The Swiss Science Data Center

The Science Data Centers (SDCs) are responsible for developing software following strict standards, and then after the launch, for operating this software to carry out the systematic and complete Euclid data processing. Two different names are used to differentiate the activities: SDC-DEV stands for SDC development and SDC-OPER for SDC operations. In the first period (2013-2017), SDC-DEV activities clearly take precedence over SDC-OPER related ones. There will be increasing overlaps later with early concerns about setting up the operational environment.

The overall task is shared between the national SDCs. The SDC-DEV activties for the Swiss SDC (SDC-CH) are to take care of the distance determination derived from the photometric measurement, i.e., the photometric redshift, and the characterisation of galaxies and quasars with strong gravitational deformation, i..e, the strong lensing. For this reasons, the Swiss SDCs maintain special relation with the OU-PHZ and OH-SHE (in particular with the strong lensing EPFL group) which are providing algorithm specifications in the respective domains.

The task allocation related to the operation (SDC-OPER) are not yet fully defined as the software processing may be organized slight diffrently taking maximum advantage of the hardware resources available in the different countries (also given data transfer constraints).