ARION: An Advanced lightweight architecture for accessing scientific collections
	Michela Spagnuolo (responsible), Bianca Falcidieno, Andrea Clematis, Corrado Pizzi, Marco Attene, Simone Marini http://www.arion-dl.org
Keywords: Digital Scientific Library Abstract: ARION provides a new generation of scientific Digital Library services for the searching and retrieval of digital scientific collection that resides within research or consultancy organizations geographically distributed. These collections contain not only data sets, but also simulation models and analysis tools in various scientific areas and incorporate applications of different domains of knowledge. ARION records expert knowledge for information domain representation and stores them thorught the definition and specification of ontologies which can be used for retrieval as well as for dynamic data set production. In a first static phase, the production of new data is obtained by the specification of so-called workflow which identify fixed flows of operations and process composition. In a second phase, it will be evaluated and possibly implemented the possibility of given the user more flexibility for an arbitrary but controlled composition of simulation or analysis modules. ARION advances the finding of previous studies in areas, such as, management of networked scientific repositories and metacomputing. It consolidates the work of international interoperability standard development, uses workflow-based on-line data set production, to provide a system that is complementary to established scientific practices in these organizations. Duration: 2001-2003 Coordinator: Catherine Houstis Institute of Computer Science, FORTH P.O.Box 1385, Science and Technology Park Heraklion, Crete, GR-711 10 Greece Phone: +30.81.391729 E-mail: houstis@csi.forth.gr Partners: Enterprise LSE Limited, Londra, Gran Bretagna Foundation for Research and Technology, Institute of Computer Science, Heraklion, Grecia HR Wallingford Ltd, Wallingford, Gran Bretagna Joint Research Center, Space Application Center, Marine Environment Unit, Ispra, Italia National Technical University of Athens, Università di Atene, Grecia Oceanographic Company of Norway ASA, Trondheim, Norvegia University of Crete, Heraklion, Grecia IMA, Italia