AVROSS is an effort to understand the reasons behind low levels of adoption of e-Infrastructures in the social sciences and humanities.  It also aims to support optimization of powerful distributed computing tools and applications, known as Grid, by analyzing and assessing current conditions. AVROSS is funded by the Commission of the European Communities and involves a consortium of organizations.

The AVROSS project includes the following elements:

• a comprehensive overview of worldwide integration activities in high-speed networking and Grid infrastructures in the field of economic and social research, geography and regional science, computational linguistics, and archeology;

• an analysis of the eight most promising approaches to using e-Infrastructure;

• recommendations for a large-scale rollout of virtual research organizations.

The study will use the following empirical methods to meet its objectives:

• A survey of early adopters and enthusiasts of e-social science and a list of highly promising approaches to using e-Infrastructures;

• Data collection through web, email and telephone queries;

• Eight case studies from the list of highly promising approaches, each involving interviews with initiators, providers and managers, and surveys of the user communities on awareness experiences, needs and barriers in regard to using these particular tools and approaches.

Based on the results of the empirical work, recommendations will be developed and discussed during a workshop with experts from the EU member states and industry.

Learn more about the AVROSS project here.