Project Plan
Agenda
- Background and connections
- Objective
- Schedule and resource needs
- Organisation
- Working methods
- Risks
- Project cost estimate
- Sustainability plan
- Edition history
Background and connections
Background
Earth System Modeling research is essential to assess the drastic impacts of climate change and requires huge computing and storage resources that are still provided locally e.g. at national level. This hinders bit-replicability and makes it difficult for researchers to compare their developments and confidently validate the scientific results. In addition, the cost and expertise necessary for developing and improving Earth System Models often lead researchers to join large international consortium that do not necessarily focus on the Nordic regions. Most Nordic countries participate to initiatives such as CMIP6 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6) and/or CORDEX (Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment) but there is no coordination on the Nordic level.
The EuroHPC initiative is a unique opportunity for the Nordic countries towards a coordinated effort of the Nordic participation in Climate Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIP) provided that all the necessary building blocks (containerization, workflow management, job orchestration, model diagnostics) for creating fully reproducible and efficient ESM workflows as well as for publishing FAIR (Findable Accessible Interoperable and Reusable) climate data are in place. In this context, the LUMI supercomputer will be the first shared pre-exascale system available in the Nordics through EuroHPC as of 2021.
Expected benefits
Strengthen the Nordic position within climate modeling by leveraging, reinforcing and complementing ongoing initiatives to enable a future joint Nordic Climate Model Intercomparison Project and Nordic Climate services to assist decision-making.
- Enhance the performance and optimize and homogenize workflows used, so climate models (like EC-EARTH and NorESM) can run in an efficient way on future computing resources as provided e.g. through EuroHPC.
- Widen the usage and expertise on evaluating Earth System Models and develop new diagnostic modules for the Nordic region within the ESMValTool
- Create a roadmap for FAIRification of Nordic climate model data
Connections with other organisations or projects
Earth system modeling and CMIP
An important way to get ESMs internationally recognized is through the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) sponsored CMIPs which is a unique international initiative that highlights the importance of sharing, comparing and analyzing the outcomes of global climate model simulations and to deliver high quality climate information. CMIP results have been used in a very large number of scientific studies that make them a cornerstone of IPCC assessment reports. Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish modeling groups have participated in phase 6 of CMIP (CMIP6). The regional counterpart to CMIP is the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) endorsed by the WCRP that has produced a large ensemble of RCM integrations at high horizontal resolution for all continents. The CORDEX results are now being used worldwide for climate impact studies and climate change adaptation work.
ENES and IS-ENES: The European Network for Earth System modeling
Several partners in this proposal are actively involved in the ENES/IS-ENES European collaboration. ENES aims to
- help in the development and evaluation of state-of-the-art climate and ESMs,
- facilitate focused model intercomparisons in order to assess and improve them,
- encourage exchanges of software and model results,
- help in the development of high-performance computing facilities dedicated to long high-resolution, multi-model ensemble integrations.
The Climate Modelling community is an essential component of joint European efforts to build a European framework of earth system modelling as part of the ENES/IS-ENES network (European Network for Earth System Science), through Horizon 2020 projects (e.g. CRESCENDO), as well as Joint Programming Initiatives and possibly European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) instruments.
Infrastructure for Norwegian Earth System modelling (INES)
The Norwegian partners of the NICEST2 proposal are all engaged in the Infrastructure for Norwegian Earth System modelling (INES) project (funded by the Norwegian Research Council) that aims at establishing the next generation climate model for Norwegian and Nordic research. This model will provide society and business with the most recent high-quality knowledge base at a time when climate change is recognized as a primary driver for change in wide socio-economic areas of Norway. The INES project is unique in Norway, serving climate-related user communities in a cost-efficient way, which will further enhance knowledge transfer to all researchers in the Nordics.
The Nordics and NeIC
Within the Nordic ESM modeling community there is significant and sustained support for the concept of a Nordic collaboration. Several initiatives have been initiated in response to this ongoing interest.
NordicESM
The NordForsk NordicESM project investigated the potential modes and merits of a coordinated/integrated Nordic platform and collaboration for earth system modeling. The project ended in November 2017.
NICEST
The objective of the NICEST project was to strengthen the Nordic ESM community by supporting the efficient use of various e-infrastructures through competence building, sharing and exchanging knowledge. The project ended in december 2019.
EOSC-Nordic
European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Nordic aims at bridging e-services in the Nordic region with European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The Nordic Climate Community is represented in EOSC-Nordic by a few partners of the NICEST project. NICEST2 complements this unique climate science demonstrator by ensuring that:
- the EOSC-Nordic services are fully adopted by the Nordic community,
- relevant training material is developed and introduced to researchers from different disciplines,
- other use cases can also be easily deployed on EOSC-Nordic services following the same approach.
Success factors
The following success factors are the most important to NICEST2:
- Access to experts on ESM and ESMValTool provided by the partners.
- Access to experts on FAIR data in conjunction with EOSC-Nordic
- Access to experts on containerization
- Access to e-infrastructures that enable collaborative work: Galaxy Climate Workbench, the NIRD toolkit, Rahti container cloud and SNIC Science Cloud.
- Access to HPC and cloud services with container enabled technologies (Docker, singularity, Sarus, rkt) and storage from national providers.
- Access to containers (private/public) and workflow (public) repositories
Objective
Project idea
Towards Open Science, NICEST2 contributes to enhance the accuracy and reproducibility of Earth System Models over the Nordic regions by optimizing ESM workflows, developing diagnostics specific to the Nordics and a clear roadmap for publishing Findable Accessible Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) climate data.
Project objective
NICEST2 aims at
- improving the e-infrastructure to tackle these challenges in optimal conditions, with minimal waste of resources, and
- setting up the building blocks for ESM workflows which are to be deployed as part of the Nordic European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), thereby realizing its full potential for the benefit of the Nordics.
Contributions are given in Person months (PMs).
Workpackages
WP1: Project management
| Work package number | 1 | Lead institution | Sigma2/UiO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work package short title | Project management | ||
| Participants | Sigma2/UiO | ||
| PMs per participant | 18 | ||
| Start month | 2020-04 | End month | 2023-06 |
Objectives
The objective of the WP1 is to ensure a sound, effective and efficient implementation of the project including all activities needed to:
- Provide top level management of the project to ensure that the aims of NICEST2 are efficiently and successfully met on time within the limits of the budgeted resources;
- Facilitate communication and integration between partners;
- Provide effective reporting and communication within project and NeIC and other external actors;
- Give the technical and administrative support to partners
and to the Project Steering Group in the preparation and execution of major project meetings and obligations;
Description of work
- Task 1.1: Establish a procedure to share end results and reports using existing publication channels according to the FAIR data management principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) (M-2 – M4)
- Task 1.2: Day-to-day project management, coordination and internal communication (M1 – M36)
- Task 1.3: Prepare mid-term report to the NeIC board (M16 – M18)
- Task 1.4: Organize final report (M34 – M36)
Deliverables
- D1.1: Report on the agreed procedure to share end results and reports (M4);
- D1.2: Glossary for Nordic Climate (M6)
- D1.3: Mid-term report to the NeIC Board (M18)
- D1.4: Final report (M36)
WP2: Model analysis and diagnostics focused on the Nordic regions
| Work package number | 2 | Lead institution | MET Norway |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work package short title | Model analysis and diagnostics | ||
| Participants | MET Norway, FMI, DMI, NERSC, Sigma2/UiO, | ||
| SMHI, INAR | |||
| PMs per participant | |||
| Start month | 2020-06 | End month | 2023-05 |
Objectives
The main objective of this activity is to develop expertise on ESMValTool within the Nordic countries and enable the development of new diagnostic modules.
Description of work
Three main tasks have been identified:
- Task 2.1 (MET Norway, NERSC): Organization of workshop/hackathon at the beginning of the project on ESMValTool to collect user requirements (M3 – M9)
- Task 2.2 (FMI, MET Norway, NERSC): Development of new ESMValTool diagnostic modules for the Nordic regions (M7 – M24)
- Task 2.3 (NERSC, MET Norway, FMI, Sigma2/UiO): Development of teaching material for learning how to use ESMValTool diagnostics over the Nordic regions (M18 – M36)
Deliverables
- D2.1: Report on the workshop/hackathon to discuss about how to use ESMValTool with a focus (M12) on the Nordic countries and collect user requirements for the two training materials.
- D2.2: Development of new ESMValTool diagnostic modules for the Nordic regions (e.g. polar lows, European and Greenland blocking events) with strong emphasis on (high-latitude) observations and to some extente also “observation simulators” (M30)
- D2.3: 1 online tutorial on how to best use ESMValTool diagnostic tools for the Nordic countries (e.g. polar lows, European and Greenland blocking events) with emphasis on (high-latitude) observations and to some extent also “observation simulators”. (M36)
WP3: FAIR climate data for NorESM and EC-Earth
| Work package number | 3 | Lead institution | NSC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work package short title | FAIR climate data | ||
| Participants | NSC, DMI, CSC, NORCE, MET Norway | ||
| PMs per participant | |||
| Start month | 2020-06 | End month | 2023-05 |
Objectives
The main objective of this activity is to define a clear roadmap to FAIR climate modeling data in the Nordics. This activity will be strongly linked to EOSC-Nordic, in particular WP4 “FAIR data” and WP5 “Open Research demonstrators”.
Description of work
Two main tasks have been identified:
- Task 3.1 (NSC, CSC, NORCE): Support for Nordic ESGF hosting of CMIP6 data
(M1 – M36)
Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish HPC providers currently host ESGF nodes. Although there have been considerable improvements in the ESGF software, the deployment and reliable maintenance of an ESGF node requires experience and a technical understanding of the hardware and ESGF software. In addition, knowledge of climate model output formats, project data reference syntax and controlled vocabularies (e.g.CMIP6) is also required. This activity will continue to strengthen the collaborative efforts, knowledge sharing and skills development initiated in the NICEST project regarding the deployment and administration of ESGF nodes. - Task 3.2 (NSC, NORCE, MET Norway): Towards FAIR Nordic climate modeling data (M4 – M36)
Beyond CMIP6 and CORDEX, there are Nordic and national projects that generate valuable climate model data. The management of these outputs should follow FAIR and open data principles. The aim of this sub-activity is to investigate to what extent the tools (including ES-DOC, CF, CMOR, ESGF) and techniques for managing CMIP6 data can be reused in Nordic and national projects to ensure the valuable outputs from such projects are FAIR and open. This will be achieved by bringing together data generators (ESM modelers), data managers (ESGF) and FAIR data specialists .
Deliverables
- D3.1: Collation of monthly online minutes from all Nordic ESGF operation meetings (one per year) (M12, M24, M36)
- D3.2: 1 face to face workshop for Nordic ESGF operations team on the ESGF CMIP6 publication process. (M18)
- D3.3: 1 hackathon with FAIR experts and ESM specialists to understand what needs to be done to make climate data FAIR (for NorESM and EC-Earth). (M9)
- D3.4: Report on knowledge/skills gap analysis and suggested roadmap to FAIR Nordic climate modeling data (M36)
- D3.5: 1 Data Management Plan Template, including best practices for FAIR Nordic Climate Data (M36)
- D3.6: 1 Data stewardship workshop for FAIR climate data (M24)
WP4: ESM workflows to efficiently run NorESM and EC-Earth on euroHPC
| Work package number | 4 | Lead institution | Sigma2/UiO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work package short title | Integrated workflows for ESMs | ||
| Participants | Sigma2/UiO, NERSC, NORCE, DMI, FMI | ||
| PMs per participant | |||
| Start month | 2020-09 | End month | 2023-05 |
Objectives
The main objective of this activity is to develop expertise on how to run efficiently ESM workflows and facilitate the porting and deployment of Nordic ESMs on future HPCs, in particular the EuroHPC.
Description of work
Two main tasks have been identified:
- Task 4.1 (Sigma2/UiO, NORCE, NERSC, FMI): Reproducible workflows for deploying and running ESM on future HPCs (M4 – M30)
As part of this task an analysis of existing workflow Management systems (cylc, galaxy, snakemake, etc.) will be done and serve as a basis for the definition of Nordic ESM workflow Management Systems. Mock-up ESM workflows will be made available by mid-term and will facilitate benchmarking of Nordic ESMs on new HPCs and ease the deployment of Nordic ESMs on EuroHPCs. To improve reproducibility, package management system and environment management system such as conda will be tested, and containers for running these models will be deployed. The performance achieved by the containerized models will be made publicly available. Within High Energy Physics especially around the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, many solutions and services do already exist to tackle complex tasks like workflow management execution with data and compute. Those solutions are being used now by more and more scientific communities. One potential idea is to identify some use cases and evaluate the services available like job management, data catalog and orchestration. A demonstrator will be set up as part of the project with technical support and expertise from NORDIC WLCG TIER-1 FACILITY. - Task 4.2 (NORCE, Sigma2/UiO, FMI): Efficiency of Nordic ESMs on future euroHPC (M4 – M36)
Having a common framework to analyze the performance of Nordic ESMs can considerably reduce the cost (computing and energy efficiency) for running climate models and give us a competitive advantage for running on computing platforms of the future including EuroHPC. This task will focus on best practices for performance and productivity of Nordic ESMs and on understanding what needs to be done to run on EuroHPC.
Deliverables
- D4.1: 1 deliverable/report on the identification of the Nordic ESM community needs for ESM workflows (analysis of existing tools such as cylc, galaxy, snakemake) and identification/classification of associated services to be deployed for efficiently orchestrating these workflows on various computing platforms. (M12)
- D4.2: 1 demonstrator build with a simple use case for distributing computations and managing data on at least 3 different sites (within the Nordic countries). The associated deliverable will be publicly available. (M36)
- D4.3: 1 online training material on best practices for the deployment of ESM workflows (package management, writing efficient workflows to optimize computing and storage resources) (M36)
- D4.4: 1 workshop (face to face meeting) with national HPC providers to discuss and characterize the Nordic ESM involvement in EuroHPC (M18)
- D4.5: 1 deliverable/report on bottlenecks that would hindrance the efficient usage of Nordic ESMs on EuroHPC and possible remediation actions (I/Os, adding GPU support, etc.) with a clear information on costs in terms of manpower (M9, M36).
- D4.6: Best practice guides on how to evaluate the performance of Nordic ESMs. (M36)
Priority of the objective
- Result: 0.6
- Time: 0.1
- Cost: 0.3
Limitations
The infrastructures on EOSC-Nordic may not be available yet at the start of the project. So rather than having a single e-infrastructure for collaborating, we will be using separate e-infrastructures: HPCs on one side and on the other side the Galaxy Climate Workbench and the NIRD toolkit, Rahti container cloud, SNIC Science Cloud.
Recipients and approval criteria
List of deliverables
| Number | Delivery object description | Recipient, delivery | Delivery date (in months) | Delivery date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| D1.1 | Report on the agreed procedure to share end results and reports; | Steering group | M1 | July 2020 |
| D1.2 | Mid-term report to the NeIC Board | Steering group | M18 | November 2021 |
| D1.3 | Final report | Steering group | M36 | May 2023 |
| D2.1 | Report on the workshop/hackathon to discuss about how to use ESMValTool with a focus on the Nordic countries and collect user requirements for the two training materials. | Steering Group | M12 | May 2021 |
| D2.2 | Development of new ESMValTool diagnostic modules for the Nordic regions (eg, polar lows, European and Greenland blocking events) with strong emphasis on (high-latitude) observations (and “observation simulators” to some extent) | Steering Group | M30 | November 2022 |
| D2.3 | 1 online tutorial on how to best use ESMValTool diagnostic tools for the Nordic countries (eg, polar lows, European and Greenland blocking events) with emphasis on (high-latitude) observations (and “observation simulators” to some extent). | Stering Group | M36 | May 2023 |
| D3.1 | Collation of monthly online minutes from all Nordic ESGF operation meetings (one per year) | Steering Group | M12, M24, M36 | May 2021, May 2022, May 2023 |
| D3.2 | 1 face to face workshop for Nordic ESGF operations team on the ESGF CMIP6 publication process. | Steering Group | M18 | November 2021 |
| D3.3 | 1 hackathon with FAIR experts and ESM specialists to understand what needs to be done to make climate data FAIR (for NorESM and EC-Earth). | Steering Group | M9 | February 2021 |
| D3.4 | Report on knowledge/skills gap analysis and suggested roadmap to FAIR Nordic climate modeling data | Steering Group | M36 | May 2023 |
| D3.5 | 1 Data Management Plan Template, including best practices for FAIR Nordic Climate Data | Steering Group | M36 | May 2023 |
| D3.6 | 1 Data stewardship workshop for FAIR climate data | Steering Group | M24 | May 2022 |
| D4.1 | Identification of the Nordic ESM community needs for ESM workflows | Steering Group | M12 | May 2021 |
| D4.2 | Distributing computating for running ESM workflows | Steering Group | M36 | May 2023 |
| D4.3 | Online training material on best practices for the deployment of ESM workflows | Steering Group | M36 | May 2023 |
| D4.4 | Workshop (face to face meeting) with national HPC providers for EuroHPC | Steering Group | M18 | November 2021 |
| D4.5 | Report on bottlenecks that would hindrance the efficient usage of Nordic ESMs on EuroHPC and possible remediation actions (I/Os, adding GPU support, etc.) with a clear information on costs (PMs, etc.) | Steering Group | M9, M36 | February 2021, May 2023 |
| D4.6 | Best practice guides on how to evaluate the performance of Nordic ESMs. | Steering Group | M36 | May 2023 |
Schedule and resource needs
Prerequisites and outer dependencies
Prerequisites
- Expertise on FAIR, containerization needs to be available at the beginning of the project. This expertise will come through the EOSC-Nordic collaboration in the form of a joint training.
- A collaborative platform for developing ESMVal diagnostic tools with both computing and storage resources needs to be deployed at the start of the project. It will be provided by EOSC-Nordic WP5 as part of the Climate Science demonstrator.
- HPC and storage for optimizing ESM workflows will be provided by SNIC and Sigma2 (under the allocation of NorESM and EC-EARTH simulations).
Outer dependencies
- NICEST2 (WP2, WP3 and WP4) will make use of EOSC-Nordic outputs, in particular results from EOSC-Nordic WP4 (FAIR data) and EOSC-Nordic WP5 (Open Research data & services - demonstrators). Collaboration with EOSC-Nordic needs to be initiated at a very early stage for the organization of a joint hackathon with FAIR experts and ESM specialists to understand what needs to be done to make climate data FAIR (deliverable D3.1).
Two of the EOSC-Nordic use cases are meant to serve NICEST2:
- EOSC-Nordic use case 3 for deploying a virtual laboratory for ESMValTool (WP2).
- EOSC-Nordic use case 2 for FAIR climate data (WP3).
Project schedule
Gantt chart
Milestones, decision points
During the life span of the project from startup to termination, a number of formal decisions must be made by the steering group. These fall into eight different types; which are numbered in the chronological order in which they are typically made.
- DP1 – Decision point type 1; steering group decision to start the project, based on the project directive.
- DP2 – Decision point type 2; steering group decision to continue, change or interrupt the project based on findings during the preparation phase. A project may have multiple DP2.
- DP3 – Decision point type 3; steering group decision to approve the project plan developed during the preparation phase. Typically this is tied to a DP4 decision to start the execution phase.
- DP4 – Decision point type 4; steering group decision to start the execution phase. http://neic.nordforsk.org/
- DP5 – Decision point type 5; steering group decision to continue, change or interrupt the project based on findings during the execution phase. A project may have multiple DP5.
- DP6 – Decision point type 6; steering group decision to approve the result of a delivery, for example to end users. A project may have multiple DP6.
- DP7 – Decision point type 7; steering group decision to transfer the responsibility for a delivery, typically to operations in a receiving organization.
- DP8 – Decision point type 8; steering group decision to approve the final report and terminate the project
The milestones (MS) and decision points (DP) are defined here
Resource needs
In this section, we list all the resource needs both in terms of skills/competencies and training.
Resources, skills and competencies
- Github expertise (organization, projects): Sigma2/UiO
- Conda, container and Galaxy tools expertise: Sigma2/UiO, SNIC and CSC
- FAIR data expertise: EOSC-Nordic (WP3)
- ESM and ESMValTool expertise: INAR, FMI (WP2)
- Communication/writing expertise: all partners
Training
- Training for the PPS project model is planned for the Project Manager. Also the project steering group will be offered a one day training course on the relevant parts of PPS. Costs for PPS training by Tieto will be covered by NeIC as part of its generic activity to promote common project practices in Nordic collaboration.
Remark
The current project manager has already done PPS1.
Project administration
- Use of Zoom conferencing system for online training
- Use of Zoom conferencing system for online meetings
- NICEST2 project website
- Chat channel (zulip https://nordicesmhub.zulipchat.com/ or esm NeIC slack channel)
Technical training
- ESMValTool
- Introduction to Galaxy Climate Workbench (jupyterLab) for ESM model development and Climate data analysis
- Workflow management systems (snakemake, nextflow, cylc, galaxy)
- Introduction to FAIR concepts
Resources, equipment, etc.
- Container repository (need for private repository); check with CodeRefinery if containers can be hosted in the CodeRefinery code repository hosting.
- Workflow repository (something like https://workflowhub.eu/, https://www.rohub.org/); should be public.
- Cloud and HPCs computing time and with container tools (Singularity, Sarus, etc.) and GPUs. (we need to make a list of what we can get and where and how to access these resources).
- Storage 50 TB (could be on NIRD-Sigma2, google cloud storage, ?)
Phase out and conclusion
NICEST2 staff are all working for their home institutions and will return to their normal positions and tasks. The ESM container repository usually has an annual subscription and a sustainability plan needs to be define to ensure continuity beyond the lifetime of the project (same if using CodeRefinery code repository hosting). HPC/cloud computing and storage are offered for the duration of the project by the national e-infrastructure bodies and participating partners.
Purchases
- Subscription for a container repository for ESM (with both the possibility to have private and public containers)
Organisation
Project organisation
The project is organised according the PPS project method with the groups or roles as desccribed in the collaboration agreement.
- Steering group: Michaela Barth (chair), Anne Claire Fouilloux (secretary), Alok Kumar Gupta (Norway, member), Hamish Struthers (Sweden, member), Risto Makkonen (Finland, member), Shuting Yang (Denmark, observer).
- Project owner: Michaela Barth
- Project leader: Anne Claire Fouilloux
The consortium members are listed on the NeIC NICEST2 website.
The Project members group is formed by the experts provided by the partners.
Working methods
The Tieto Practical Project Steering (PPS) model with certain adaptations is applied within NeIC with good practical experience since 2014. The NeIC HR policy applies encouraging competence development and regular development dialogues. The NICEST2 project manager is part of the community of project managers and project owner representatives with regular (bi-weekly) meetings and two F2F meetings per year, the annual NeIC All Hands meeting and biannual NeIC conferences. The management meetings between the project manager and the project owner representative are scheduled weekly. The team meetings are held regularly over an agreed-on communication platform.
Requirement dialogue
The requirements from a higher level come from the project directive drawn by Steering group members and NeIC. The participating experts will take the requirements to a more technical level, and there will be regular discussions at project and Steering Group meetings.
Change control
Change requests, for example from the project community, or from NeIC that are seen to necessitate a significant change in the project requirements are documented in writing. The decision on approval of change requests will be made by the project manager with consultation to the project owner or in a case of major change will be taken to the steering group for decision. Small changes can be accommodated within the normal development cycle of the project.
Risk management
WP1 is in charge of minimizing the potential risk of misalignments and ensure that the developments provide full and easy re-use tools for the entire ESM community. The evolving needs of the active ESM research community will be regularly monitored. Communication with national HPC providers to ensure alignement with future EuroHPC platforms, in particular LUMI.
Information distribution
The project aims for open and transparent communications. The main hub for communications is the NICEST2 project website, including NeIC wiki pages (internal and public).
Other channels include Zoom and email.
The regular meetings of the project include:
- Steering group meetings: at decision points, aiming for 2-3 times a year.
- Project management meetings: every week
- Full consortium meetings: annualy
Document management
Documents produced in the project will be put either in the NICEST2 project website, the internal wiki or public wiki pages.
All documents that potentially have interest outside the immediate project group should be placed on NICEST2 project website and can also be referenced in Nordic Earth System Modelling Hub website, if there is no specific reason to not publish them. The internal wiki is mainly for documents in preparation or for meeting notes etc. that are not of general interest (e.g. working group meetings, project management meetings). Some documents will be prepared on Google Drive before publication.
Confidentiality
The project aims at open communication in its execution. However, before publishing information consideration is required whether there is particular reasons for this information not to be public. If in doubt, it is good practice to ask the author of the document in question, the project leader, or the funders of the project, whichever is applicable. The Steering group can make the final decision on withdrawing project documents from public access.
Special care should be taken when working on and creating products using climate data (models, observations) as they may contain personal information and/or sensitive information.
Environment
One of the objective of the project is to optimize ESM workflows both in terms of performance and energy efficiency. The project will take a particular attention to this matter and make sure to avoid unecessary travels. We will organize most meetings (including trainings) online instead of physical meetings consequently reducing air travel.
Administrative routines
Service contracts will be made for persons working in the project. The contract will be made between the employing organization and NeIC. The service contract specifies the amount of working time committed for the project. Formally the project leader decides on nominating persons to work for the project.
The project personnel should follow the practices of their home organization for time reporting. The NICEST2 project does not require time reports. Instead, the results will be closely followed.
NeIC will cover costs for travel which is necessary for the project work. Covering the travel costs need to be agreed beforehand with the project leader.
Risks
List of risks and associated mitigation actions
The list of risks will be continuously updated as well as corresponding mitigation actions.
Any risks that materialize during the lifetime of the project will be documented in the risk list. Risks that have a major impact on the project results will be immediately reported to the NICEST2 project owner and mitigation actions will be closely monitored.
| Risk description | Likelihood | Impact | WP(s) involved | Mitigation strategy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lack in organizational processes | Low | High | WP1 | Use of PPS model within the NeIC organisation will ensure the implementation of a well-defined organizational structure clearly identifying the roles of each involved partners. |
| Difficulty to recruit motivated and available staff | Medium | High | All | Start recruiting staff before the start of the project. Make sure staff can choose/discuss tasks and redistribute if necessary. Ask for regular feedback on the workload regarding their own commitment at their home institutions |
| Lack of partner engagement (compared to what was initially agreed/committed) | Low | Low | All | Redistribute tasks among remaining participants according to collaboration agreement. |
| Difficulties in getting the necessary resources for developing new ESMVal diagnostics | Low | High | WP2, WP4 | Ask for resources prior to the start of the project and discuss with national providers. |
| Problems with community building and poor communication among partners | Low | Medium | All | Quaterly newsletters, reward participation using proper acknowledgment. |
| Inability to involve FAIR experts | High | Medium | WP3 | Contact EOSC-Nordic FAIR WP at the beginning of the project and discuss with NeIC on the possibility to organize co-events for the climate community. |
| No access to state of the art HPC | Low | Low | WP4 | Ask for HPC resources before the start of the project. |
| Workflow management system chosen by NICEST2 is not used by researchers | Medium | Medium | WP4 | Organize training events (online) to onboard researchers (not only those involved in the project. |
Project cost estimate
Staff cost
This project will operate on a budget of 2.6 FTE/year and a total of 7.8 FTE with the following composition. All numbers are in person-months (PMs).
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MET Norway | 0.5 | 2 | 2 | 0.5 | 5 |
| NSC | 1 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 8 |
| NORCE | 0.5 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 0.5 | 4 |
| Sigma2/UiO | 1 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 8 |
| SMHI | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| FMI | 0.5 | 3 | 2 | 0.5 | 6 |
| DMI | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| CSC | 0.5 | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | 3 |
| INAR (UoH) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| NERSC | 0.5 | 0.5 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| NeIC funded staff | 4.5 | 14 | 14.5 | 5 | 38 |
| Management | 3 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 18 |
| Total NeIC funded | 7.5 | 20 | 20.5 | 8 | 56 |
Average cost for 1 FTE: NOK 1 600 000
The distribution for the in-kind contribution by the other partners follows the NeIC funded person month distribution for staff, besides for NSC providing 2 extra PMs at the beginning of the project.
Travel and other budget
Due to covid-19, in person meetings and workshops will be done online in 2020. Travel budget for 2020 has been shifted to 2023.
The consortium consists of co-funding and supporting partners. The travel and meeting budget will also cover the supporting partners, but these will not have any manpower funded. The role of the supporting partners is to be kept in the loop, be part of the knowledge exchange and finally use the generated outputs and benefits generated within NICEST2.
| 2020 | 2021 | 202 | 2023 | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workshops/meetings (kNOK) | 0 | 165 | 165 | 165 | 495 |
| Attending workshops/meetings (kNOK) | 0 | 58 | 58 | 58 | 174 |
| Total NeIC funded travel (kNOK) | 0 | 223 | 223 | 223 | 669 |
Project overview
| Year | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total NeIC funded PMs | 7.5 | 20 | 20.5 | 8 | 56 |
| Total NeIC funded PYs | 0.62 | 1.67 | 1.71 | 0.67 | 4.67 |
| In-kind PMs* | 40 | ||||
| In-kind PYs | 3.33 | ||||
| PYs in total in the project | 8.0 | ||||
| Cost for NeIC funded PYs (MNOK) | 1.00 | 2.67 | 2.74 | 1.07 | 7.47 |
| Cost NeIC travel budget (MNOK) | 0 | 0.223 | 0.223 | 0.223 | 0.669 |
| Total cost NeIC funding (MNOK) | 1.00 | 2.89 | 2.96 | 1.29 | 8.14 |
| In-kind funding value (MNOK) | 5.33 | ||||
| Total budget for the project (MNOK) | 13.47 |
Remark:
In-kind PMs is the same as NeIC funded person month distribution minus project manager plus 2 extra PMs provided by NSC at the beginning of the project.
Funding per partner in MNOK
| Year | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NeIC | 1.00 | 2.89 | 2.96 | 1.29 | 8.14 |
| MET Norway | 0.066 | 0.267 | 0.267 | 0.067 | 0.667 |
| NSC | 0.266 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.267 | 1.333 |
| NORCE | 0.066 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.067 | 0.533 |
| Sigma2 | 0.133 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.133 | 1.066 |
| SMHI | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| FMI | 0.067 | 0.4 | 0.267 | 0.067 | 0.8 |
| DMI | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| CSC | 0.067 | 0.133 | 0.133 | 0.067 | 0.4 |
| INAR (UoH) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| NERSC | 0.067 | 0.067 | 0.267 | 0.133 | 0.534 |
| TalTech MSI | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total budget for the project (MNOK) | 13.47 |
Sustainability plan
The creation of a critical mass of users that ensures the long-term sustainability of the results produced by NICEST2 is a fundamental aspect of our strategy.
The sustainability plan will be developed at the beginning of the project and constinusouly monitored and updated. The initial objectives are:
- Identify the relevant stakeholders of the project including where to build the community
- Identify proper dissemination and communication tools and strategies to reach both the research community and the stakeholders of the EOSC Hub
- Plan and coordinate national and international community-building events to be held throughout the project
- Ensure the high-level quality and impact of the community-building activities
- Explore and develop relevant business ideas to guarantee the long-term impact and sustainability of the outcomes of the project
Edition history
| 04/05/2020 | First draft |
|---|---|
| 10/05/2020 | Take into account Project Owner comments (Refine expected benefits, update dates, add risks) |
| 11/05/2020 | Add new tables to clarify budget |
| 25/05/2020 | Review from Project Owner and SG |
| 03/06/2020 | Second review from Project Owner |
| 21/09/2020 | move hackathons because of MET Norway joined NICEST2 later |