Abstract: The increasing of experimental facilities in many research fields is powering a concentration of such facilities in a few selected places, sometimes driven also by environmental conditions.

The clear, steady skies without light pollution necessary to Astronomical Observatories are generally not easily found. In the Southern hemisphere the best observing facility for optical and infrared astronomy is widely acknowledge to be ESO.

At the same time the ever increasing data volumes as detectors get bigger and more complex, raises a number of problems for the builders, the operators and the users as well.

The remoteness of the facilities makes the travelling from European home institutions difficult and expensive.

Information Technologies can offer a solution to these problems, provided the necessary infrastructure and tools are put in place.

The strategic objective of this proposal is to make possible a strict integration in the ever-growing instrumental grid emerging worldwide of the world-class facilities created in Chile by the European Astronomical Community. These represent an investment of many hundred million Euros that will be exploited in the next decades.

The present project proposes to create a physical infrastructure (and the tools to exploit it) to efficiently connect these facilities to Europe. The infrastructure will be complementary to the international infrastructures created in the last years with the EC support (RedCLARA, ALICE, GEANT) and will be another step in the creation in Latin America of an advanced instrumentation GRID. This will allow the European Research a competitive edge having faster access to the collected data and use the facilities in an ever more efficient way.

Dettagli tecnici:

• Struttura INAF: INAF-OA Trieste
• Bando: FP7-Infrastructures-2007-1
• Riferimento: 212891
• Inizio: 01/01/2008
• Durata: 36 mesi
• Coordinamento: Università degli Studi di Trieste