The EOSC-ENTRUST project aims to create a European network of trusted research environments for sensitive data and to drive European interoperability by joint development of a common blueprint for federated data access and analysis.
Countries and institutions have made significant investments in secure and trusted data environments to meet the need for research and policy-driven analysis of sensitive datasets such as people's health and socio-economic status, the habitats of vulnerable species and geo-spatial locations of protected sites. There are now a large number of such secure environments in operation - linked to national centres, individual organisations or specific research communities.
EOSC-ENTRUST brings together providers of operational Trusted Research Environments from 15 European countries with a shared goal to implement, validate and promote their capabilities through a common European framework using shared standards and common legal, operational and technical language.
The main benefit of to project is that it will offer a solution to the current fragmented landscape which poses challenges for both users and providers, specifically:
- researchers are faced with a large number of different systems and access procedures
- providers need to manage federated access across multiple, potentially incompatible, technology and governance frameworks.
This blueprint for interoperability is anchored in the EOSC Interoperability Framework spanning the four dimensions of Legal, Organisational, Technical and Semantic interoperability. EOSC-ENTRUST has identified four driver projects covering Genomics, Clinical trials, Social science, and public-private partnerships to benchmark capabilities, inform blueprint design and demonstrate secure data analysis using federated workflows.
A key feature of the project will be the interoperability of the secure processing environments with:
- existing European data resources
- existing services managing sensitive data from infrastructures such as ELIXIR and EUDAT
- sensitive datasets for health and social sciences
Targeted outreach activities will expand this open network with further providers and develop policy papers and guidelines for the full range of stakeholders to create a long-term operational TRE framework within the European Open Science Cloud.
The main objective of GRNET's participation in the project is to acquire expertise in sensitive data management and to develop contacts with the relevant research communities.
More specifically, GRNET's role in the project will include:
- Participation in the inventory of the specifications of the Secure Processing Environment & Data Environment used by the different partners in different countries
- Confirmation of the specifications of the reference architecture and of the draft that will be produced as part of the proposal
- Participation in creating the specification of a secure solution for user authentication (AAAI) for the services that are proposed to be used in the proposal
Participating Partners in the project:
EUROPEAN MOLECULAR BIOLOGY LABORATORY (Germany - Coordinator)
CSC-TIETEEN TIETOTEKNIIKAN KESKUS OY (Finland)
BARCELONA SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER CENTRO NACIONAL DE SUPERCOMPUTACION (Spain)
EUDAT / under legal beneficiary CSC (Finland)
STICHTING HEALTH-RI (Netherlands)
MASARYK UNIVERSITY (Czech Republic)
SIGMA2 AS (Norway)
UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN (Norway)
SURF BV (Netherlands)
DANMARKS TEKNISKE UNIVERSITET (Denmark)
ASSOCIACAO BIP4DAB (Portugal)
UPPSALA UNIVERSITET (Sweden)
TURUN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY (Finland)
TARTU ULIKOOL (Estonia)
PNED GIE (Luxembourg)
UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI (Slovenia)
ECRIN EUROPEAN CLINICAL RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE NETWORK (France)
VSB - TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF OSTRAVA (Czech Republic)
VIB VZW (Belgium)
CESSDA ERIC (Norway)
TERVEYDEN JA HYVINVOINNIN LAITOS (Finland)
FUNDACIO CENTRE DE REGULACIO GENOMICA (Spain)
NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURES FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY (Greece)
UNIVERSITAET BIELEFELD (Germany)
Associated Partners:
Health Data Research UK (United Kingdom)
UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER (United Kingdom)
UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE (United Kingdom)
UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM (United Kingdom)
UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX (United Kingdom)
Affiliated Entities:
NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU (Norway)
UNIVERSITY OF OSLO (Norway)
SCIENSANO (Belgium)
TARKI ALAPITVANY (Hungary)
GESIS-LEIBNIZ-INSTITUT (Germany)
The project is implemented under the European Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON), with 100% funding from the EU.