SoBigData (SBD) RI is a Pan-European, multi-disciplinary research infrastructure that uses social mining and big data to understand the complexity of our contemporary, globally interconnected society. Originally established in 2015 through funding from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 (now Horizon Europe) programme, it offers an integrated ecosystem of tools for data scientists and AI researchers to design and develop big data experiments in social science and support innovative, cutting-edge research in collaboration with a network of experts, research institutions, and industries. The project coordinator is the Italian National Research Council (CNR).
SoBigData provides a broad set of services, data, methods, training materials and technologies for Data Science within operative guidelines including EU Ethical, Legal, Social, Economic, and Cultural (ELSEC) values. FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and FACT (Fair, Accurate, Confidential, and Transparent) principles are key aspects of the research infrastructure development. The project is aimed at creating efficient synergies with public bodies and policy-makers to answer societal questions and optimize public resource usage.
In 2022, the project was recognised as part of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) roadmap as relevant digital infrastructure in the European Research Area (ERA), with the ambitious objective of becoming an established European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) by the end of 2025.
More than 30 partners between academic and research institutions and civil society organisations cooperate in 12 different countries within the scope of SoBigData’s Research Infrastructure.
