RI-SCALE has reached a major milestone with the delivery of the first release of its Data Exploitation Platform (DEP). This initial deployment establishes the technical foundations of a platform designed to help Research Infrastructures realise the full value of their data by securely connecting data holdings with advanced computing and AI capabilities.
Research Infrastructures across Europe manage vast and valuable datasets. However, turning these data assets into actionable knowledge requires more than storage capacity. It requires secure data movement, scalable computing, trustworthy AI workflows, clear access control policies, and sustainable resource management. The DEP is being built to provide exactly this environment: a scalable, policy-driven platform where data can be transferred to cloud and HPC systems, processed efficiently, and analysed using advanced AI tools.
The first DEP release delivers the core building blocks of this vision. It establishes key components for Data Life Cycle Management, enabling policy-based data transfers and integration with computing sites. It introduces AI Life Cycle Management capabilities, including the AI Model Hub, distributed machine learning frameworks, provenance tracking, and early AI agents supporting model training and inference. Access Control mechanisms based on policy-driven authorisation and secure authentication are in place, ensuring that data access and embargo rules can be enforced in a transparent and standards-based way.
In addition, the foundations for resource and credit management have been designed, preparing the ground for tracking CPU, GPU, and storage usage in a sustainability-aware manner. The first specialised AI accelerator hardware has also been installed, supporting experimentation with energy-efficient AI workloads.
The first release delivers a validated baseline across multiple scientific and technical use cases, implemented at proof-of-concept level. The platform is now entering a validation phase, where the use cases will test and assess the deployed components in real-world research scenarios ranging from climate science and space weather to computational pathology and bioimaging.
Heimo Müller, WP5 Lead at BBMRI-ERIC
“Co-design and integrated validation are at the heart of RI-SCALE,” says Heimo Müller, WP5 Lead at BBMRI-ERIC. “By coordinating the technical work packages and running both scientific and technological validations, we ensure that the DEP reflects real-world requirements, evolves as a coherent platform rather than a collection of separate components, and delivers tangible value to Research Infrastructures.”
Ville Tenhunen, RI-SCALE Technical Coordinator and Data Solutions Architect at EGI Foundation
“Importantly, this first release is not yet a fully integrated, out-of-the-box product,” says the RI-SCALE Technical Coordinator Ville Tenhunen. “It represents a structured and validated baseline. We have built it in close co-design with the use cases and compute centres to ensure that every technical step is grounded in real research needs. The lessons we learn during validation will directly shape the second DEP release in March 2027, where we will deliver the remaining requirements and significantly mature the platform’s integration, user experience, and sensitive data handling capabilities.”
With this first deployment, RI-SCALE moves from design to operational reality. The DEP foundations are now in place, enabling the next phase of integration, validation, and expansion toward a fully operational European Data Exploitation Platform for AI-driven research.
