NFDI4Ing — National Research Data Infrastructure for the Engineering Sciences
In October 2020, the research project NFDI4Ing officially started. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Robert Schmitt holds the project’s spokesperson role. Therefore, the Chair of Production Metrology and Quality Management and in particular the resarch group Industrial Capabilities is responsible for different subprojects.
The goal of the NFDI4Ing project is to establish and expand a National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) for the engineering sciences. Within this scope, it is planned to establish a user-centered sustainable research data management (RDM) together with researchers, i.e. the actual users, and infrastructure service providers, e.g. data centers and libraries. Through the active role of the engineering community, a broad acceptance shall be ensured and thus the accessibility, transparency and traceability of engineering research results shall be strengthened.
The project consortium consists of engineering institutes, computing centers and libraries from eight universities and three research institutions. In addition to these applicant partners, numerous other institutions and research projects are participating.Thus, among others, all TU9 universities are also involved in NFDI4Ing.
To meet the heterogeneous requirements of the engineering community, NFDI4Ing follows a method-oriented approach. Diverse engineering questions result in heterogeneous research areas. This leads to highly individual requirements for highly specialized approaches. At the same time, interdisciplinary commonalities arise at the level of the research methods and processes used. In order to harmonize these commonalities, so-called archetypes were developed as prototypical representatives of the respective research areas. They represent the heterogeneous needs for RDM, e.g., research primarily characterized by experiments (ALEX), field data (GOLO), or work with many different and heterogeneous data sources (FRANK).
The overarching task area of base services will provide central services for the archetypes and develop solutions, including data quality assurance, metadata standards, and research data software. Furthermore, the task area community clusters servces as the gateway to the research engineering communities and their needs. It incorporates five clusters representing a specific community. These are: “Mechanical and industrial engineering”, “Thermal engineering/ process engineering”, “Materials science and engineering”, “Computer science, systems and electrical engineering”, and “Construction engineering and architecture” .
The focus of all measures is the discipline-compliant design of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles for the cataloging and subsequent use of research data. To ensure sustainable use of the solutions and establishment of standards, formalized qualification and training concepts for scientific staff, employees in the infrastructure facilities and students will be developed. The following figure depicts the NFDI4Ing structures incorporating the different Task Areas such as the archetypes, base services and community clusters.
In addition to Prof. Schmitt’s role as spokesperson for the consortium, the Chair of Production Metrology and Quality Management and in particular our research group Industrial capabilites is responsible for the Task Area “Archetype FRANK”, the Community Cluster “Mechanical Engineering and Production Technology” and the Base Service “Community-specific Training”. In order to determine requirements and test developed solutions, several research projects are also participating, including the BMAS project “AIXPERIMENTATIONLAB” and the Cluster of Excellence “Internet of Production”.
For more information please visit the project’s official website.
