The European Virtual Observatory (Euro-VO) initiative is an integrated and
coordinated program designed to provide the European astronomical community with
tools, systems, research support and data interoperability standards and
practices necessary to explore the digital, multi-wavelength universe resident
in European and international astronomical and astrophysical data archives. The
project is based on the research, development experience and prototypes produced
in the FP5 RTD entitled Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (AVO) Project. The
Euro-VO program seeks to support and deploy VO capabilities to data centres and
observatories across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. It will therefore be
closely coupled with the two other major integrating and networking activities
for astronomy in FP6: OPTICON and RADIONET.
The Euro-VO will consist of three new
organizational structures which will meet the goals of the total
work program and which will provide a platform for a long term
European VO research infrastructure and capability. These three
structures are:
The Euro-VO Data Centre Alliance (DCA): a
collaborative and operational network of European data
centres who publish data and metadata to the Euro-VO and who
provide a research infrastructure of GRID-enabled processing
and storage facilities.
The Euro-VO Technology Centre (VOTC): a
distributed organization that coordinates a set of research
and development projects on VO technology, systems and
tools.
The Euro-VO Facility Centre (VOFC): an
organization that provides the Euro-VO for centralized
resource registry, standards definition and promotion as
well as community support for VO technology take-up and
scientific program support using VO technologies and
resources.
