by Kostas Glinos, European Commission, DG Information Society and Media, Head of GEANT and e- Infrastructure Unit

The management of extremely large and growing volumes of data has since many years been a challenge for the large scientific facilities located in Europe such as CERN or ESA, without clear long term solutions. The problem will become even more acute as new ESFRI facilities come on-stream in the near future. The advent of “big data science”, however, is not limited to large facilities or to some fields of science. Big data science emerges as a new paradigm for scientific discovery that reflects the increasing value of observational, experimental and computer-generated data in virtually all domains, from physics to the humanities and social sciences.