DRIHM is organized in work packages (WPs 1-8) corresponding to the following categories: Joint Research Activities (JRA), Services Activities (SA), and Networking Activities (NA). All together SAs (WPs 5-6), NAs (WPs 1-4) and JRAs (WPs 7-8) will aim to deploy the DRIHM e-Science environment in the hydrometeorological community to enable multidisciplinary and global collaboration between meteorologist, hydrologists and possibly other Earth science scientists (and to address their specific needs) and to attract also non-specialists.

WP 1 - Management: this will address the coordination, financial and administrative management of DRIHM. The main objective of this WP is to efficiently manage all project activities, including the communication between the partners and with the European Commission (EC), the co-ordination of actions for performing the workplan and the monitoring of activities and resources for the full duration of the project to avoid any deviation between planned activities and actual work.

WP 2 - Dissemination and Outreach: this focuses on disseminating and outreaching the project objectives and results developed in Service Activities (SA) and Joint Research Activities (JRA) by demonstrating the feasibility and benefits of ICT-based Hydro-Meteorological Research (HMR) at a European and possibly global level. Consequently, the main objectives are:

• to demonstrate the project solutions to stakeholders (HMR and neighbouring Earth Science user communities, administrators and application developers, operational centers, the press, and other authorities)
• to raise the project awareness at the European and possibly global level in:
  • HMR user communities;
  • Grid communities;
  • Earth science user communities;
  • Related projects;

The specific means to achieve these objectives are:

1. preparation and distribution of adequate information material including a periodic DRIHM e-Newsletter;
2. active participation in conferences and workshops including the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) and OpenMI association;
3. media and press releases;
4. organization of a DRIHM User Forum. A web 2.0-style platform will be set up for the DRIHM User Forum.

WP 3 - Support, Training and Education: as the final goal of the DRIHM project is to facilitate a new way of doing HMR at a European and possibly global levels, the key elements of the DRIHM e-Science environment will be the selection and provision of adequate tools, the provisioning of a sustainable e-Infrastructure to use these tools, and a set of activities designed to overcome current limitations in using such tools. The main objective of this work package is thus to provide support and training to HMR scientists/students and interested non-specialists, constituting the DRIHM Virtual Community, to set up and operate the DRIHM e-Science environment and to contribute to it by adding new applications.

WP 4 - Policy Management, Sustainability and Long Term Vision: This project should be considered as only the first step towards the general uptake of the DRIHM e-Science environment by the hydro-meteorological research community. This project includes three application experiments to test and demonstrate the environment; a broader adoption is anticipated as the environment and services mature over the course of the project. Achieving sustainability of these services for the HMR community beyond the scope of this project is thus one of the major challenges for the DRIHM project team. Sustainability does not come for free. Whereas it is anticipated that the base technical infrastructure will be maintained as part of the European e-Infrastructure, sustaining the application side of DRIHM requires both technical and socio-economical efforts. Technically, it has to be ensured that the DRIHM environment continues to provide added value (e.g. persistence of shared resources, and easy access to HPC infrastructure) beyond the project’s termination. Socio-economically, an adequate governance structure with clear responsibilities and dependencies has to be established. A key ingredient of DRIHM is the instantiation of the DRIHM e-Science environment, which is foreseen to last beyond the runtime of the project. In addition, this workpackage will actively contribute to long-term activities, such as the workshop series by the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group.

WP 5 - Infrastructure Operation and Management, Data and Resource Management: The aim of this work package is the sustainable provisioning of the DRIHM collaborative e-Infrastructure and its services. This includes the definition of its basic architecture, the provisioning of all necessary services and facilities, and the deployment of all means for guaranteeing an adequate support for both users and developers. Functional areas include (but are not restricted to):

• authentication, authorization, certificate management;
• VO management;
• privacy management;
• auditing and accounting;
• infrastructure monitoring;
• trouble ticketing;
• deployment, installation, and configuration.

A major emphasis will be on ensuring the interoperability with existing distributed computing infrastructures like DEISA/PRACE and EGI and on the sustainability of the infrastructure beyond the project’s end.

WP 6 - Application Services: The purpose of work package WP6 is to develop and deliver a set of HMR application services to be run and supported by work package WP5. These applications will allow meaningful use cases, such as those in the experiment suites, to be executed. These services will include model execution and integration, data integration, workflow and inventories of models, data sources and tools. They will be driven from the requirements of the experiment suites in work package WP8, supported by the design activities from WP7.

WP 7 - Use Case and Application Requirements Analysis: The objective of this Joint Research Activity is to provide the  fundamental requirements, building blocks and initial design for the infrastructure services that will be integrated and operationally supported by the DRIHM Service Activities (SA, WP5-WP6).

WP 8 - HMR experiment suites: DRIHM is motivated by a “learning by doing” approach. The objectives of work package WP8 are twofold:

1. To execute a series of meaningful, representative experiments which demonstrate the DRIHM e-Science environment against a strong set of use-cases set out by DRIHM virtual community;
2. To drive the developments in work-packages WP7 and WP6 from a ‘real world’ perspective as defined by the DRIHM virtual community.

WP8 running and analyzing simulations and datasets will provide feedback to ICT groups resulting in a continuous evaluation of the e-Infrastructure and pointing out how and where it may improved and upgraded