ESCAPE, the 'European Science Cluster of Astronomy and Particle physics ESFRI research infrastructures', is an international project supported by the European Commission to boost the implementation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). EOSC is a cloud for research data in Europe allowing for universal access to data, providing a single online platform where all European researchers will be able to access and re-use data produced by other scientists, as well as share and analyse the data they have produced.
Indeed, a deluge of data is expected in the next years by the astronomy-related projects and the accelerator-based particle physics facilities, combining investigations from the largest-scale structures in the observable Universe to the most fundamental particles. In particular those projects and facilities prioritised in the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), and other world-class projects are expected to create huge flows and amounts of data.
ESCAPE aims at establishing a collaboration between existing ESFRI facilities in order to implement a functional link between the concerned ESFRI projects and the EOSC initiative. One of the concerned ESFRI is the European Solar Telescope (EST). The Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB), as a partner within the H2020 ESCAPE project, will participate in the effort to connect EST to EOSC through the Virtual Observatory framework. The Solar Virtual Observatory and the JHelioviewer software developed at ROB will play a key role in this effort.
More information on the ESCAPE project can be found in the related press release at https://indico.in2p3.fr/event/18279/ (5 languages).