Research Infrastructures
Following the concept of the European Commission, Research Infrastructures (RIs) can be defined as facilities that provide resources and services for research communities to conduct research and foster innovation.
The European Commission has the role of defining, evaluating and implementing tools to provide Europe with sustainable RIs, due to the cooperation with EU countries and countries associated to Horizon 2020.
Some of the objectives that the European Commission have regarding this task are:
The reduction of fragmentation of the research and innovation ecosystem
To coordinate in a better way the development and use of RIs
To join forces internationally to construct and run large, complex or expensive infrastructures, responding to global challenges and fostering combining skills
There have been several developments from European institutions in relation to cooperation regarding Research Infrastructures within the European Union. For example, the European Commission developed the Long Term Sustainability of Research Infrastructures or the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). The latter is especially relevant for this project since two of the pilot projects ResInfra will develop (LifeWatch and INSTRUCT-ERIC) currently take the form of an ERIC, which is defined as a specific legal form that facilitates the establishment and operation of Research Infrastructures (RI) with European interest.
Another example of cooperation is the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), promoted by the EU Council. The objective of this cooperation area is to support a coherent and strategy-led approach to policy making on Research Infrastructures (RI) and to facilitate multilateral initiatives such as the present project or similar.