SustainLife - Sustaining Living Digital Systems in the Humanities

科学应用在确保研究项目的成果和成果方面发挥了至关重要的作用，尤其是在人文学科方面。演示系统、交互式可视化、研究数据库、数字版本和数字研究环境作为工作工具、传播和聚合平台，已成为日常研究工作的组成部分。保持它们的活力，维护它们，并确保它们在有限的资金期限之外的长期可用性是主要的组织和最终的财务挑战。虽然在长期保存的存储库中保存静态研究数据相对容易，但生命系统面临不同的暴露。它们是数字生态系统的一部分，因此需要定期进行调整，例如通过更新各个组成部分。在这个项目中，我们寻求在云计算和供应策略背景下开发的解决方案，并将这些方法和技术调整到目前在科隆大学人文数据中心（DCH）运行的生命系统中。我们将使用OASIS标准TOSCA及其开源实现OpenTOSCA， OpenTOSCA是由斯图加特大学的应用程序系统架构研究所（IAAS）开发的。在项目期间，将分析科学应用的用例，以确定具有创造协同效应的高潜力的关键组件，以及典型的软件体系结构和共同的管理任务。结果将被建模为组件和应用程序模板，并分别在OpenTOSCA环境中实现。这些努力的目的是发展一种提供和维护科学应用的关键组成部分的标准化方法。将记录和编辑结果和最佳做法，使合作伙伴和其他研究数据中心能够在各自机构中实际应用。项目期间将举办两次研讨会，以优化向研究数据界感兴趣的各方的知识转移。通过这个项目，DCH和IAAS将为开发一种更有效的方法来长期运行和维护人文科学应用，从而降低运行成本做出重要贡献。

Scientific applications have come to play a crucial role in securing outcomes and results from research projects, especially in the humanities. Presentational systems, interactive visualisations, research databases, digital editions and digital research environments serve as working tools, platforms of dissemination and aggregation and have become an integral part of day-to-day research work. Keeping them alive, maintaining them, and ensuring their long-term availability beyond limited funding periods is a major organisational and ultimately financial challenge. While it is comparably easy to conserve static research data in repositories with long-term preservation, living systems face different exposure. They are part of a digital ecosystem and as such need to be adjusted regularly, e.g. by updating the various components. In this project, we seek to transfer solutions developed in the context of cloud computing and provisioning strategies and adjust these methods and technologies towards the living systems that are currently running at the Data Center for the Humanities (DCH) at the University of Cologne. We will use the OASIS standard TOSCA and its open-source implementation OpenTOSCA, which was developed at the Institute of Architecture of Application systems (IAAS) at the University of Stuttgart. During the project period use cases for scientific applications will be analysed in order to identify key components with a high potential of creating synergistic effects, as well as typical software architectures and common management tasks. Findings will be modelled as components and application templates and implemented respectively in the OpenTOSCA environment. These efforts aim at developing a standardised approach to providing and maintaining key components of scientific applications. Results and best practices will be documented and edited in a manner that enables partners and fellow research data centers to apply them practically in their respective institutions. Two workshops will be organised in the course of the project to optimise knowledge transfer to interested parties in the research data community.With this project the DCH and the IAAS will make an important contribution to the development of a more efficient approach towards long-time operation and maintenance of scientific applications in the humanities, and thus also to the reduction of running costs.