EUDAT - Towards a pan-European Collaborative Data Infrastructure

On October 1, 2011 the EUDAT project was launched to target a pan-European solution to the challenge of data prolif- eration in Europe's scientific and research communities. Aiming to contribute to the production of a Collaborative Data Infrastructure driven by researchers' needs, the project is coordinated by CSC - IT Center for Science, Finland, and co-funded by the European Commission's Framework Programme 7. EUDAT aims at providing Europe's scientific and research communities with a sustainable pan-European infrastructure for improved access to scientific data. Burgeoning volumes of valuable and complex data - newly available from powerful new scientific instruments, simulations and digitization of library resources - represents a fantastic opportunity for science, but has created new challenges related to data manage- ment, access and preservation. The EUDAT consortium comprises 25 European partners, including data centers, technology providers, research communities and funding agencies from 13 countries, who will work together to deliver a Collaborative Data Infrastruc- ture that can sustainably meet future researchers' needs