The Life Sciences Special Interest Group (LSSIG) and the Environmental Measurement Special Interest Group (EMSIG) are jointly holding an event on the management of large datasets on 3 February 2010 at Hamilton House, Euston.

Volumes of data, produced by experiments across the scientific disciplines, are increasing at a rapid rate. Construction of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), has necessitated the collaboration of 170 computer centres across 34 countries to manage the 15 million gigabytes of data the experiment will produce each year.

Similar, if somewhat smaller scale challenges are faced by researchers and industry in the life and environmental sciences, but the demand for computer performance and data storage continues to grow; meaning that we could face challenges to the transition to exa to zetta and yotta-scale data much sooner than previously anticipated.

This event will seek to hear from the users of large data to see what lessons can be learnt from the different disciplines; both academics and the users of informatics in industry, and as to what technologies they envisage for the future.

The objectives of this brokering event are to:

• learn from the communities on how they deal with the data question;
• examine the need for the standardisation of data and centralisation of facilities;
• provide an open forum for the LSSIG and EMSIG to engage with other communities.

For further information, please visit the Sensors KTN website.