EUDAT

EUDAT
Name	EUDAT
Formation	2011
Type	Research data infrastructure
Purpose	Data services and preservation
Region served	Europe

EUDAT EUDAT is a European research data infrastructure initiative that provides collaborative digital services and storage solutions to support data-intensive research across multiple scientific domains. It aims to enable data sharing, long-term preservation, and interoperable workflows for researchers, projects, and institutions. The initiative engages with national research infrastructures, regional data centers, and international programs to align technical services with policy frameworks and funding mechanisms.

Overview

EUDAT operates as a distributed research data infrastructure positioned among initiatives such as European Open Science Cloud, CERN, European Grid Infrastructure, PRACE, Copernicus Programme, European Space Agency, EuroHPC, ELIXIR, Human Brain Project, CLARIN, DARIAH, Pan-European Research Infrastructure for Image Data Analysis, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Max Planck Society, European Research Council, Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe, European Commission, European Union Agency for the Space Programme, European Environment Agency, European Medicines Agency, World Data System, Research Data Alliance, OpenAIRE, Digital Curation Centre, NIH Data Commons, National Institutes of Health, European Southern Observatory, European XFEL, Large Hadron Collider, Square Kilometre Array, SKA Observatory, European Space Observatory, European Bioinformatics Institute, Institut Pasteur, Wellcome Trust, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, GÉANT, PRACE Scientific Steering Committee, European Research Infrastructure Consortium, European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, International Council for Science.

EUDAT's remit emphasizes cloud-compatible services, data management planning, persistent identifiers, and metadata standards to support reproducible research in areas such as climate science, astronomy, genomics, earth observation, social sciences, computational chemistry, materials science, neuroscience, oceanography, hydrology, seismology, particle physics, bioinformatics, epidemiology, pharmacology, remote sensing, geophysics, paleoclimatology.

Services and Infrastructure

EUDAT provides a portfolio of services including data storage, replication, publishing, discovery, and identity management that interoperate with platforms like Zenodo, Figshare, Dataverse, CKAN, GitHub, GitLab, JupyterHub, Kubernetes, OpenStack, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, iRODS, Globus, DCAT, Dublin Core, FAIR principles, PID (persistent identifier), DataCite, Handle System, ORCID, LDAP, SAML, Shibboleth, OAuth2, OpenID Connect, SPARQL, Resource Description Framework, JSON-LD, OAI-PMH, THREDDS Data Server, HDF5, NetCDF, FITS, HEALPix, MPI (Message Passing Interface), POSIX.

Core EUDAT services typically include data staging and transfer, B2DROP for synchronization, B2SHARE for community data publishing, B2STAGE for workflow staging, B2FIND for metadata discovery, B2SAFE for safe replication and preservation, and B2ACCESS for authentication and authorization. These services are designed to integrate with research platforms run by European Space Agency, European Southern Observatory, CERN Open Data Portal, NOAA, Copernicus Sentinel Data, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Met Office, National Oceanography Centre.

Governance and Funding

EUDAT is coordinated through a consortium model that includes research organizations, national data centers, and academic institutions similar to governance arrangements seen in European Research Council consortia and European Research Infrastructure Consortium structures. Its funding has combined competitive grants from Horizon 2020, project-specific support from national research agencies, and contributions from partner organizations including Jisc, CSC – IT Center for Science, SURF, SNIC, DFG, CNRS, CINECA, PSNC, CSC Finland, Max Planck Society, French National Centre for Scientific Research, and regional funding instruments administered by the European Commission and member state ministries. Policy alignment engages stakeholders from European Data Protection Supervisor frameworks and follows principles promoted by European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation.

Community and Partnerships

EUDAT works with a wide range of partners spanning European infrastructures, universities, and research centers such as University of Oxford, Technical University of Munich, University of Cambridge, ETH Zurich, University of Edinburgh, Karolinska Institutet, CERN, EMBL-EBI, INFN, CNRS, CSIC, Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, University of Barcelona, Trinity College Dublin, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, University of Milan, Politecnico di Milano, University of Helsinki, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sorbonne University, Leiden University, Utrecht University, University of Copenhagen, University of Warsaw, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Jülich Research Centre, KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), CEA.

Partnerships extend to international programs and standards bodies including Research Data Alliance, DataCite, OpenAIRE, ISO, W3C, IEEE, CODATA, and regional consortia such as Gaia-X and national research and education networks like GÉANT.

Impact and Use Cases

EUDAT services have been applied across numerous scientific projects and infrastructures for reproducible data publication, secure replication, and cross-domain discovery. Use cases include large-scale climate model output archiving for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments, genomic data management for consortia linked to European Molecular Biology Laboratory and Wellcome Sanger Institute, astronomy survey data workflows for European Southern Observatory and LOFAR, seismic data sharing for European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, and multidisciplinary data curation for Human Brain Project and ELIXIR datasets. EUDAT-enabled workflows have interoperated with HPC Centres such as PRACE facilities, CINECA, Jülich Supercomputing Centre, CSCS, and BSC to stage data for petascale analysis, and have supported data citation practices via DataCite DOIs and researcher identifiers like ORCID.

History and Development

EUDAT emerged from collaborative efforts in the early 2010s driven by European research infrastructure policy and funded projects under the Seventh Framework Programme, later evolving through Horizon 2020 calls to expand services and governance. Its development has followed trajectories similar to European Open Science Cloud discussions and has interfaced with community initiatives such as OpenAIRE and Research Data Alliance working groups. Over successive project phases, contributions from partner institutions including national data centers, universities, and research laboratories shaped the service portfolio, technical architecture, and engagement models with major programs like Copernicus Programme, European Space Agency activities, and domain infrastructures such as ELIXIR and Human Brain Project.

Category:Research infrastructure