A European e-Science platform advancing ionosphere, thermosphere & plasmasphere research through open, FAIR, and integrated services
About
PITHIA-NRF (Plasmasphere, Ionosphere and Thermosphere e-Science Infrastructure) is a European Research Infrastructure initiative that integrates Europe’s leading observing facilities, data processing tools, and prediction models in the upper-atmosphere domain. It connects key national and regional research infrastructures – including EISCAT, LOFAR, ionosondes/digisondes, GNSS receivers, riometers, Doppler sounding systems, and VLF receivers – into a single, coherent ecosystem accessible to all European researchers.
Through this integrated network, the community can address major scientific and operational challenges such as:
- Understanding ionospheric disturbances and space-weather impacts,
- Improving prediction of geomagnetic storms,
- Supporting the development of innovative instrumentation,
- Characterising upper-atmosphere dynamics relevant to satellite operations, communication, and navigation services.
PITHIA-NRF brings together 22 European partners and has operated from 2021 to 2025, funded under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme. For the first time, it enables open, harmonised access to upper-atmosphere observing capabilities and services on a European scale, strengthening collaboration, interoperability, and scientific excellence across the community.
The Challenge
Before PITHIA-NRF, access to upper-atmosphere instruments, models, and data was fragmented across institutions and countries, based on heterogeneous formats and standards, difficult to combine into cross-disciplinary workflows, and unsupported by long-term, sustainable services.
Researchers, therefore, lacked a unified platform for discovering, accessing, and processing resources,
- consistent metadata and FAIR-aligned data stewardship,
- workflow automation for generating derived products,
- central authentication, user support, and documentation,
- scalable compute and storage capacity.
The e-Science Centre: a New Research Paradigm
At the conclusion of its project phase, PITHIA-NRF launched the e-Science Centre – a central integration platform that enables FAIR dataset discovery and access; registration of new data collections; execution of automated scientific workflows; access to community-validated models, and publication of higher-level, processed data products.
A web-based interface is supported by a distributed cloud environment provided through EGI, enabling cross-border research and community interoperability.
Commercial cloud providers (AWS, Google Cloud, etc.) were evaluated but found to be too costly for long-term research sustainability, insufficiently integrated with federated identity management, and last but not least, poorly aligned with community-driven service lifecycles.
By contrast, EGI offered a research-focused alternative aligned with EOSC principles, FAIR data practices, GDPR compliance, and long-term support models appropriate for Research Infrastructures.
As part of the Horizon 2020 collaboration, EGI joined the project to support interoperability, sustainability, and long-term service provision across the PITHIA-NRF ecosystem. EGI leads the development of sustainable service models that extend beyond the project’s lifetime, providing cloud services and resources that power the computational layer of the e-Science Centre. This support includes:
- Federated authentication and authorisation via EGI Check-In,
- Workflow execution environments through EGI Cloud Compute,
- Storage services for data ingestion, transformation, and sharing via EGI DataHub
- Infrastructure monitoring via EGI ARGO,
- User support and ticketing through the EGI Helpdesk.
Services Provided by EGI
Login with your own credentials
Run virtual machines on-demand with complete control over computing resources
Access key scientific datasets in a scalable way
The PITHIA-NRF e-Science Centre marks a turning point for upper-atmosphere research in Europe. By integrating facilities, models, and data services through EGI, we’ve enabled researchers to collaborate across borders as if working on a single infrastructure.
PITHIA Project Coordination Team
Highlights
PITHIA-NRF integrates 11 leading European observing facilities (EISCAT, LOFAR, NOA, INGV, OE, RMI, ROB, IAP, CBK/PAS, SGO, DLR), operating dozens of instruments that have been delivering continuous observations for decades. Together, they provide one of Europe’s richest long-term datasets on the upper atmosphere. Across this network, instruments routinely generate millions of measurement samples per week, supporting high-resolution monitoring and analysis.
The project launched the first FAIR-aligned e-Science Center dedicated to ionosphere and thermosphere research. Within this platform, PITHIA-NRF capacities -including datasets, models, metadata standards, and research facilities – have been formally described. To date, 71 Data Collections, 6 workflows, and 17 static datasets (under 5 entries) have been registered, with 29 Data Collections and 6 workflows accessible via API. Clear guidelines for registration and reuse have been defined and deployed.
To support continuity beyond the project, a Coordination Committee has been established through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) process led by EGI, with 17 institutions confirming participation. The wider PITHIA-NRF network includes 202 registered stakeholders, demonstrating strong community engagement.
The project has generated substantial scientific output, comprising 64 peer-reviewed publications and 84 conference presentations.
The Provider
The underlying cloud capacity is delivered by the EGI Federated Cloud member IN2P3-IRES, enabling scalable compute and data pipelines.
Through IN2P3-IRES, PITHIA-NRF receives:
- 80 virtual CPU cores,
- 10 TB of online storage,
- public IP addresses and secure access endpoints,
supporting data workflows, scientific model execution, and user-driven processing workloads.
This partnership ensures reliable, research-oriented infrastructure that can evolve alongside community needs—without requiring costly commercial cloud deployments.
Supporting Projects
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