Digital barriers hinder research cooperation across the Nordic borders.The Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC) brings experts together to remove these cross-border barriers. NeIC have a unique system to help researchers effectively share data and access big supercomputers across the Nordics. The benefit for the whole region is more research for less money.
This application is for Norway’s membership and participation in the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC). The current funding period is until the end of 2022, this application for the period 2023–2024. NeIC is part of NordForsk which is under the Nordic Council of Ministers (NCM) and provides an environment for research and research infrastructure cooperation across the Nordic region. NeIC’s member states are Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland and Sweden. Norway is actively involved in all of the current NeIC activities and projects. Norway is represented in the NeIC Board by UNINETT Sigma2. Through NeIC, Sigma2 connects Norway to other national and Nordic e-infrastructure service providers in the form of collaborative activities.
Since 2012, NeIC has facilitated common Nordic development and operation of digital infrastructure for the research sector. NeIC has an operational responsibility for the Nordic distributed WLCG Nordic Tier-1 facility, which provides computing and storage for CERN to be used by high energy physicists worldwide. NeIC is responsible for a set of development projects that aim to explore, evaluate, develop and deploy innovative infrastructure services in response to common strategic priorities within the Nordic region in the area of e-infrastructure and the needs of the national e-infrastructure providers, like Sigma2 in Norway. These activities aim at pooling competences, sharing capabilities and connecting people for efficient use of e-infrastructure.
From 2023 onwards, in addition to collaboration with Nordic Tier-1 and the national e-infrastructure providers, NeIC plans to establish long-term collaborations with the biodiversity, earth system modelling and human sensitive data communities. These collaborations contribute to high-level agendas in the Nordic region, e.g. the NCM Vision for the Nordic region to become the most sustainable and integrated region in the world by 2030, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.