Base4NFDI - Basic Services for NFDI (NFDI4Ing)

• Subject Area: Mechanical and Industrial Engineering ; Construction Engineering and Architecture ; Computer Science, Systems and Electrical Engineering ; Materials Science and Engineering ; Thermal Engineering/Process Engineering
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 521474032

Efficiency and seamless user experience in research data management within and beyond the NFDI can be greatly improved through NFDI-wide basic services. Base4NFDI is a unique joint effort supported by all consortia to develop and deploy such services. Base4NFDI involves institutions from all relevant infrastructure domains and from all major research organisations in Germany. Its resulting NFDI-wide basic service portfolio will benefit all these communities and domains. The target group for basic services is the wider NFDI-community and, in particular, operators of specialised community resources. Base4NFDI builds on two core pillars: 1) organisationally, a community driven co-design of basic services via the NFDI Association and, 2) technologically, a common framework establishing quality assured and coherent models for continuous identification, fostering, development, operation and evaluation of NFDI-wide basic services. True to its mission of supporting NFDI, all strategic and financial decisions on basic services will be made by all consortia in the bodies of the NFDI Association. A basic service needs to be useful to potentially all existing and future consortia. In Base4NFDI a service is understood as a technical-organisational solution, which typically includes storage and computing services, software, processes and workflows, as well as the necessary personnel support for different service desks. To generate proposals for basic services, Base4NFDI will draw on the expertise in the NFDI Sections. They are the loci for exchange between consortia on cross-cutting topics, provide infrastructural and technological expertise in combination with domain knowledge and act as incubators for identifying potential basic service. For development it will rely on a three-stage process of 1) initialisation of potential basic services 2) integration of basic services candidates and 3) ramping-up for operation and becoming part of the NFDI basis service portfolio. Base4NFDI’s basic services will foster interoperability and efficiency within the NFDI. Development will commence with services for Identity and Access Management (IAM), Persistent Identifiers (PID) and Terminologies. Through this process, Base4NFDI will bring up to ten basic services to operation-readiness by 2027.

• DFG Programme: NFDI-Basic Services
• Applicant Institution: Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen
• Co-Applicant Institution: Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB)
• Participating Institution: Verein zur Förderung eines Deutschen Forschungsnetzes e. V.; DFN-Geschäftsstelle Berlin
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr.-Ing. Robert Heinrich Schmitt
• Co-Spokesperson: Axel Klinger