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Research Infrastuctures

Research infrastructures are essential for scientific advancement and play a vital role in overall economic and social development. They facilitate excellent research, enhance international visibility, promote economic growth, create new jobs, and help tackle global challenges such as climate change and health crises. Furthermore, research infrastructures contribute to the education and skill development of researchers, while also bolstering the innovation ecosystem through various types of innovation infrastructures

High-quality research infrastructure serves as the foundation for sustainable development and global competitiveness. According to the European Commission’s definition ‘research infrastructures’ means facilities that provide resources and services for the research communities to conduct research and foster innovation in their fields, including:

    • major equipment or sets of instruments;
    • knowledge-related facilities such as collections, archives or scientific data infrastructures;
    • supporting infrastructures based on information and communication technologies, such as GRID infrastructure, computing, programming, and communication infrastructure; and
    • any other infrastructure of a unique nature essential for research.

    Research infrastructures can be classified in several ways.

      • Traditional infrastructures are located at a single site, while distributed infrastructures consist of a network of resources spread across multiple locations. Virtual infrastructures provide services electronically.
      • Based on the geographical area they cover, they can be national, regional, macro-regional, or pan-European.
      • Research infrastructures can also be classified according to their capacity to support various phases of scientific research. This classification recognizes:
        1. Large research infrastructures that enable the execution of all research activities within a given scientific process in a specific field of science (e.g., infrastructure planned by the SEEIIST project).
        2. Medium research infrastructures that enable the execution of individual or partial phases of the research process (e.g., centers of excellence – such as FoodHub4).
        3. Small research infrastructures that allow the completion of specific tasks within the research process

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