PANdata - the Photon and Neutron data infrastructure initiative - brings together thirteen major world class European research infrastructures to create a fully integrated, pan-European, information infrastructure supporting the scientific process. The first PaNdata project named PaNdata Europe strategic working group - or in brief PaNdata Europe - has developed a policy framework and laid the basic foundation for a sustainable data infrastructure. PaNdata Open Data Infrastructure (PaNdata ODI), the current FP7 supported project, took up these developments to create a federated open data infrastructure, seamlessly integrating the existing user and data management systems of the European photon and neutron facilities. PaNdata aims to provide a rich eco-system of federated services useful for both the facilities as well as the scientific user communities.
RDA Interest group and co-located events
We aim to align our data infrastructure efforts with the recommendations and developments of the Research Data Alliance. The RDA could provide a perfect platform to promote collaboration across the European landscape. We therefore initiated the Photon and Neutron Science Interest group (PaNSIG), meanwhile recognized and endorsed by the RDA. The first PaNSIG meeting will take place at the 3rd RDA plenary, together with PaNdata event co-located with the RDA plenary. See here for more information.
Identity management and federated services
At the core of the federated service infrastructure is a common identity system named Umbrella. The UmbrellaID enables the user to use various services with a single sign on and provides the basis for cross-facility data operations. The Umbrella Flyer gives a good overview about the system and its (future) use cases.
Standardization and NeXus/HDF5
One of the major goals of PaNdata is the creation of a federated data infrastructure for data management, analysis, discovery and provenance. NeXus/HDF5 provide an excellent standard data format suitable for high-performance data processing as well as long-term archival. Coping with next generation x-ray detectors inevitable requires the evolution of HDF5. PaNdata is strongly and successfully promoting the required developments in co-operation with detectors developers. Closely related is the data catalogue system ICAT which is being developed by several PaNdata partners. ICATs meta-data scheme closely resembles the NeXus layout, which enables automatic ingests and data discovery.
