The INAF Radio Data Archive: Towards a modern Science Gateway

Abstract

In the Big Data era, the amount and complexity of astronomical data more and more often prevents the scientist from locally store and process her/his data. As a consequence, the geographically distributed approach to data archiving and processing is rapidly becoming a requisite. To fulfill this need, we are realizing a prototype of Science Gateway (SG) for the Italian radio telescopes. The huge amount of significantly complex and resource-demanding datasets delivered by the Italian radio telescopes and the variety of use cases from the different observing modes represent an ideal test bed for the implementation and verification of a SG environment where the scientists can exploit, manage and analyse data. To this aim, we are exploiting our previous experience in the realization of a geographically-distributed radio data archive and processing tools as well as in the design of SG prototypes. Such a coordinated approach and harmonization of resources will maximize the return for the Italian observing facilities and, moreover, will match the requirements of the international community for a state-of-the-art, highly-performant environment in which to conduct successful science.