South Eastern European Grid-enabled elnfrastructure Development
SEE-GRID aims to provide specific support actions to assist the participation of the South Eastern European states to the pan-European and worldwide Grid initiatives by establishing a seamless and interoperable pilot-Grid infrastructure that will expand and support the European Research Area (ERA) in the region.
The SEE-GRID vision is to pave the way towards the provision to distributed research communities in the region with the independent of geographic location, round-the-clock, common market of computing resources. The interconnection of the regional infrastructure to the pan-European and worldwide Grid initiatives will translate into benefits for the smaller, less-well-resourced sites in South Eastern Europe to access computing power that would otherwise be unaffordable. In this perspective, the proposed initiative will ease the digital divide and release the scientific & productive talents of the region and will allow equal participation of the targeted countries in pan-European Grid Efforts in the immediate future.
Objectives of the Project:
- Creating a human network in the area of Grids, e-Science and e-Infrastructures in South Eastern Europe;
- Integrating incubating and existing National Grid infrastructures in all SEE-GRID states;
- Capturing e-Science user requirements for Grid middleware and services in the region;
- Supporting feasibility studies and providing road maps and cookbooks for the rapid integration of the SEE Grid area to the European Research Area.
- Building upon and exploiting the infrastructure provided by the Gigabit Pan-European Research and Education Network (GEANT) and the South-East European Research and Education Networking (SEEREN) initiative in the region;
- Migrating and testing Grid middleware components and APIs developed by European (e.g. EGEE, etc.) and national (e.g. Hungarian Cluster Grid, etc.) Grid efforts in the regional infrastructure;
- Deploying (adapting if necessary) and testing Grid applications developed by EGEE (Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid, Biomedical Grid) in the regional infrastructure. Demonstrating one more Grid application of regional interest (e.g. earthquake prediction, meteorology/climate);
- Integrating available pilot Resource Centers of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro and Turkey into the EGEE-compatible infrastructure. Expanding the operations and supporting the EGEE Southern Eastern Europe Federation center to cater for the operations in the above countries;
- Promoting awareness in the region regarding Grid developments through dissemination conferences, training material and demonstrations for hands-on experience, in coordination with EGEE, which will promote the project results to the private and public sector;
- Easing the digital divide and bringing South Eastern Europe Grid communities closer to the rest of the continent;
- Promoting regional and international collaboration in South Eastern Europe and with neighboring countries.
- Establishing a dialog at the level of policy developments for research and education networking and provide input to the agenda of national governments and funding bodies.
