This presentation gives an oiverview of the Sci-GaIA project, in the context of the CHAIN-REDS workshop at EGI2015 (Lisbon). Aspects covered are : 1. The Sci-GaIA project: facts, figures and bjectives 2. The legacy of other projects (ei4Africa and CHAIN-REDS 3. The Sci-GaIA work programme

1. This project has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under grant agreement n°
Energising Scientific Endeavour through Science Gateways and
e-Infrastructures in Africa
Bruce Becker, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
CHAIN-REDS conference, EGI Conference 2015, Lisbon

2. Outline
●
The need for Sci-GaIA
●
The Sci-GaIA project: facts and figures
●
Sci-GaIA objectives
●
The legacy of other projects
– ei4Africa
– CHAIN-REDS
●
The Sci-GaIA work programme
●
Last word and summary

3. Why Sci-GaIA?
●
Scientific and technical communities of practice in Africa have faced large barriers
to e-Infrastructures (compute, data, network) and services.
●
Investments in networking capacity and connectivity are reducing these barriers
– bringing access to new communities and use cases.
●
It has been shown in previous projects (ei4Africa and CHAIN/CHAIN-REDS) that
by using the web and open standards, research output and quality is improved.
●
However:
– communities of practice and collaborations may not be ready to exploit and
adapt these technologies
– The technologies and tools which are in operation are not properly
documented or refined, and need educational materials to stimulate uptake.

4. Sci-GaIA: Facts and Figures
● Project type: CSA
● Call: H2020-INFRASUPP-2014-2
● Topic: INFRASUPP-7-2014
● Duration: 24 months
● Start: May 2015
● Kickoff: London, 18 May 2015
● Budget: ~ 1 340 000 euros

5. Sci-GaIA: Facts and Figures
●
Consortium: 5 european, 4 African
– Brunel University (UK) – coordinator
– Sigma Orionis (France)
– The Ubuntunet Alliance (Malawi)
– University of Catania (Italy)
– West & Central African Research and Education Network, WACREN
(Ghana)
– Royal Institute of Technology, KTH (Sweden)
– Karolinksa Institutet, Sweden (Sweden)
– The Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology, DIT (Tanzania)
– CSIR Meraka Institute (South Africa)

6. Objectives
●
To promote the uptake of Science Gateways and e-
Infrastructures in Africa and Beyond
●
To support new and already emerging CoPs
●
To strengthen and expand e-Infrastructure and
Science Gateway related services
●
To train, disseminate, communicate and outreach

7. Topics addressed
●
E-Infrastructure services:
– Standards-based access to computational and data resources
– Integration of gateways with standards-compliant open-access publication
●
Teaching and Training:
– Updated training material
– Develop online and face-to-face user fora
●
Communties of practice:
– Identify and train new communities of practice
– Provide relevant services to emerging and maturer communities of
practice

8. Timeline

9. The legacy of ei4Africa
●
Identified and developed communities of practice -
http://ei4africa.eu/demonstrators/from-africa/
●
Deployed and developed Science gateways
●
Published several reccommendations -
http://ei4africa.eu/about-e-infrastructures/recommend
ations/

10. The Legacy of CHAIN-REDS
●
Infrastructure:
– Africa-Arabia Regional Operations Centre
●
http://aaroc.github.io
●
Coordination point for regional resources and initiatives
●
South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, Senegal, Ghana,
Morocco, Algeria, Egypt
– Standards and Interoperability:
●
Infrastructure interoperability MoU to provide transparent usage of African
and European infrastructures to scientific communities
●
Standards-based (SAGA) access to infrastructure via Science Gateways
●
Data Infrastructure and interoperability (persistent identifiers, etc)
●
Recommendations: www.chain-project.eu/deliverables

11. Work Plan
●
Sci-GaIA consists of 5 work packages:
– WP1: Promote the uptake of Science Gateways and e-
Infrastructures in Africa and beyond.
– WP2: Support new and emerging communities of practice
– WP3: Strengthen and expand Science Gateway and e-
Infrastructure related services
– WP4: Training, Dissemination, Communication and
Outreach
– WP5: Coordination and management

12. WP1: Science Gateways
●
Objectives:
– Create Science Gateway and e-Infrastructure
development guidelines and materials for NRENs and
CoPs as well as educational programmes;
– Monitor the successful implementation and uptake
of e-Infrastructures in Africa;
– Ensure the interoperability and interoperation
between the African, the EU and the global e-
Infrastructures.

13. WP1: Science Gateways
●
T1.1: Create Science Gateway and e-Infrastructure development guidelines
and materials for NRENs and Communities of Practice (Leader: UNICT /
contributors: All apart from SIGMA, KTH and KI)
●
T1.2: Create Science Gateways and e-Infrastructure development guidelines
and materials for educational programmes (Leader: UBRUN / all apart from
SIGMA)
●
T1.3: Monitor the successful implementation and uptake of e-Infrastructures
in Africa (Leader: WACREN / contributors all apart from SIGMA, UNICT)
●
T1.4: Ensure the interoperability and interoperation between the African, the
EU and the global e-Infrastructures (Leader: CSIR / contributor UNICT)

14. WP2: Support to Communities
●
Objectives:
– Identify, promote and support cooperation between application facilities,
service providers and end-user communities
– Identify innovations and experiences made in the supported user-
communities and ensure that they are scientifically reviewed, selected and
then communicated and disseminated to relevant stakeholder groups;
– Ensure models for sustainability in the operation of user-communities are
developed and tested;
– Ensure the global interoperability and reach of the e-Infrastructures
supported;
– Identify the need for planning, development and coordination of policies,
programmes and contents of e-Infrastructures.

15. WP2: Support to Communities
●
T2.1: User Forum Development (Leader: CSIR / contributors:
KTH, SIGMA, UBUNTUNET, UNICT and WACREN)
●
T2.2: Support to emerging communities of practice (Leader: KI
/ contributors: All except SIGMA)
●
T2.3: Identify and support new communities of practice
(Leader: DIT / contributors: All except SIGMA)
●
T2.4: Support communities of practice by mobilizing
universities as development resources (Leader: KTH /
contributors: UBRUN and UNICT)

16. WP3: Science Gateway and Related Services
●
Objectives
– Expand and extend activities of past projects in order to
consolidate the African e-Infrastructure services.
●
support of the creation of an African Open (and Linked) Data
Infrastructure,
●
interoperable with and federated to those emerging in EU and
in other regions of the world.
– Combine Open Access repositories with Science Gateways
●
discoverability, reproducibility and extensibility of
research

17. WP3: Science Gateway and Related Services
●
T3.1: Support the creation of federated and interoperable
Open Access Document and Data Repositories in Africa,
compliant with EU and other international guidelines
●
T3.2: Support the creation of an African Policy
Management Authority and the establishment of Identity
Federations to be connected to eduGAIN (overlap with
TANDEM and MAGIC)
●
T3.3: Support the operation and development of the Africa
Grid Science Gateway

18. WP4: Training, dissemination,
communication and outreach
●
Implement Dissemination and Exploitation Plan
– Monitoring and ensuring the consistency of all external activities of the project;
– Organising the planned project events and ensuring maximum participation and
impact;
– Running training workshops for Science Gateway and e-Infrastructure
development;
– Showcasing key developments in these areas to communicate the benefits of
these
●
Technologies to CoPs;
– Delivering three Sci-GaIA workshops and a final conference;
– Regularly examining and updating the project exploitation perspectives.

19. Semantic Infrastructure, Automation and
DevOps culture
●
Modern IT infrastructure can be abstracted and instantiated based on code:
Software-Defined Infrastructure
●
Infrastructure = Code can be tested, version controlled, reproduced and forked.
– https://github.com/AAROC/DevOps
●
Cloud providers make it easy to transport entire infrastructures to different hosting
environments
●
Big questions arise -
– What use is a ”manual” ?
– Do we disseminate skills… or culture ?
– If we can automate almost everything, what human skills are really necessary
?
buildbuild passingpassing

20. Last word: Science and the Web
● Hypothesis 1: Everybody is on the web
● Hypothesis 2: The web is now the most powerful tool for research
● Hypothesis 3: The web is an Open Infrastructure;
● Corrollaries:
– Bring the project to the web !
● http://aaroc.github.io/blog/2015/04/21/scigaia-what-is-success/
– Build an open infrastructure
● http://aaroc.github.io/blog/2014/11/26/Terre-des-hackers/
– Design the infrastructure as a commons:
● http://brucellino.github.io/blog/2015/02/24/ECommonsStrategy/
– Design the services to interoperate with the web

21. 21
Summary
●
The time is right to fully exploit the work done by CHAIN, CHAIN-
REDS, ei4Africa
●
Sci-GaIA will provide much needed consolidation to e-Infrastructure
services both for end-user communities and NRENs as service
providers
●
The project will develop a user-focussed, updated curriculum for
developers and users of science gateways, data and compute
infrastructures, for university courses
●
The project is taking a modern, open approach in developing user
communities and services

22. 22
What now ?
●
Questions ? Ideas ? Talk about it… @brusisceddu
●
Read more:
– Infrastructure and services: http://aaroc.github.com/
– Project website under construction: http://www.sci-gaia-eu
●
Interested in collaborating ?
– Fork our code and service development repos; use them
and improve them : https://github.com/AAROC
– Want to work directly with the team ?
https://africa-arabia-roc.slack.com (ask for an invite)