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Europe Latin America Collaborative e-Infrastructure for Research Activities - ELCIRA

The project aims to coordinate a series of collaboration tools and services that are being developed in Europe and Latin America in order to provide an interoperability framework that facilitates the work of European-Latin American research teams and to foster collaboration in joint research projects.

ELCIRA will seek to establish collaboration agreements between Latin American NRENs and their peers in Europe so as to jointly develop technological environments and tools that could be easily used to promote interaction among researchers in both regions. Through coordination between the partners and the GEANT Community the project will build upon the tools developed in the EuropeAid funded ALICE2 Project to create a shared Collaboration Platform coordinated with the GN3 Developed tools in order to ease collaboration by means of a Portal of Services that will include services such as a Pilot Webconference and several Web 2.0 tools for group work.

ELCIRA will drive specific actions to determine the scope of a future High Quality Video Conference Service (HQVCS) between Europe and Latin America. The integration of these videoconference services will be accomplished through the definition and agreement of service requirements, including operation and user support (Help Desks) as well as determining the service architecture delivery, including web interfaces.

The project also contemplates to foster the development of a Latin American AAI Federation based upon the Brazil CaFE Federation and its interoperation with EduGAIN to provide seamless access to information services and tools.

Finally, ELCIRA will deploy eduroam services in several LA NRENs and promote the deployment of this service in all the region through agreements with RedCLARA Partners, training and promotion.

Coordination and/or support activities: The project will allow LA NRENs to exchange experiences and visions with the GÉANT Community, TERENA, GARR and other European initiatives to develop shared knowledge and agreements on interoperability standards, norms and protocols that will help develop common tools and environments to foster the cooperation among research groups of Europe and Latin America. ELCIRA is organised around six work packages that combine the best expertise and working knowledge from both continents.

User communities: ELCIRA aims at increasing collaboration between User Communities jointly working in both continents on matters of high priority for both regions. To do this, ELCIRA contemplates, on one hand, a systematic promotion of European and other international funding agency calls in order to increase the participation of Latin American researchers in international projects. This will be achieved by reinforcing the RedCLARA Funding Alert System, and by organising InfoDays to exchange information about cooperation opportunities between Europe and Latin America. ELCIRA will also empower and promote capacity building for organising and managing virtual research communities within the Latin American region. Finally, this project will disseminate and share best practices in managing and consolidating virtual research communities by organising Thematic Days and advertising case studies of successful communities.

International aspects: ELCIRA will promote the development of an e-Infrastructures Policy development in Latin America and Europe and will participate in e-Infrastructure promotion events organized either by the European Commission or FP7 Funded projects. ELCIRA will also seek to be present, through its members, in different political fora, with the aim of influencing the public policies regarding e-Infrastructures being developed in Europe, Latin America and Worldwide. In particular through RedCLARA, it will seek participation in the Europe Latin America Summit of Heads of State and other high level events where ICT policies may be of interest.

ELCIRA started the 1st of June, 2012, and it has a lifetime defined in 24 months.

 

The ELCIRA project is funded by the EC FP7 - e-Infrastructures Programme DANTERENATARNPGARRRedIRISTERENARedCLARAEC - FP7 Programme - e-Infrastructures