Final results of the AENEAS project

The three-year H2020 project AENEAS “Advanced European Network of E-infrastructures for Astronomy with the SKA” ended on 31 December 2019. This week the final report was submitted to the EC, the closing review by a panel of experts appointed by the European Commission is planned for 4 March in Luxemburg.

The project completed its final deliverables early in 2020. Among the last set of reports were updates on the design and capital costs of the European SKA Regional Centres, results from the federated AAI pilots and recommendations on interface requirements and federated service management. A preliminary implementation plan for the ESDC gives an overview of the next steps planned by the European project partners towards realisation of the network of SKA Regional Centres. As was the case for all previous AENEAS deliverables, these are available through the AENEAS web site at the following location:  https://www.aeneas2020.eu/project-deliverables/.

In the course of the project, all-hands meetings were organised roughly every six months: a kick-off meeting in The Hague, The Netherlands (February 2017), followed by meetings in Granada, Spain (October 2017), Nice, France (March 2018), Bologna, Italy (October 2018) and Manchester, UK (March 2019).

The final meeting was held in Utrecht (The Netherlands) from 11-14 November 2019. The main results and conclusions of the project were presented and discussed. Invited speakers summarised the developments in the participating countries, including most non-European SKA members. The meeting offered the opportunity to review the AENEAS activities in the general context of the overall SKA project, with a particular emphasis on the organisation of SKA Regional Centers on a global scale. The final part of the workshop was dedicated to discussions about the optimised planning for European SKA Regional Centres, greatly helped by presentations about lessons learned from CERN’s Worldwide LHC Computing Grid and the ALMA Network of Regional Centres.

The agenda and presentations of the meeting are now also available – as is the case for all other all-hands AENEAS meetings: https://www.aeneas2020.eu/project-presentations/