RCC led the creation of Australia’s first Research Data Reference Architecture (RDRA) working group earlier this year.
The group was convened to define and document a high-level reference architecture to guide those building support infrastructure for storing and managing research data.
RCC Director Professor David Abramson, who is leading the group of 13, said this was needed as the design of such systems is “often ad-hoc, and the implementation is often driven by what’s available rather than what’s needed.”
“At UQ, RCC has built a novel architecture called MeDiCI, which underpins the University’s Research Data Management platform (UQRDM). But what was missing when MeDiCI was designed was a high-level set of design goals,” said David.
“The RDRA will fill that gap, making it easier for others to build their own systems, providing comfort that the required functionalities are supported.
“In a sense, we are reverse engineering MeDiCI to extract the decisions that drove its design, leaving others to make different technology decisions. The RDRA will be platform agnostic.”
The RDRA working group held its inaugural meeting at UQ St Lucia in March, held a follow-up meeting at UNSW in Sydney in April, and subsequently two virtual meetings.
They have written a paper on the work (available on request by emailing David: david.abramson@uq.edu.au), submitted it for publication in a conference, and plan an open report towards the end of this year as a practical guide to support the recent Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) report “Australia’s Data-Enabled Research Future”.
The inaugural members of the RDRA working group are as follows (a number are fellows of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering — ATSE):
- Professor David Abramson, UQ, RCC, ATSE, Fellow
- Luc Betbeder-Matibet, UNSW
- Stephen Bird, QCIF
- Jake Carroll, UQ, RCC
- Dr Rhys Francis, Australian BioCommons
- Dr Wojtek Goscinski, National Imaging Facility.
- Professor Shazia Sadiq, UQ, School of ITEE, ATSE Fellow
- Ai-Lin Soo, UNSW
- Garry Swan, CSIRO
- Carmel Walsh, ARDC
- Professor Glenn Wightwick, UTS, ATSE Fellow
- Dr Max Wilkinson, ARDC
- Professor Mary-Anne Williams, UNSW, ATSE Fellow.
