Landscape analysis of European Research Infrastructures

Key Messages

ESFRI performs a regular Landscape Analysis of the Research Infrastructures accessible to European science and industry, with the aim of identifying their strengths, potential and weaknesses in all fields of research. The Landscape Analysis identifies the main RIs operating open access in Europe as well as major new or ongoing projects. This includes national, regional and international facilities as well as consortia that offer integrated services and transnational access to state-of-the-art resources for research. ESFRI’s analysis is currently the most advanced attempt to describe Europe’s existing RI-landscape and pointing out gaps and further needs to fill in order to create a coherent European RIecosystem capable of addressing future challenges.

One of the key elements of an effective RI ecosystem is that the services, data and products offered by RIs are generally accessible based on the excellence-driven access principles, increasingly cross-disciplinarily interlinked, meet the needs of their scientific communities, and keep up to date with scientific progress. As more and more RIs on the ESFRI Roadmap become fully operational, the importance of ensuring that they follow these principles is growing. Various RI communities, from the same scientific areas and across disciplines, have in recent years started several integration activities of various, more or less formalised characters.

Landscape Analysis is a very important component of ESFRI work, but it is vital that it goes beyond a description of existing facilities and involves a more user-driven analysis focused on service offer and considering impact related to the broader political agendas. This would also allow promoting the use of European Research Infrastructures more broadly to researchers and industry at large. The interplay between regional (smart specialisation), national and European strategies should be more explicitly reflected in the Landscape Analysis.