Open Science and Artificial Intelligence for supporting the sustainability of the SRC Network: The espSRC case
This work addresses sustainability issues for the SKA Observatory's global data processing network, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing infrastructure and practices.
The paper tackles the challenge of reducing the environmental impact of the SKA Regional Centres network, which processes about 700 PB/year of data, by focusing on energy consumption reduction and integrating green practices into data platforms, with results including the development of Open Science technologies for reproducible research.
The SKA Observatory (SKAO), a landmark project in radio astronomy, seeks to address fundamental questions in astronomy. To process its immense data output, approximately 700 PB/year, a global network of SKA Regional Centres (SR-CNet) will provide the infrastructure, tools, computational power needed for scientific analysis and scientific support. The Spanish SRC (espSRC) focuses on ensuring the sustainability of this network by reducing its environmental impact, integrating green practices into data platforms, and developing Open Science technologies to enable reproducible research. This paper discusses and summarizes part of the research and development activities that the team is conducting to reduce the SRC energy consumption at the espSRC and SRCNet. The paper also discusses fundamental research on trusted repositories to support Open Science practices.