National European Research Programmes in the Field of ICT for Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

An important goal of the European Union is the creation of a united European Research Area. To meet this goal, the ICT-ENSURE project was initiated. ICT-ENSURE (ICT Environmental Sustainability Research, http://www.ictensure.eu) aims at supporting the European Research Area in the field of ICT for environmental sustainability. The project was funded within the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union from May 2008 to April 2010. A central task of the ICT-ENSURE project was the acquisition and compilation of metadata about national European research programmes and projects in the mentioned field and the provision of a public access to these data. For this, experts of numerous EU Member States have investigated national and regional research programmes and projects, and a web-based information system was developed (http://is.ict-ensure.eu) to supply the data. The compiled metadata were the basis for an EU-wide survey. The goal of this survey was to provide scientists and policy makers with an overview of and meta information on national research activities. In some countries the survey was supplemented by interviews to complete and verify the survey results and analyses. This paper gives a short overview of the objectives of the ICT-ENSURE project. Challenges in information retrieval for such a pan-European information system are considered and the procedure chosen for the investigation of metadata on national research programmes are dealt with. Furthermore, relevant results of the analysis of the information collected are dealt with.