DAASI International at the DI4R in Lisbon

Last week, the third edition of the conference “Digital Infrastructure for Research”, shortly called DI4R, took place in Lisbon. Objective of this event is to bring together all persons involved and interested in a digital infrastructure for the research and to enable and support an exchange of ideas. This year, the conference was hosted by EOSC-hub, GÉANT, OpenAIRE and PRACE, various organizations and networks committed to using modern technologies to better network researchers and research projects. The event already performed successfully in the years 2016 and 2017 – the first edition took place in Krakow and in the next year, the community came together in Brussels.

Presentation of the AARC AAI Blueprint Architecture

The program included several speeches, poster presentations and discuccions. The complete program can be found at the official website. DAASI International also participated yet again in the diversified offer of speeches: on Wednesday, the 10th of October, David Hübner of DAASI International discussed the benefits and experiences with applying the AARC Blueprint Architecture to the DARIAH research network. AARC stands for „Authentication and Authorisation for Research and Collaboration“; a project funded by the European Commission for the establishment of a globally unified AAI for education and research, consisting of 20 partners. One of these project partners is DAASI International. In the DARIAH research network, researchers of the different humanities and cultural studies disciplines work together with computer scientists and technology providers to develop digital research methods, to answer research questions in a new way and to establish new working methods.

In the speech, it was explained how the AARC Blueprint Architecture could be transferred to the DARIAH research network and which problems and possibilities occurred. A technical solution that is based on Shibboleth was presented. In addition, the speech was about the technical challenge to convert the Shibboleth products into an IdP-SP-Proxy referred to the AARC Blueprint Architecture. This enables the DARIAH research network to interact with other research infrastructures in the framework of EOSC also in the future. More information about the speech as well as the slides can be found here. In summary, the EOSC was one of the central topics at DI4R2018 and in several speeches it became clear that especially the question concerning a unified AAI in the research community has a great significance.

All in all, the DI4R was an enriching event in which DAASI International gladly participated. Many new contacts, interesting discussions and exciting insights remain and raise the anticipation for DI4R2019.