Europe is facing huge socio-economic challenges: an economic crisis with a young generation in search of jobs, population ageing potentially straining inclusion and innovation of our societies, climate change with its pressures to redesign energy, transport and housing patterns, just to name some of the most urgent “Grand Challenges”. SERISS brings together three research infrastructures in the social sciences: the European Social Survey (ESS), the Survey for Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe and the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA). Also involved in SERISS are non-ESFRI research infrastructures: GGP - Generations and Gender Programme; EVS - European Values Survey and the WageIndicator Survey. The overarching objective of this project is to support the Union, the Commission and the Member States to tackle these challenges with a solid base of socio-economic evidence. The scientific objective of this project is to exploit the synergies among these three infrastructures to their fullest extent and to leverage these synergies to influence the still rather fragmented landscape of smaller infrastructures. Specific bjectives are • to better represent the European population, including target groups of policy measures addressing the Grand Challenges, e.g., young unemployed, older persons in institutions and migrants, • to strengthen cross-national harmonization across Europe by leveraging recent advances in questionnaire design, translation and coding techniques, • to exploit the advances in software technology for cost-effective web-based interviewing, more efficient fieldwork management, and to support new ways of collecting data • to better connect the world of research-driven social surveys with the world of process-generated administrative data, and, • to ensure that the ethical and data protection concerns of the respondents are properly be taken into account by creating a consistent and EU-wide framework for all social surveys

The eRImote project is the first to consider solutions for digital and remote service provision across RI domains and to look for transferable practices and new developments that will improve accessibility and resilience of RI infrastructures. While existing processes will be collected, eRImote will also explore new solutions using defined use cases to develop and test their implementation in RI scenarios. This will take us beyond the state-of-the-art for concrete solutions. The eRImote consortium is relatively small with eight beneficiary participants representing four main ESFRI RI Roadmap domains. However, the consortium extends much more broadly through the existing contacts and networking partners of each of the project participants, increasing the reach out to hundreds of individuals, other European and global RIs, scientific networks, RI users, industry partners and policy makers. eRImote is intended for 30 months to enable timely interventions. The project is outlined relatively straightforward by four main activities. eRImote will create an online information platform with a publicly available data store on best practises and tools based on a landscape analysis, also with needs and impact. This will be translated into strategies on transition and use cases (Green Paper). All this is based on broad outreach and extensive dissemination beyond the consortium. The eRImote consortium will identify strategies and solutions to enable transition to remote and digital access to RI services that will help to enhance and make more accessible the service capacities of RIs while reducing the need for physical access to RI sites, bringing benefits to the green economy, reducing the footprint of RIs and increasing their inclusiveness as a result. In addition, eRImote will contribute to increased efficiency of remote access service provision at RIs, enhance mutual knowledge and trust, and develop joint strategies across the RI domains on transition to

EURHISFIRM designs a world-class research infrastructure (RI) to connect, collect, collate, align, and share detailed, reliable, and standardized long-term financial, governance, and geographical data on European companies. EURHISFIRM enables researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders to develop and evaluate effective strategies to promote investment, economic growth and job creation. The RI provides the tools for long-term analysis highlighting the dynamics of the past and the way those dynamics structure our present and future. A few large stand-alone long-term databases have been built in Europe so far, while important resources have been invested into scattered and dispersed historical datasets. EURHISFIRM develops innovative models and technologies to spark a “Big data” revolution in historical social sciences and valorize Europe’s cultural heritage. These technologies match and collate historical data, and connect them to recent ones. They bring the next generation of data extraction and enrichment systems from digitized historical sources and web-based resources. The scaling up in the variety, quantity and quality of long-term data changes the way of conducting scientific enquiry in the historical social sciences. EURHISFIRM constitutes a vibrant and large users’ community around the innovative data and services provided. The 2016 ESFRI Roadmap identifies Big Data, interdisciplinarity and innovative ways to disseminate research products as the main science drivers for RIs in the Social Sciences and Humanities. It recognizes the need and the opportunity for RIs providing access to the European Cultural Heritage and innovative methods to analyze and integrate information extracted to broad communities. EURHISFIRM fulfills this mission in close cooperation with ESFRI Landmark CESSDA and other existing RIs in the field of Arts and Humanities, like DARIAH, within the Research Data Alliance.

RISCAPE will provide systematic, focused, high quality, comprehensive, consistent and peer-reviewed international landscape analysis report on the position and complementarities of the major European research infrastructures in the international research infrastructure landscape. To achieve this, RISCAPE will establish a close links with a stakeholder panel representing the main user groups of the report, including representatives from ESFRI, the OECD and Member state funding agencies to ensure usability and the focus of the Report. It will also benefit from close co-operation with other projects and initiatives in the European research infrastructures development to ensure consistency with the existing landscape work. Particularly, RISCAPE builds on the European Research Infrastructures (RIs) in the ESFRI landscape report (2016) and on the landscape analysis done or currently underway in the H2020 cluster projects. RISCAPE leverages the experts on the European RIs with extensive knowledge on the disciplines involved and RI development in Europe and the project benefits from the contacts and tools developed in the cluster- and international RI collaboration projects to maximize the discipline-specific usability of the results. A key factor in the RISCAPE analysis is that the complementarities will be analyzed in a way which is natural and suitable for the discipline and RI in question. The resulting Report and the used methods will be independently peer reviewed to maximize the usability and objectivity of the information provided for the EU strategic RI development and policy. The project answers directly to the European Commission strategy on EU international cooperation in research and innovation, particularly on the need to obtain objective information in order to help implement the (EC) strategic approach.

After CESSDA's successful launch we must now achieve full European coverage, and strength and sustainability for the widened network. European coverage: In each country the barriers to, and the potential value and benefits from, membership will be examined, and existing relevant infrastructure mapped. Bespoke coordination, networking activities, and stakeholder forums, all designed to address the specific barriers, will be delivered. In particular, relationships between national ministries, Research Councils, and the social science research community will be built. Relevant work in other completed initiatives (eg. SERSCIDA, DASISH, DwB) would be taken up and moved to the next stage of practical and direct support for achieving membership of the CESSDA Research Infrastructure. National opportunities for using European structural funds and other sources of support will be explored. The approach is to ensure the national and European economic and social benefits, and the positive returns on investment, that are achieved through membership of CESSDA are wholly apparent to the relevant national decision-makers. Strength and sustainability : The widened membership must form a strong and sustained network, where global best practice is built in to the infrastructure of European social science and research. Membership of CESSDA should mean membership of a world class support infrastructure. Links with practical benefits will be established with equivalent infrastructures in other continents. The benefits of coordinated collaboration and consultation with trans-national European stakeholders (for example, Eurostat, European Parliament, Consilium) will bring benefits to all national CESSDA Members. The visibility of this research infrastructure and its importance to excellent evidence in policy making will be enhanced. Further, existing national infrastructures must complete their transition into a holistic service, capable of access services for all.