Norway
Every second year, the Research Council of Norway (RCN) updates the national roadmap for research infrastructures based on the national research strategy, which states that “Norwegian research and industry shall have access to relevant and updated infrastructures supporting research of high quality for an innovative and sustainable society”. The updates of the roadmap are coordinated with the biennial calls for national infrastructure funding.
The Norwegian roadmap describes the strategic foundation of the RCN’s priorities of infrastructures within specified thematic areas. Well aligned with Norway’s position as an early adopter of digital technologies in private and public sectors, information technology and e-infrastructures are two such areas of great importance. The roadmap, of which the current version is from 2020, also showcases the existing national research infrastructures that are under establishment and/or in operation. Simula Research Laboratory hosts the Experimental Infrastructure for Exploration of Exascale Computing (eX3), which has been listed in the national roadmap since 2018 and is intended to be the core of the Norwegian node in the SLICES infrastructure. As documented in the national roadmap, Norway is already actively participating in many European research infrastructures, from international research organizations like CERN, EML and ESA, to around 20 infrastructures currently listed in the ESFRI Roadmap.