Cluster of Research Infrastructures and Synergies in Physics (CRISP)

CRISP - Cluster of Research Infrastructures and Synergies in Physics

The purpose of CRISP is to create synergies and develop common solutions for an initial group of eleven ESFRI-PPs (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructure preparatory phase) projects in the field of Physics, Astronomy, and Analytical Facilities.

Its ultimate aim is to supply the best service to the rapidly growing and largely diversified user community, and to ensure that the large investments made at the national and international levels result in significant progress in science.

The e-Research Centre's participation in CRISP is to represent the SKA (Square Kilometre Array) project within the consortia, specifically with work on ICT infrastructure and DAQ systems.

CRISP’s participating partners comprise operating facilities currently undergoing major upgrades (ESRFUP, FAIR, ILL 20/20, SLHC, and SPIRAL2), new Research Infrastructures (RIs) which have entered the implementation stage (ESS and XFEL), and RIs well advanced in their preparatory phase and ready to progress towards implementation (ELI, EuroFEL, ILC-HiGrade, and SKA). Each of these eleven represents a large-scale resource. Their common intent is to provide a word-class level service to the European Research Area: sensitive to the needs of a broad range of user communities, responsive to diverse and changing demands in a highly dynamic environment. They cover a variety of scientific goals together with a range of experimental methods and techniques.

CRISP is a cooperative project. It offers the partners opportunity to enhance their own infrastructures whilst sharing research and development efforts.  Under CRISP, the partners propose a greater exchange of ideas and expertise: to better serve user communities; to retain the lead in technological progress and scientific sophistication; to achieve enhanced levels of development; and to exploit complementary know-how.

Through the mutual exchange of test and commissioning results, an improved and accelerated learning curve shall be achieved, leading ultimately to faster implementation. Joining expertise and experience will avoid fragmented approaches and uncoordinated efforts; furthermore it will significantly reduce risks associated with individual RI projects.

The scientific and technical work to be completed as part of the CRISP project reflects the main challenges the RIs are facing or will face in the near future. Their solution requires a concerted action amongst the RIs, rather than the individual effort of single RIs, and thereby supports the implementation of these RIs.

Key topics identified within these challenges have been clustered into Topic Groups namely:

  1. Accelerators
  2. Instruments & Experiments
  3. Detectors & Data Acquisition
  4. Information Technology & Data Management