A microdata computation centre for de-centralized data sources

The European Data without Boundaries (DwB) project proposes a Remote Access Network (Eu-RAN) to access confidential microdata from different sources. A central service hub within Eu-RAN should host different services that support researchers and research projects. One of the attached services is a Microdata Computation Centre (MiCoCe). It is made to enable analysis of distributed data sources. Due to data security reasons, some of the most interesting data must stay physically in the facilities of the data owner. At the same time, there is an increasing demand on analysing data from different European sources simultaneously. The challenge is therefore twofold: enable analysis with distributed data sources while fulfilling the requirement of not moving the data. This talk will present the outcomes of a workshop held in Nuremberg, Germany, that focused on this topic. Data managers, IT-experts and statisticians discussed approaches that could support scientific research with decentralized data sources. Solutions come from the areas of grid computing, federated databases, statistical modelling and so forth. Having a service like the MiCoCe would enable the use of already available data sources in Europe and in addition make access to Big Data sources possible.