CINES is located in Montpellier (France), and offers computer services to the scientific community in public research and higher education. It is a public national organization, under the authority of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

CINES offers services in:

• High-Performance Computing (its supercomputer is ranked 18 in the Top500 of June 2010),
• Long term data and digital document preservation,
• Hosting of computer equipment.

It also offers training sessions in High Performance Computing and Internet Data Communication, in cooperation with RENATER, the French national network for research and higher education (CIREN).

CINES is one of the Tier-1 computer operators and sites of national relevance selected by GENCI, in charge of funding large HPC infrastructures for the French public research.

CINES is involved in PRACE, HPC Europa 2 european projects as well as other digital repositories accreditation initiatives (Data Seal of Approval).

The UK Data Archive is an internationally acknowledged centre of expertise in the areas of acquiring, curating and providing access to data. Since 2005 the Archive has been designated a Place of Deposit by the National Archives allowing us to curate public records. It acquires high quality data from the academic, public, and commercial sectors, providing continuous access to these data while also supporting existing and emerging and communities of data users.

The Archive follows a policy of active preservation to ensure the authenticity, reliability and logical integrity of all resources entrusted to its care while providing usable versions for research, teaching or learning, in perpetuity. Its Preservation Policy is the codification of long-standing good archival practice at the Archive. From a preservation point of view this policy is generally conformant to the OAIS Reference Model, with additions and alterations which are specific to the materials held within the Archive. UKDA has a series of strict requirements for its digital preservation activities which are laid down in this policy, together with how these requirements can best be achieved in relation to regulatory requirements, archival best practice, information security and available funds. The Archive’s Preservation Policy is based upon open and available file formats, data migration and media refreshment.

UKDA ensures that it is at the leading edge of technical advances by taking a strategic approach to long-term digital preservation, and by monitoring hardware and software developments and migrating our collections accordingly. It also aims to continually improve all aspects of the preservation related workflow by embedding an awareness of quality in all processes.

The Archive has been involved in the creation of the Data Seal of Approval (DSA) because it believes that the complex international standards which currently exist in this area are not the best place for repositories to start to assess their practices. The DSA is a ‘low-level’ series of guidelines which does not replace more formal standards, both existing and forthcoming, but provides a way for smaller and more specialist organisations to reach a recognised benchmark in digital repository management.

The University of Patras is the 4th in size higher education institute in Greece with 22 academic departments and more than 16.000 students. It was founded back in 1964 and up to now it has become the second institution in the country regarding research projects and funding. It consists of the Schools of Natural Sciences, Engineering, Health Sciences, Humanities & Social Sciences and Economics & Administration. The Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics founded in 1980 was the first computer science academic school in Greece and even now it is considered the leading school in the area.

Library & Information Center (LIC) was founded in 1965 and it is the major scientific library in the regions of Western Greece. Staff consists of 14 graduates of the areas of Librarianship, Humanities and Sciences as well as of 3 information technology experts. Research and development within LIC focus on information and digital libraries technologies and related user oriented services. LIC and it’s staff the last 15 years have been actively participated in a number of national and EU research projects such as STRIDE, COMETT, TELEMATICS for LIBRARIES and the Operational Program for Education and Initial Vocational Training funded jointly by the Greek Ministry of Education and the EU. Currently participates as a partner in Europeana v1.0 Thematic Network.

More particular LIC’s long experience and expertise could be summarized in the following areas:

• automated library services, including information management & integration applications (ERMs), information systems,  etc.
• digital libraries applications and projects, e.g. digital collection suite: Kosmopolis (http://xantho.lis.upatras.gr/kosmopolis)/, Pleias (http://xantho.lis.upatras.gr/pleias), Daniilida (http://xantho.lis.upatras.gr/daniilida/) , etc
• open access e-publishing projects & initiatives, platforms Pasithee (http://xantho.lis.upatras.gr/pasithee/), Dexameni (http://xantho.lis.upatras.gr/dexameni/), Directory of Greek Digital Resources (http://www.lis.upatras.gr/Libworld/gr_resources_EL.php)
• performance evaluation of library services and user surveys
• user instruction and support

All LIC digital library services are compliant to international preservation standards, such as the OAIS reference model highlighting thus a high level commitment to the the long-time preservation care, while are syntactically interoperable through the conformance to OAI protocols and examination from verification services, such as DRIVER.

The Austrian National Library (ONB) is the main scientific library of the Republic of Austria. With a history dating back to the 14th century, the Austrian National Library’s collections contain a significant part of the world’s cultural heritage. The Austrian National Library is required by media law to receive a copy of every publication appearing in Austria. The library has a long tradition in the preservation of information and its obligations also comprise preserving and making accessible large quantities of resources.

In addition the Austrian National Library acts as a research centre and has been involved in numerous national and international digital library initiatives. The library has been a partner in several projects funded by the European Commission in FP4, FP5, FP6 and FP7, as well as in the eContent and eContentplus Programmes, recently including IMPACT, PLANETS, DELOS, BRICKS, TELplus and Europeana v.1.0. The library is strongly involved in the Commission’s European Digital Library initiative and acts a project coordinator of EuropeanaConnect which is a core project in the actual implementation of Europeana.

Over the last years ONB has been a relevant partner on the organisation and implementation of relevant events in the digital library and digital preservation domain, such as ECDL. In 2010 ONB will be co-host and co-organisator of IPRES 2010, the leading digital preservation conference.

Apart from being partner in bigger events, ONB is regularly involved in the coordination and set up of outreach and  events on-site in Vienna but also in external destinations – such as the organisation of a four day digital preservation training course in Sofia.

The library’s R&D and Digital Preservation departments do not only bring many years of experience in the area of digital libraries, digital repositories, web archiving and digital preservation but also in the actual dissemination research outcomes for a broader and as well as for a specialist public.

The Space Research Institute (IKI) is the leading organization of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) in the field of investigations of Outer Space, Solar System planets and other objects of the Universe. It also has responsibility for long-range planning and elaboration of space research programs, a considerable part of which is performed within the framework of international space research cooperation. Scientists from the Space Geophysics Department of IKI are specialists in the field of remote sensing. Their extensive experience in processing satellite data is utilized in space oceanography, ocean monitoring, space geo-ecological monitoring, and the satellite monitoring of megacites. IKI keeps an extensive data bank collected during preceding aerospace programs going back over 30 years. The data accumulated is particularly valuable for Climate Change Research and it is essential that such data is preserved in an efficient and well co-ordinated manner so that it can be made available to the international community in the long term. IKI is also well connected with other research institutes across Russia and other countries in the former Soviet Union. It is therefore well placed to act as a conduit for the spread of knowledge from APARSEN into Eastern Europe.

B1.1.1.1 Motivation

Russia is the largest country in total area in the world (almost twice the area of the United States). Global climate change is likely to have a very significant impact on the vast areas of Siberian tundra – with global consequences. The key to understanding climate change is to have access to long-term historical observations, and to preserve current observations for future analysis.

As a result of the political turmoil over the last 20 years, Russia presents a number of unique challenges with regard to historical data preservation. If the APARSAN project is to fully address the problems of long-term data preservation then it needs to take into account the additional challenges presented by Russian data preservation and access.

As noted above, the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences has extensive experience in the processing of remote sensing satellite data for environmental and climate change research. It also maintains an extensive data bank collected during previous aerospace programs going back over 30 years.

IKI is also well connected with other research institutes across Russia and other countries in the former Soviet Union. It also has a track record of helping to organize conferences on such topics as Digital Libraries. IKI is therefore well placed to act as a conduit for the spread of knowledge from APARSAN into Eastern Europe.

The staff at IKI also have close links with the Universities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and provide many lecture courses covering Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI), data preservation and access. This, again, will help the spread of knowledge from APARSAN into Eastern Europe.

The commitment to digital preservation is underlined by the fact that if Russian historical scientific data is not brought within the remit of APARSEN then these data will at best remain very difficult to access by the broader European community and, at worst, may become totally inaccessible to anyone, resulting in the loss of globally significant data.

Secure Business Austria is a competence centre focusing on IT-Security founded by the Vienna University of Technology, Graz University of Technology and University of Vienna in 2006. In the second research phase from 2010 to 2017, the Vienna University of Economics and Business will join the center as a fourth full academic partner. Secure Business Austra currently employs about 40 researchers and is located in Vienna, Austria. The research centre performs basic research in IT security with a clear heading towards a practical usage by our industrial partners. It incorporates their partners’ own R&D efforts and brings in its basic research perspectives. SBA has four main areas of research: (1) Governance, Risk and Compliance (2) Data Security and Privacy, (3) Secure Coding and Code Analysis and (4) Hardware Security and Cryptanalysis. “Data Security and Privacy” is a newly established area in SBA which has a strong focus on digital preservation challenges. It deals with automated and trusted workflows and auditable processes for decision making (e.g., preservation planning), Secure Documents Audit & Certification and Disaster Recovery. Case studies on Digital Preservation as well as preparations for compliance audits in the field of long-term retention of digital objects are being conducted with partner institutions. The work further includes research on the specific aspects of document and software application security pertaining to long-term digital preservation. Furthermore, audit services for SME repositories allow institutions to validate the trusted status of their repositories. Over the past years the team working on digital preservation at SBA has gained research and practical experience in this field by actively engaging in national and international projects. Specifically, the research group in the “Data Security and Privacy” area includes experts recruited from the Digital Preservation team at Vienna University of Technology, which is being expanded, beginning June 2010. Members to join SBA in Summer have been involved in many of the leading European initiatives in digital preservation, including the Digital Preservation Cluster of the DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries, the FP6 projects Digital Preservation Europe (DPE) and the Integrated Project PLANETS, the German competence network NESTOR, and a recent national project Digital Memory Engineering (DME), developing digital preservation solutions for small and medium enterprises.

The IBM Haifa Research Lab (HRL) was founded in 1972. The lab has grown steadily, now employing over 500 researchers working in areas such as systems and storage technologies, information retrieval, and more.  HRL is currently one of IBM’s main European centres for innovation.

Relevant Experience and Role in the Project

HRL is an IBM centre of competence in storage technology. The lab invented both the iSCSI storage protocol and the concept of Object Storage, leading the SNIA standardisation work in these areas. . This lab is responsible, among other IBM technologies, for the development of advanced data recovery and business continuance functions for IBM’s flagship disk storage subsystems. The lab is actively pursuing research in the area of long term data preservation and is a leading centre of competence in this area within IBM. The lab participated in the CASPAR FP6 project, in which HRL is the largest ICT partner, providing leading edge technologies for preservation aware storage. In addition to digital preservation, the storage group is conducting research on power management for storage systems. Storage cloud is a new emerging key activity in the group.  HRL is a centre of competence in cloud computing, worldwide supporting IBM in this area, and leads the RESERVOIR project (Resources and Services Virtualisation without Barriers), a large FP7 effort, addressing challenges of cloud-scale service deployment.

IBM Haifa will take a key role in the storage and the scalability aspects of APARSEN. IBM Haifa will bring its expertise in building preservation-aware storage systems which are scalable and efficient. It will also bring its expertise in storage cloud, including security, data reliability and data federation, to address scalability and cost.

Tessella  specialises in the application of innovative software solutions to scientific, technical and engineering problems. Tessella’s activities cover a range of industries, working for customers in the life sciences, oil and gas, chemicals, transport and environmental engineering.

Tessella has over 20 years of expertise in the area of reliable and authentic long-term preservation of electronic records, both for government and scientific organisations. Tessella supplies the “Safety Deposit Box” a complete Digital Archiving Solution that is currently in use at 10 national archives and libraries. Tessella also provides consultancy, bespoke customer development, and integration services in the digital archiving space. The key unique feature is the Active Preservation tool that allows organisations to plan the long term availability of their digital assets and to conduct digital preservation activities such as migration.

Tessella is also active in research in this field. Projects include the Dutch Testbed project, the EU PLANETS project and the KEEP project. This research is used to enhance the products available to customers and to add to the knowledge of the whole community.

The Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Scienza dell’Informazione (DISI) of the University of Trento, Italy, provides a dynamic and qualified response to the ever-increasing demand of such competences from the productive tissue at the local, national and international level. University departments historically are structures of remarkable importance for the increase of knowledge and for technological transfer. In this context, within the Italian academic system, the Department is quite an innovative reality.

The Department has several distinctive features: it covers all the different areas of information technology (computer science, telecommunications, and electronics) and their applications. These disciplines above are studied individually but also with a strong focus on their integration, It has a strong focus on interdisciplinarity and it has professors and students from almost all Faculties of the University of Trento (Science, Engineering, Economics, Sociology, Cognitive Science); it aims at integrating the complementary experiences present in the various research areas in order to develop innovative methods and technologies, applications and advanced services; it offers a wide array of educational paths, linked to Industry, Research Centres and Top Universities in all the world (English is the official language); it has about 70 staff academic, 40 research collaborators, 140 PhD students, 21 PostDoc positions and 8 technical and administrative staff.

Luleå University of Technology is the northernmost university of technology in Scandinavia with research and education on an international arena. Our strength lies in our cooperation with companies and universities both nationally and internationally. Our contact with companies and society help us develop research and education that satisfy the demands that the world around makes on us and our students. Luleå University of Technology conducts research in the Faculty of engineering and the Faculty of arts and social sciences. Research at the University has an annual turnover of approx. MEURO 69. The research is characterized by multidisciplinary cooperation between the University’s research departments and close interaction with trade and industry and society. Both major international and national companies and small enterprises in the region are involved in the University’s research and development projects. The companies also cooperate in the University’s research centres. The Division of Computer Aided Design has its research platform in product development processes, product data management, product lifecycle management, modelling and simulation, engineering design, and distributed collaborative engineering. One of the division’s main focus areas is, in close collaboration with leading national and international research centres, to conduct research and education in Product Development and Engineering Design, which encompasses the process from user needs to concept development, detail design and product lifecycle management.