EGI at IBERGRID 2024: Strengthening Iberian Collaboration

From October 28-30, 2024, EGI Federation representatives participated in IBERGRID 2024, hosted by the Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto in Portugal. Focused on “Better Software for Better Science,” the event brought together experts from across the Iberian Peninsula to showcase the region’s significant contributions to the joint mission of advancing Open Science in Europe. Spain and Portugal are instrumental in developing digital infrastructures like EGI, promoting scientific collaboration, and shaping the European research landscape.

EGI’s team presented four key contributions at IBERGRID 2024:

On the first day, a status update from Isabel Campos of CSIC, the EGI Council Participant, presented Iberian federated infrastructures across grid computing, data processing, and cloud computing. The presentation emphasised the critical integration of Iberian resources in EGI and other international initiatives and projects. In more detail, IBERGRID has a crucial function in EGI, supporting 1) Regional infrastructure coordination and support, 2) EGI Accounting portal, 3) Orchestration services (Infrastructure Manager), 4) Software provisioning, 5) Software infrastructure, and 6) Resource provisioning in Grid and Cloud.

The presentation was reinforced by Andrea Manzi's presentation highlighting the powerful role of Spain and Portugal in EGI’s development. As longstanding members of the EGI Federation, Iberian institutions delivered nearly 320 million HTC CPU hours and 29 million Cloud CPU hours and participated in 43 joint R&D projects, solidifying their position as foundational pillars of the EGI Federation and the European Open Science Cloud.

On October 29, EGI’s Xavier Salazar introduced the SPECTRUM project to the IBERGRID community. SPECTRUM’s vision is to create a strategic blueprint and technical agenda that enables an exabyte-scale data federation and compute continuum across Europe. This initiative supports data-intensive scientific collaborations in areas such as high-energy physics and radio astronomy. This presentation aimed to introduce the SPECTRUM project to the IBERGRID community, including the early results already obtained, including survey and scientific use cases, and encourage the IBERGRID community to engage in the effort that will define the roadmap at the end of the project.

Later that day, Andrea presented on the Horizon Europe-funded InterTwin project, which aims to develop a Digital Twin Engine (DTE) for various scientific disciplines, including climate research and particle physics. The project involves Spanish and Portuguese partners, showcasing the Iberian region’s essential role in advancing the use cases of digital twin technology for scientific and policy applications. 

Finally, representing EGI’s innovation in software distribution, João Pina of LIP provided insights into new repository developments led by teams in Spain and Portugal. The new repository system supports RPM Package Managers, DEBs (Debian Packages) and Docker images, simplifying the deployment of software resources for Europe’s research community and fostering Open Science initiatives.

The contributions presented at IBERGRID 2024 highlight the Iberian region’s indispensable role in EGI’s efforts to advance Open Science across Europe. By building essential infrastructures, supporting large-scale data federation projects, and fostering collaborative digital ecosystems, Spain and Portugal continue to drive EGI’s mission forward and shape the future of European research.

For more on EGI’s initiatives and the role of Iberian partners, follow our updates and projects.