waveforms (including strong-motion) and metadata from permanent and temporary networks and from ocean-bottom seismometers, etc.
Product Services: locations, magnitudes and other parametric earthquake information collections for recent and historical earthquakes, etc.
Earthquake Hazard and Risk Services: access to data products, results, computation tools and support, including hazard maps, risk maps, scenarios and basic geological and geotechnical data
Computational Seismology services: access to IT platforms allowing computational workflow definition and execution for data- and CPU-intensive processing, massive data mining, and visualization …

12. Example: TCS Multiscale Laboratories
Multi disciplinary: paleomagnetics, analogue modelling, rock mechanics, geochemistry, etc.
Only static, mostly small data („long-tail“)
Few disciplinary metadata portals or NRIs
Workflow:
Development of metadata standards for each discipline if not existing
Development of a central TCS „Portal“ with API for communication with ICS
Integration of metadata of data products via an XML Metadata Editor or scripts
Data access via DOI-referenced data publications in data repositories
Data and Products: analytical and experimental data and data products on volcanic ashes and magmatic rocks, experimental data and data products on rock properties, paleomagnetic data, and data on analogue modelling materials and experiments
Physical Access: transnational access to experimental and micro-analytical facilities

13. Challenges for EPOS - 2
Provide a user interfaces that seamlessly integrates different types of data
Integrate different types of services provided by the TCS communities (HPC-access, visualisation and others)
General organisation: standardisation, harmonisation, quality control
„Types of data“= groß & klein ; kontinuierliche Datenströme und Dateien

14. EPOS IP project Timeline
Implementation
Validation
Pre-operation
TCS cost assessment
Sep 2016
TCS-ICS Validation
TCS-ICS testing for operation
Il successo dell’implementazione dei TCS sarà valutato e deciso in ambito EUROPEO

15. Thank you for your attention!
Thank you for your attention!