---
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
---

# 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

The core team for EuroCC WP16 with six experts was created at the start of the project and work started on September 1st, 2020. There are 16 scientific experts and three other staff members working in the project now. All experts are working in the project part-time, but after obtaining the legal status for NCC Latvia we will have also full-time staff members.

A workspace for the project team and document repository have been created in MS Teams and regular weekly meetings are taking place. Responsibilities of the team members as task leaders and champions have been assigned and established communication with the PMT and support project (CASTIEL).

The Roadmap was created and delivered in M4. All the task leaders were involved in the development of their respective parts of the Roadmap. 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.

## T16.2

During the last year, our NCC has been collaborating with several institutions and businesses, for example, Institute of Numerical Modelling of the University of Latvia and Riga Technical University's HPC Centre, and State Joint-Stock Company (SJSC) "Latvijas Valsts meži" ("Latvian State Forests"), therefore allowing us to organize collaborative education and training events with a broader programme. Possible collaboration with NCC Sweden and NCC Lithuania is in progress.

Overall, we have organized six training events from the planned five to ten events for 10-30 participants in each event.

## T16.3

First year activities were focused on understanding the possibilities to cooperate with potential clients and partners and creating trust during the process.

First, the NCC has established contact with most industry specific associations and organizations that aim towards industry growth.

Second, continuous talks with individual companies are done to tailor the NCC activities and services accordingly. Onboarding of HPC technologies has been discussed with both large-scale state-owned companies (“Big data community”) and SME’s.

Furthermore, seminars about HPC 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.

## T16.4

We have designed draft HPC NCC and industry collaboration strategy and its Implementation plan. This plan is based on a desk research, other NCC best practises, current demand analysis and value chain model. High potential for supercomputing application development and adoption by independent software vendors and SMEs is in selected three priority sectors (bio-sciences, geo-sciences and environmental and renewable energy subsectors).

The draft business and financial models of NCC operation as a public-private collaborative quasi-independent intermediaries were elaborated and HPC-service scheme intervention model was proposed including a framework and guidelines of three business procedures.

## 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.

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.

## 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, several demo cases were adopted during the first project year, covering several topics in areas that were identified as the most promising for HPC solution implementation and NCC consulting services. The specific demo case topics/titles are listed below, and are freely available as *git* repositories on the [GitLab group page](https://gitlab.com/eurocc-latvia) of the NCC Latvia [1]:
- [***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)

## T16.7

Dissemination activities started on 9th of September, 2020 with a press release, and the first workshop took place on 9th of October, 2020, with 36 participants overall.

A great amount of time was taken in creating our NCC’s logo and designing the [NCC Latvia website](https://eurocc-latvia.lv/?lang=en) [2]. Consultation applications are sent directly to our official e-mail: [e-mail], and the communication is taking place via MailChimp.

Social media sites also have been created in [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/eurocclatvia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/eurocclatvia) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/eurocclatvia?lang=en) [3-5], with a total of 50 followers and 12 articles posted. 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 and visit other HPC competence centres abroad to obtain new competences and share experiences. A special training workshops were planned to be organized after each visit.

# 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].