The Future : EURO-VO Planning

A successor project to the AstrophysicalVirtualObservatory is now in the proposal stage, known as the EURO-VO project. The AVO was always intended as a Phase A study working towards an ambitious Phase B implementation stage, to begin in late 2004 and last 4 years. Now in fact, as the various VO projects progress it becomes clear that a monolithic organisation is not at all appropriate. The VO is really an enabling technology that allows many people to play the game. Furthermore, as the VO vision is based around the idea of data services, and the publication of these services to one or more registries, the focus moves on to the expert data centres who will both populate the system with data, and will publish services.

The actual submitted proposals are attached to the AstrophysicalVirtualObservatory page on this wiki as they become available

EURO-VO Components

The analysis above led us to the idea of three entities we want to create :

• Data Centre Alliance (DCA) : a consortium of expert centres with a common interest in deploying the technology and keeping a collaborative approach.

• VO Facility Centre (VOFC) : a lightweight structure which maintains a registry, co-ordinates support and travel, works on standards, provides access etc.

• VO Technology Centre (VOTC) : a distributed collaboration of research groups that continue to develop further waves of infrastructure technology, write tools etc.

EURO-VO Proposals

Matching these aims to the actions/instruments etc of FP6 was not easy.. we ended up with three linked proposals that fund the above structures in a kind of matrix :

• Proposal-1 (VO-INT) : an Integrated Infrastructure Inititiative (I3) aimed at DG-Research. Submitted April 15th. Funds all of VOFC, half of DCA, and a third of VOTC

• Proposal-2 (VO-NET) : another I3 aimed at the "Communication Network Development (CND)" theme. Due May 6th. Funds the other half of DCA.

• Proposal-3 (VO-TECH) : an Integrated Project (IP) aimed at "Grids for Complex Problem Solving" in DG-Information Society. Expected deadline October 2003. Funds the other two thirds of VOTC.

EURO-VO Partners

The potential size of the Data Centre Alliance, let alone advance decisions on where resource would be placed, made forming a massive consortium in time for the first proposal (April 15th) not feasible. Instead we settled on the idea of national nodes, plus ESO and ESA representing further smaller nations. It is assumed that the organisations within each country can distribute money appropriately. In addition, the first year will be a planning phase, at the end of which we can potentially renegotiate the contract and add partners to the consortium. The partners are :

• European Southern Observatory (ESO : on behalf of all ESO member states

• European Space Agency (ESA) : led by ST-ECF in Garching, but potentially involving other ESA organisations as well.

• France-VO : represented by CDS at the University of Strasbourg.

• UK AstroGrid Consortium : represented by the University of Edinburgh.

• German Astrophysical Observatory (GAVO) : represented by MPE, Garching.

• Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Rome : representing Italy.

• Nederlandse Onderzoekschool voor Astronomie (NOVA), Leiden : the Netherlands funding agency.

• Laboratorio de Astrofisica Espacial y Fisica Fundamental (LAEFF), Madrid : representing Spain.

ESO, ESA, France-VO and AstroGrid are the four core partners, and form a four person Euro-VO Executive that will oversee the whole Euro-VO programme. Probably only these four partners will be involved in the VO-TECH proposal.

VO-INT funding summary

The VO-INT proposal asks for 9.3Meuro in total. The largest share goes to ESO (3.8M), partly because as co-ordinator it will hold a reserve of about 2M to be distributed later, but also because this first proposal establishes the VOFC as an ESO-ESA collaboration. ESA shares the VOFC and has roughly 2M. France and UK lead joint research project as part of VOTC and have about 1.2M each. Other partners have about 300K each.

Most of the money goes on 32 staff. This is planned as follows :

• Co-ordinator Reserve : 12 staff for years 2-4
• VOFC-core : 3 staff : 2 at ESO, 1 at ESA
• VOFC-access (AstroVirtel successor) : 3 astronomers at ESA
• DCA : 9 staff : 1 at each node, expected to be matched by nationally funded staff, plus 1 at CDS for co-ordination
• VOTC : 5 staff - Project Scientist at UK, plus 1 developer at each of UK, France, ESO, ESA.

VO-NET funding bid

VO-NET (just being finished as I type) bids for 3.8Meuro in total. Again, the largest part goes to the co-ordinator, partly because of a large reserve. The UK request is 316K. The proposal is mostly aimed at DCA staff effort for "Grid node integration" but there is also some travel and minor staff effort for an activity on journal-archive links, and an activity developing a Theory Services network.

In staff terms, the proposal asks for 0.5FTE for each partner for 4 years (expecting a similar amount contributed by national funds) plus a reserve of 2 FTEs for 3 years, and a DCA co-ordinator at 1 FTE for 4 years, and finally some administrative effort.

VO-TECH funding bid

TBD but aiming at roughly a further 7 staff. With travel, overhead, equipment etc, the whole bid will probably be around 3M.

VOTC final size

If both VO-INT and VO-TECH are successful, the VOTC will have a Project Scientist, a Technical Leader, 10 EU-funded staff, and 10 nationally funded staff, making a team of 22 people working in this area. It does not run a single project like AstroGrid, but co-ordinates a series of individual projects. The exact plan will evolve with time, but the general idea is to have six themed activities :

• (A0) Technology Programme Co-ordination
• (A1) Core VO component completion and deployment
• (A2) VO-aware science tools
• (A3) Automated resource discovery
• (A4) High volume datamining on the Grid
• (A5) Advanced Grid visualisation techniques.

The general idea is the VO-INT proposal funds half of A0 (the Project Scientist) and two developers each for A1 and A2; the VO-TECH proposal funds the other half of A0 (the Technical Leader) and two developers each for A3-A5.

-- AndyLawrence - 28 Apr 2003