ERINA+ is a project co-funded by the European Commission. It aims to evaluate the impact of projects co-funded by the European Commission in the domain of e-Infrastructure through the deployment of an effective socio-economic methodology.

The Commission Communication “ICT infrastructures for e-Science” to Parliament and Council on 5th March 2009 highlights ‘the strategic role of Information Communication Technologies Infrastructures as a crucial asset underpinning European and innovation policies’. In 2008 the Aho Report recognises the relevance of e-Infrastructures for innovation and the ERINA study confirms the very high potential of e-Infrastructures beyond the research domain. The latest European Commission Framework Programmes have built up a significant momentum for the deployment of e-Infrastructures. Today there is a need to assess clearly the pros and cons of recent investments and to address more effectively the next ones by promoting, through the ERINA+ project, a systematic socio-economic analysis to asses the impact of research results.

Already experimented within the ERINA study, the socio-economic methodology is optimised and refined and is then applied to a set of ongoing e-Infrastructure projects. The analysed projects are supported by the ERINA+ team in learning, understanding and applying the methodology which is then transferred to stakeholders and future project coordinators through communication activities.

SEQUOIA and ERINA+

Both ERINA+ and SEQUOIA projects aim at evaluating the impact of the recent investment made in the research domain respectively in the areas of Research Infrastructures and Software & Service Architectures and Infrastructures. Both projects draw and build on the experience of the ERINA study and the FASSBINDER project.