CREAF, new member of the European Open Science Cloud, EOSC

The recently formed 'European Open Science Cloud, EOSC’ association incorporates CREAF among its members and other research centers and organizations across Europe.

The announcement has been made public at its first general assembly, where the people who will be part of the board of directors have also been chosen, among them a researcher from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Ignacio Blanquer. The objective of the EOSC is to create a virtual infrastructure that brings together all the data, services, and open science tools that generates Europe in the coming years to make them available to the entire scientific community. The consortium, together with the board of directors, will work to promote its development and implementation. 

The objective of the EOSC is to create a virtual infrastructure that brings together all the data, services, and open science tools that generates Europe in the coming years to make them available to the entire scientific community.

Another of the commitments involved in being a member of the EOSC is to provide data on the different lines of research of CREAF to this cloud."This will make it easier for a researcher from another country or organization to use the information for his or her studies. For example, the biodiversity data generated at CREAF will be available to create prediction models for the distribution of species in different climate change scenarios", says Joan Masó, researcher at CREAF and at the GRUMETS group fom the UAB, and one of the voices that have promoted the adherence of the center to the association. Joan Masó also believes that it is an opportunity to promote the integration of geospatial information (earth observation) and citizen science in the EOSC environment, fields of research that he leads together with his group at CREAF. In particular, through the European project of technological innovation in citizen science, Cos4Cloud, coordinated by the ICM-CSIC and in which CREAF participates.

Another point that Joan Masó highlights is the fact that there is Spanish representation in the management team. In his words, "it is good news: Ignacio Blanquer has our full support, we hope to work together with him to stimulate the growth of the EOSC and the integration of the Spanish science in this space."

The association's statutes are available at this link, as well as the provisional list of all members.