Seventeen of the projects have their origin in grant proposals submitted in response to the initial funding announcement issued by the National Financing Initiative for Research Infrastructure in 2009. These were selected from among 260 grant proposals after thorough assessment on the basis of the criteria described in Section 1.3.1. Ten of these projects received full or partial grant awards and have signed a contract, or are engaged in contract negotiations, with the Research Council.

The budget framework of the funding announcement was insufficient for financing of the remaining seven projects, despite the fact that they earned a mark of “Outstanding” in terms of scientific merit and strategic importance. These projects are considered to be investment-ready.

The other six projects presented here are projects on the European Roadmap for Research Infrastructures in which Norway has entered into binding agreements or has clearly signalled its desire to participate.

Projects included on the first edition of the Roadmap

All projects titles in the tables are hyperlinked to descriptions of the prosjects.

Table 1:

Large-scale Facilities
Project	Topic	Applicants	Amount    sought mill NOK	Amount allocated mill NOK	Status
NMNF Norwegian Micro- and Nanofabrication Facilities	Materials and Nanotechnology	NTNU, SINTEF, UiO, HVE	150	71	Under implementation
NOWERI Norwegian Offshore Wind Energy Research Infrastructure	Energy	CMR, SINTEF	77	66	Under implementation
Biobank Norway A national infrastructure for biobanks and biobank related activity in Norway*	Health and Biotechnology	NTNU, UiT, UiO, UiB, FHI, Helse-foretakene	96	80	Under implementation
NORTEM  The Norwegian Centre for Transmission Electron Microscopy	Materials and Nanotechnology	SINTEF, NTNU, UiO	98		Investment ready
MARINTEK The marine technology laboratories. Required upgrading and developments	Oceans	SINTEF Marintek, NTNU	162		Investment ready
GEOTESTING National Geo-Test Sites	Geosciences	NGI, NTNU, UNIS, SINTEF	48		Investment ready
NORBRAIN Norwegian brain initiative: a large-scale infrastructure for 21st century neuroscience	Health	NTNU, UiO	174		Investment ready
NorMIT Norwegian centre for minimally invasive image guided therapy and medical technologies	Health and Biotechnology	St. Olavs Hospital, NTNU, SINTEF, UiO, IVS Oslo University Hospital	103		Investment ready

* The project is expected to partly finance the Norwegian node in the ESFRI-project BBMRI – Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure.

Table 2:

eInfrastructure
Project	Topic	Applicants	Amount    sought mill NOK	Amount allocated mill NOK	Status
NorStore Norwegian data storage infrastructure	Interdisciplinary	UNINETT Sigma AS	43	37	Funding allocated for 2010-2013
Notur II  The Norwegian metacenter for computational science	Interdisciplinary	UNINETT Sigma AS	40		Investment ready
SEQ An eInfrastructure supporting high-throughput sequencing in life sciences	Biotechnology	UiB, UiO, NTNU, UiT	45		Investment ready

 

Table 3:

Scientific Databases and Collections
Project	Topics	Applicants	Amount    sought mill NOK	Amount allocated	Status
MENOTEC Medieval Norwegian text corpus	Humanities	UiO, UiB	7,3	7	Under implementation
INESS Infrastructure for the exploration of syntax and semantics	Humanities	UiB, UNI Research AS	22	19	Under implementation
NORMAP Norwegian satellite earth observation database for marine and polar research	Geophysics	NERSC, CERSAT, Kongsberg Satelite Services, The Norwegian Meteorological Institute	33	25	Under implementation
ACDC Advanced Conflict Data Catalogue: defining an industry-standard for data on armed conflict	Social Sciences	PRIO, Swiss Fed. Inst. of Technology, ETH, Uppsala university	8,8	8	Under implementation
The ACCESS life-course database	Social Sciences	NOVA, SSB	6,6	6	Under implementation
NorBOL Norwegian Barcode of Life Network	Biology	UiO, Bergen Museum, UiTØ, Museum of Natural History and Archeology	27		Investment ready

 

Projects on the European Roadmap for Research Infrastructures

- in which Norway has entered into binding agreements or has clearly signalled its desire to participate.

Table 4:

ESFRI: Large-scale Facilities
Project	Topic	Norway offers hosting	Participating Norwegian institutions
SIOS The Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System	Climate and Environment	X	RCN, NPI, UNIS, NSC, UiB, UiT, METNO, NERSC, IMR, NILU, NMA, ARR
ESRF Upgrade European Synchrotron Radiation Facility*	Materials Science		NordSync (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland)
ECCSEL European Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage Laboratory Infrastructure	Carbon Capture and Storage, Energy	X	NTNU, SINTEF
ESS European Spallation Source	Physics, Materials Science		IFE, NTNU, UiO, UiB
EISCAT-3D Next Generation European Incoherent Scatter Radar System*	Physics, Space Research		UiT, UNIS, UiO, UiB og FFI

 * Norway is member of ESRF and EISCAT

Table 5:

ESFRI: Scientific Databases and Collections
Project	Topic	Norway offers hosting	Participating Norwegian Institutions
CESSDA Council of European Social Science Data Archives	Social Sciences	X	Norwegian Social Science Data Service(NSD)

 

Research areas of national priority

An effort has been made to ensure that projects on the Norwegian Roadmap represent a balance between national priority research areas. The figure below shows the total amount of funding sought by the projects on the Roadmap under the National Financing Initiative for Research Infrastructure in 2009 distributed by:

• the priority thematic areas and technologies identified in the Government white paper on research;
• eInfrastructure of benefit to all disciplines;
• projects of particular relevance to basic research.

Although the majority of infrastructures on the roadmap have wide-ranging areas of application, the figure below gives only the area in which the project has its primary objective. Nevertheless, the figure clearly illustrates that there are funded or investment-ready projects in almost all of the national priority research areas.

The total amount sought by projects in roadmap tables 1, 2 and 3 above, distributed by the thematic priority areas and technologies identified in the white paper on research, eInfrastructure (of an interdisciplinary nature) and basic research. Allocated sums and sums under negotiation are indicated in the dark portion of the horizontal bar