---
WP: 16
Country: Latvia
Authors: Ilmars Slaidins, Janis Virbulis, Ieva Timrote, Kristaps Bergfelds, Karlis Muiznieks, Janis Bicans, Aigars Asmis
Version: Draft
Reviewer 1: Carmen Martinez Fernandez
Reviewer 2: Bojana Malisic
Submitted: 2021-07-15
---

# List of Abbreviations

| Abbreviation | Phrase |
|:------------ |:-------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| AI | Artificial Intelligence |
| CA | Consortium Agreement |
| CASTIEL | Coordination and Support Action (CSA) closely associated with EuroCC |
| CUDA | Compute Unified Device Architecture |
| DoA | Description of Action |
| EU | European Union |
| GA | Grant Agreement |
| HPC | High-Performance Computing |
| HPDA | High-Performance Data Analysis |
| ICT | Information and communications technology |
| IZM | Ministry of Education and Science |
| KPI | Key Performance Indicator |
| LCCI | Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) |
| LU | University of Latvia |
| MHD | Magnetohydrodynamics |
| MX | Month of the project (X - number) |
| NCC | National Competence Centre |
| NGO | Non-governmental organization |
| PMT | Project Management Team |
| QX | Project quarter (X - number) |
| RTU | Riga Technical University |
| SJSC | State Joint-Stock Company |
| SMEs | Small and medium-sized enterprises |
| VIAA | State Education Development Agency |
| WP | Work package |

# Executive Summary

In Latvia there were no clear strategies and plans for the development of HPC systems and their application before the EuroHPC initiative. The infrastructure was fragmented and HPC services were provided by individual universities and institutes.

The Riga Technical University (RTU) with the partner University of Latvia (LU) joined the EuroCC project aiming to create the National HPC Competence Centre (NCC) of Latvia as a reference point for academia, industry, and public administration within High-Performance Computing (HPC), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High-Performance Data Analytics (HPDA).

The project in Latvia started with the building of the expert team, solving administrative challenges, mapping of competences and training opportunities. Awareness raising of HPC applications in different fields such as academia, public sector, and industry – especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) also was recognized as an important task to succeed.

This report presents the results obtained in the first year of the project, with risks and challenges foreseen already in the project planning stage. The Roadmap developed in the first quarter of the project was followed with just a slight deviation caused mainly due to COVID-19 pandemic. Our plan is to continue the development to reach the aim – creation of the sustainable and recognized NCC Latvia linked also to EuroCC network.

In this document there are presented main results achieved during the first year of the project and slight modifications of the plans for the continuation. Section 1 presents the progress and results obtained in the tasks following the Roadmap, including developed demo-cases, awareness raising and training events. Section 2 presents some deviations from the DoA due to COVID-19 and the update of KPIs. Section 3 presents some updates of the Roadmap and Section 4 states that no changes are needed in the data management plan.

# 1 Overall Progress and Achievements in the Tasks:

## T16.1

Representatives from the Riga Technical University's (RTU) HPC Centre and the Institute of Numerical Modelling of the University of Latvia (LU) started to prepare for the project already in April 2020 and the project was started on September 1, 2020 after the signing of the Grant Agreement (GA) and the Consortium Agreement (CA).

The core team for EuroCC WP16 was created at the start of the project, and all the necessary administrative documentation and disseminated information (a local press release in M1) was prepared. The dissemination workshop in Zoom was organized on October 9, 2020 and the agreement with the partner LU was signed.

A workspace for the project team and document repository have been created in MS Teams and regular weekly meetings of the management team are taking place. There were also organized additional working group meetings on specific topics. Responsibilities of the team members as task leaders and champions have been assigned and communication with the PMT and CASTIEL project established. The work on competence mapping and education/training mapping was organized from M1, the search of contacts with experts from industry and research community led to the first results summarized in M3. This work has been continued in respective tasks and collaboration with CASTIEL. NCC Latvia experts were participating in all events organized by PMT and CASTIEL (meetings, training events, conferences etc.), as well as in other linked events ex. EuroHPC Summit.

An important management task was the development of the Roadmap. The collaborative cloud document editing was used while developing the Roadmap, as well as other documents. The draft version of the Roadmap was created in M3 and the final version was delivered complying with the assigned deadline in M4. All the task leaders were involved in the development of their respective parts of the Roadmap and have been participating in the discussion and correction of draft versions. The main topic of the WP16 Roadmap is the development of the resources with the perspective to create a sustainable NCC Latvia and to obtain a legal status.

The quarterly financial and technical reports also have been prepared and delivered in time. Again, all task leaders were involved in the development of their respective parts of the technical report and in the improvement of the draft. The Data Management plan was developed and added to Q2 report and the following Technical Reports.

One of the challenging tasks in NCC resource development was hiring of the experts for the project team and this process is still ongoing. The first six scientific experts and three other staff members started to work in M3, in M4-M5 seven new experts joined and now we have 16 scientific experts and three other staff members. All the hired experts are working now in the project just part-time, but we envision that after obtaining the legal status for the NCC Latvia we will have also full-time staff members.

There is still ongoing communication with the Ministry of Education and Science (IZM) and the State Education Development Agency (VIAA) on getting the project support. As EuroCC is a new initiative, several corrections in the existing legislation are needed to be approved by the Government to provide support for the project, however, it takes time. Now all the corrections are made, and we expect to sign an agreement in M12.

## T16.2

During the last year, our NCC has been collaborating with several institutions and businesses, therefore allowing us to organize collaborative education and training events with a broader programme. More information about the events - date, duration, name, and number of participants - is available in Table 1.

**Table 1. Events organized by NCC Latvia.**
| Start date | Duration | Name of the event | Number of participants |
| ---------- |-------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------- |
| 2021-03-05 | One day | Seminar on capabilities of Singularity containers | 19 |
| 2021-03-30 | Two half days | CUDA introductory course “Introduction to high-performance computing technology CUDA” (Part I) | 10 |
| 2021-03-30 | One day | An educational seminar about HPC for SJSC “Latvijas Valsts meži” (“Latvian State Forests”) | 20 |
| 2021-06-08 | Two half days | Advanced CUDA course “Applied use of the high-performance computing technology CUDA” | 12 |
| 2021-07-07 | One day | Open HPC week: HPC day | 29 |
| 2021-07-09 | One day | Open HPC week: Open-source software day | 27 |
| 2021-07-05 | Five days | Open HPC week: Consultations with experts | 5 |

Seminar on capabilities of Singularity containers was organized in collaboration with Institute of Numerical Modelling of the University of Latvia and Riga Technical University's HPC Centre. CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) courses were organized in collaboration with Riga Technical University's HPC Centre.

Together with State Joint-Stock Company (SJSC) "Latvijas Valsts meži" ("Latvian State Forests") an educational seminar about HPC was organized. The programme included four lectures and practical demonstrations about HPC, Modelling and AI. This event will be reproduced in other organizations. It functions as a foundation for brainstorming and future cooperation.

The main training event for the first year of the project was an Open HPC week. Although it was set as a publicity event, it included a lot of training elements - seminars, lectures, demo and hands-on sessions. In order to attract new HPC users, we offered an HPC day, an open-source software day, and private consultations with experts in their field.

The HPC day gave an overview of what is HPC, how to connect to HPC and work with it. Hands-on session gave an opportunity to calculate simple HPC examples with command lines, and in an interactive environment - Galaxy. There was a presentation about high-capacity data network in Latvia, and demonstration of it's speed.

The Open-source software day gave an overview and basic principles of open-source software, as well as introduced with some practical examples and demonstrations on using the open-source software.

During the whole Open HPC week, participants were encouraged to have private consultations in the following topics:
- HPC services and infrastructure;
- Technical aspects of using an HPC;
- Bioinformatics/genomics;
- Modelling in construction;
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning;
- Modelling of technological processes;
- Computational chemistry/ drug discovery;
- Computational hydrodynamics;
- Modelling of weather forecast and analysis of climate data;
- Joining the high-capacity data network.

We promoted several events offered by EuroCC project, including NCC Sweden, therefore participants from Latvia had the possibility to join additional training events. For example, promotion of Galaxy workshop (February 15-19) on local websites reached out to record number of participants from Latvia (42) compared to the rest of the world.

At this point, we have had conversations with NCC Sweden and NCC Lithuania regarding possible collaboration and support with twinning activities for training.

A great amount of time has been taken to map education and training events in AI/HPC/HPDA all around the country. So far, 70% of respondents have given full information needed. To get a clear view on what training possibilities are offered in Latvia and what is still missing, we will proceed to communicate with everyone involved in training events to get as much information as possible.

If we look at the overall results, we have succeeded in offering six training events from the planned five to ten events for 10-30 participants in each event. From the plan to create three to seven new courses, seminars, and workshops, we have had six of them.

## T16.3

First year Business Development and Technology Transfer activities were dependent on competence mapping results which provided base information about the state of different industry representative HPC experience, knowledge, plans etc. During this process, the first cooperation agreements were made with HPC experts for both the development of demo-cases and for future collaboration in NCC framework as expert consultants. Currently the network of experts consists of nine experts actively involved in demo-case production and a list of experts with whom contact is established and future collaboration can be started immediately if necessary for the NCC consulting services.

First year activities to advance progress in T16.3 were focused on the following efforts:
1. To further understand needs of industries and opportunities to cooperate with relevant industry partners.
2. To appropriately tailor both the services of the NCC and best process for enabling HPC use in an organization.
3. To create awareness of HPC benefits and the NCC.

The following activities were performed:
- Contacts have been established with five different industry competence centres, three funds for technology start-ups, Latvian Investment and Development agency that run business incubator network, Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) and other association-type points of contact.
- Seminars about HPC possibilities and benefits were organized to create awareness of HPC and position NCC as a trustworthy organization open for cooperation providing consultations and support for business development and technology transfer.
- The first public online seminar about HPC was held on February 5, 2021 (37 registered participants). Information about the seminar was disseminated through the acquired contacts of associations mentioned above. The main aim of the seminar was to introduce the concept of HPC and its applications as well as to introduce the NCC as a point of contact for future cooperation. As a result, a meeting with the municipality of Kuldīga was organized which gave insight into possible future cooperation models. Focus on possible cooperation models with municipalities must be pursued in ongoing activities. Also, an informal agreement to cooperate in the process of HPC implementation was made with EUROLCDS Ltd. (the largest liquid crystal display factory in Europe).
- A seminar for members of LCCI was held on July 2, 2021 and now is publicly available on YouTube. The impact of the seminar is unclear, as 9 participants were more passive with limited activity to get more detailed information or service. The follow-up service will take place.

Furthermore, contacts have been established and individual talks are in progress with the “Big data community” – a group of big state-owned companies involved with use, generation, and analysis of big data – to discuss the onboarding of HPC technologies. The group involves Latvian State Forests, TET (a partly state-owned ICT company), Latvenergo (ensures generation, trade and distribution of electricity and thermal energy as well as trade of natural gas), Latvian State Radio and Television Centre and other companies.

Evaluation of potential HPC user needs and promotion for more active involvement in HPC technology uptake is done through continuous and ongoing meetings and discussions with industry and public sector representatives on use of HPC technology. Considering this, cooperation with “Demola Latvia” – organization which involves students in problem solving – will result in a 12-week workshop for students (starting September 2021) who will research the most common barriers for HPC adoption in industry and ways to overcome them by interviewing companies.

Taking in mind current results in creating new HPC developments across different fields, only partial success has been achieved: 2 developments in 2 areas (Company UPB and LU researchers). A decision to reduce the respective KPI has been made. The KPI will be changed to 2-7 new developments in 1-3 areas (previously: 5-15 developments in 2-5 areas). This change in the number describing the goal does not imply reduced activity in attempts to achieve them.

## T16.4

The main effort during first year was put in road-map and company's need analysis executed during first quarter of 2021. The assessment of European and USA NCC's best practices (16 university cases were analysed) and meetings, interviews and consultancies helped to identify supply side of HPC services. **The aggregated demand-supply balance** allowed to see importance of HPC-readiness factor as a driver for collaboration between supercomputing service (computing, consulting, and training) provider and industry players. In Europe, the HPC landscape in terms of usage as well as financing is mainly driven by the public sector (e.g. ministries of education and science). Similar situation we can observe in Latvia as well.

During our research we noticed that enterprises in Latvia are self-sufficient and have limited interest into purchasing supercomputing services from NCC (see Figure 1). Therefore, we choose to focus our attention on private and government owned small and medium companies as new potential HPC users. These companies have the least amount of knowledge and understanding about supercomputing capabilities and potential applications compared to academia. As mentioned in sections T16.2, T16.3 and T16.5 several activities have been performed to establish common understanding and long-term collaboration with various types of potential partners and supercomputing services customers.


We have designed **draft HPC NCC and industry collaboration strategy** and its Implementation plan. This plan is based on our observations and assumptions made from desk research, other NCC best (discussed at CASTIEL workshops) practises, current Latvian customer demand analysis and **value chain model** assessed by Fraunhofer SCAI (Source: Financing future of supercomputing, EC DG Connect, 2018). This plan consists of activities related to marketing, training and awareness building and entry level consulting services. We have validated action plan together with UPB Holding and few SMEs representing potential HPC customers from 3D-rapid prototyping sector and wood processing industries. To identify how much actual effort, information, process improvements are needed to provide end to end services we have started negotiations with partners from 3D printing and wood processing industries. We expect to gain first results within upcoming 6 months.

We see high potential for supercomputing application development and adoption by independent software vendors and SMEs in selected **three priority sectors** (CAE, bio-sciences, geo-sciences and environmental and renewable energy subsectors) where Latvia can obtain role of regional HPC/AI-service leader. These companies are more flexible, agile, and willing to take risk more than large and mature companies. From our point of view modelling tasks are more suitable for trials as they require minimum amount of information related to company know-how, data protection and intellectual property. Data analysis and artificial intelligence tasks require access to information that is not publicly available and process to gain access to this information is either not defined or very time and resource consuming (requires several circles and repeated actions). Large partners are not yet ready to make any action towards data sharing. Sometimes the success key is to identify right entrepreneur / innovator within a firm. The next challenge is to work with partners to complement the designed map of firm needs and available in market services in local circumstances aimed to increase NCC service performance.

The conclusions are based on outcomes from conducted several meetings:
- 2021-02-26 Meeting with the Electronic Communications Office of Latvia on deep learning model development for radio tower surveying (telecommunications cluster in Latvia).
- 2021-02-25 Introduction call with Asya.ai start-up representative on potential Deep learning model development and applications for quality control.
- 2021-02-24 Consultation on the benefits provided by HPC/HPDA/AI solutions for company “SIA CastPrint”.
- 2021-02-18 Call with Riga city Traffic monitoring department representatives on deep learning application for surveillance camera video anonymization applications
- 2021-02-11 and 2021-01-11 Meetings with UPB Holding building construction experts
- 2021-04-26 Meeting with IT Cluster EDIH, electrotechnical and electronics association Letera and Latvian Electronics competence centre LEO, Aeronautics Institute of RTU
- 2021-05-10 Meeting with mobile network operator LMT
- 2021-05-12 Meeting with Ventspils municipality (smart city strategy)
- 2021-05-25 Meeting with forestry company – JSC Rīgas Meži
- 2021-05-25 Communication with rapid prototyping and 3D printing firms Baltic3D and SMW Engineering
- 2021-06-08 Discussion with two technical managers from LTVRC and design of development plan for TV tower deformation monitoring
- 2021-07-02 seminar at Latvian CCI and discussion with its manager B.Greda
- 2021-07-12 several discussions with wood processing experts representing wood article drying processes and simulation of large-scale wood module fire safety and fire expansion prognosis (Peterkoks Ltd. Research institute MEKA)

**The draft business and financial models** of NCC operation as public-private collaborative quasi-independent intermediaries were elaborated and HPC-scheme intervention model was proposed requiring further discussion and validation.

The most valuable outcome of the 1st year period is design of **a framework and guidelines of three business procedures** aimed to assist to firms with different level of HPC-readiness - 1) assist in awareness building by informative services; 2) increase confidence to use and exploit HPC-provided advantages by starting shift from desk PCs, and 3) provide different level training to respective maturity users. The upcoming task is to fine-tune procedures by servicing real nascent and mature HPC-users.

## T16.5

A list of entities to be interviewed for HPC competence mapping activities was established with 87 entities listed (45 companies, 5 government institutions, 1 NGO, 33 scientific institutions and 3 individuals). The list is being continuously updated as new information is acquired.

About 40 out of 87 listed institutions were interviewed. Main conclusions about the HPC ecosystem of Latvia have been made and described in the roadmap deliverable. Main conclusions and meeting minutes from each interview have been summarized in a single local competence mapping table.

A special effort was made towards mapping the national chemical and pharmaceutical industries and related institutions. Additionally, national genomics research institutions were thoroughly interviewed regarding their ongoing HPC developments - the fastest growing HPC application area in Latvia. Competence mapping activities also included workshops with the largest state institutions (Latvian State Forests, TET and Latvenergo - see Section T16.3)

Competence mapping activities strengthened and elaborated the points given in the initial status report that was prepared during the EuroCC project application phase. Although there are diverse and highly valuable HPC/HPDA/AI competences within the academic community of Latvia, there is significant underperformance in terms of industrial adaptation and implementation within the business/industrial sector.

Similarly, the adaptation of HPC solutions within new fields of academic and applied research indeed are taking place, but the process is alarmingly passive. This situation arises due to (1) the lack of centralized coordination effort from the state government and universities, (2) the inconvenient and bureaucratic access to local HPC infrastructure, as well as (3) low popularity and underutilization of European Union (EU) provided HPC resources. These findings are discussed in more detail in the roadmap.

As a result of the competence mapping activities, several important areas of the local HPC ecosystem have been established to a level that warranted corresponding HPC demonstration case adaptation. By performing further research and continuing discussions with NCC experts, corresponding companies and institutions were identified that will serve as dissemination channels for the proposed HPC demo-cases in these areas. These areas - alongside the demo-case development - are described in Section T16.6.

## T16.6

By performing the competence mapping activities (T16.5), it was clearly identified that facilitation of access to scientific and technical expertise and knowledge pools can be aided by creating a set of HPC demonstration (demo) cases that would provide clear basis for workshops and seminars with industry as well as training materials and publicity. Therefore, the following demo case adoption and dissemination plan was established and used during the first project year:
- **COMPLETED - Mapping of industry needs and competence level (M2-M3).** Interviews were conducted to identify specific needs of the industry that served as the topics for demo cases (see T16.5).
- **COMPLETED - Mapping and extending related competences (M2-M3).** NCC identified experts that are specifically related to the mapped needs of the industry. Additional seminars were organized to address lacking competences for the demo case adoption (seminar on *Singularity* containerization and additional workshop considering use of *Git* versioning system - tools required for easy dissemination of the completed demos).
- **COMPLETED - Demo case specification (M4-M5).** Based on the industry needs and interests, as well as available competences and open-source HPC solutions, demo case content was specified and discussed in the framework of several internal NCC seminars to provide a specific work task for selected experts. During this stage of demo-case adoption, eligibility within the EuroCC framework was addressed – it was made sure that the prepared cases will be general enough to be applicable for a wide range of businesses, but specific enough to serve as attractive example for the companies within the specific area.
- **COMPLETED - Adaptation of demo cases (M6-M9).** Selected experts – according to the provided specification – adapted existing HPC solutions for demonstration purposes. These demo-cases include the mathematical models, data processing techniques, and software implementation that show the capabilities of the HPC simulations if used in the specific industry scenario. Special attention was paid to make cases modular, easy to edit and supplement to aid the later adoption within the companies.
- **UNDERWAY - Short-term dissemination of demo cases (M10-M13).** Prepared demo cases were documented and made publicly available on the GitLab portal (*GitLab.com* group of the [NCC Latvia](gitlab.com/eurocc-latvia) [1]). Careful documentation and rich visuals were prepared to aid the dissemination activities and awareness creation. The demo cases currently serve as basis for workshops and conferences with industry partners.
- **UNDERWAY - Perfection of the demo-case content (M10-M13).** Feedback obtained during the workshops/meetings with industry partners is used to perfect the demo cases to make them as user-friendly as possible. Experience exchange seminars for NCC experts involved in the demo-case adoption was organized to facilitate similar format and scope of the demo-cases (documentation, functional aspects, scope of technical details).
- **PLANNED - Long-term dissemination of demo cases (M14 and onwards).** After perfecting the demo case content during hands-on workshops together with industry partners, wide-spread dissemination activities will take place to target as many new users as possible. The involved experts will continue to pursue company representatives and serve as consultants within the specific area of HPC.

The specific demo case topics/titles are listed below, each implemented and maintained by one of the NCC experts as a *git* repository (see Figure 2).
- [***Building management system AI data analysis***](https://gitlab.com/eurocc-latvia/bms-ai-model)
- [***Horizontal single belt casting with electromagnetic flow control***](https://gitlab.com/eurocc-latvia/metal-casting-hpc-model)
- [***MHD stirring of a large-scale furnace in metallurgical applications***](https://gitlab.com/eurocc-latvia/mhd-mixing-hpc-model)
- [***Operational modelling of seaports by oceanographic model***](https://gitlab.com/eurocc-latvia/oceanographic-hpda)
- [***Room Thermal Comfort and Epidemiological Safety***](https://gitlab.com/eurocc-latvia/room-model)
- [***Statistical downscaling of seasonal temperature forecasts***](https://gitlab.com/eurocc-latvia/seasonal-weather-forecast-hpda)
- [***HPC Array Job Example***](https://gitlab.com/eurocc-latvia/hpc-array-job-example) (Instructional example for NCC experts on how to prepare the demo-case documentation).
- [***Assessment of Wind Loads Using HPC***](https://gitlab.com/eurocc-latvia/wind-loads)
- [***Microchannel Flow in a Heated Plate***](https://gitlab.com/eurocc-latvia/microchannel-flow)

Involvement of these experts (eight for demo-case adaption, one additional for competence mapping in the field of computational chemistry HPC applications) fulfill the proposed KPI to involve 5-10 new experts each year.

 [1]](https://i.imgur.com/7P7SWXh.jpg)

## T16.7

Dissemination activities started on 9 September, 2020 with a press release regarding the start of the EuroCC project. The first Dissemination Workshop for potential experts and users was organized on October 9, 2020. Overall, 36 participants registered for the event.

A great amount of time was taken in creating our NCC's logo (Figure 4), designing the [NCC Latvia website](https://eurocc-latvia.lv/?lang=en) [2] (Figure 3), and creating website's content. It was decided to have two languages for the website - Latvian and English - with the same content. At this stage, there are three main blocks - *EuroCC* (general information, services and possibilities available, as well as subscriptions to Newsletter or applying for a consultation), *Training* (courses organized by NCC Latvia and other training possibilities within the EuroCC project), and *News* (relevant information on upcoming and past events).


Information from people who have applied for a consultation, is automatically sent to our NCC's official e-mail: [e-mail], therefore all further communication is via the e-mail. For people who have signed up for a newsletter, they will receive it via mailchimp.

After the logo was created, it was incorporated in our website's design and social media platforms. In addition to this, the logo was incorporated in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation template, and official NCC e-mail's signature.


Since the development of [NCC Latvia website](https://eurocc-latvia.lv/?lang=en) [2], we have created 14 news in Latvian and English. In addition to the website, social media accounts have been created for [Facebook](https:/https://www.facebook.com/eurocclatvia/), [LinkedIn](https:/https://www.linkedin.com/company/eurocclatvia/), and [Twitter](https:/https://twitter.com/EuroccLatvia/) [3-5] (see Figures 5-6). From March 2021, we have 50 followers and 12 articles posted. As the number of activities increase, there will be more information to post on social media and more followers to reach. Social media platforms, as well as our NCC's website is used to promote meetings with industry representatives and training events organized by our NCC and EuroCC members. Detailed information on dissemination activities is mentioned in T16.2 and T16.3.



Overall, the EuroCC project and our NCC's activities have been mentioned at least 18 times - LU portals, RTU portals, and LCCI.

# 2 Deviations from Annex 1 - DoA

The Annex 1 DoA for the NCC Latvia was taken as a core in development of the Roadmap and there was no significant deviation observed. It was planned in DoA that at the end of the second year the NCC Latvia will be a key organization in Latvia for supporting industry and scientists with expertise and advice, with open platform containing at least 20 demo-cases and the number of industry partners who inquire for further development of the demo-case will serve as KPI for the activity.

Main challenges and risks were well foreseen except COVID-19 pandemic. It was the main deviation from DoA. It was planned to organize the Baltic HPC and Cloud conference in 2021 and 2022. In DoA it was planned to attend international scientific and technical conferences (4 persons visiting 2 conferences) during the project and visit other HPC competence centres abroad (4 persons visiting 2 competence centres) to obtain new competences and share experiences. A special training workshops were planned to be organized after each visit and obtained information had to be spread to interested audience.

# 3 Update of the Roadmap Deliverable

Over the course of the first project year, there are no conceptual changes required for the NCC Roadmap. However, a few changes to the timeline and expected KPI values will be implemented:
- Roadmap features KPI for *Number of new HPC developments* with expected amount of 5-15) in 2-5 new areas. However, NCC consulting operations during the first year proved that this amount is too high to be expected for Latvia. Expected values will be changed to 2-7 new developments in 1-3 areas.
- HPC demo-case adoption timeline features *Long-term dissemination of demo cases* with wide dissemination activities where these cases are presented to interested parties over the course of widely publicized workshops. However, adoption and perfection of these demo-cases (implementation, documentation, publicity materials) have proven to be challenging enough for these activities to be postponed to M14.

# 4 Update of the Data Management Plan

The Data Management Plan was developed and presented in the Technical Report Q2. Update is not necessary.

# Sources of information

[1] - Git repositories of the NCC Latvia. 2021. [Online] Available: https://gitlab.com/eurocc-latvia. [Accessed: 14 July 2021].

[2] - Webpage of the NCC Latvia. 2021. [Online] Available: https://eurocc-latvia.lv. [Accessed: 14 July 2021

[3] - Facebook page of the NCC Latvia. 2021. [Online] Available: https://www.facebook.com/eurocclatvia. [Accessed: 14 July 2021].

[4] - LinkedIn page of the NCC Latvia. 2021. [Online] Available: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eurocclatvia. [Accessed: 14 July 2021].

[5] - Twitter page of the NCC Latvia. 2021. [Online] Available: https://twitter.com/EuroccLatvia. [Accessed: 14 July 2021].