Monitoring the implementation of the National Roadmap for Research Infrastructures of Strategic Interest (RNIE), as well as analyzing the socioeconomic return of research infrastructures and promoting synergies with ESFRI, among other functions, are the responsibility of the Research Infrastructure Monitoring Committee, set up by FCT under Regulation No. 327/2013 (RNIE Regulation). In 2015, the FCT asked the Monitoring Committee to conduct an initial analysis of the maturity of the implementation of the infrastructures integrated into the RNIE in the previous year, and of their capacity to serve the scientific community.
Taking into account the integration of 12 new infrastructures into the RNIE in 2019, as well as the fact that four years have passed since the previous maturity analysis, the FCT decided to launch a new maturity assessment of research infrastructures in the last quarter of 2019, which maintained the ESFRI methodology as a reference, with the necessary adaptations to the national context.
The maturity assessment took place between October 2019 and February 2020, with the participation of 28 experts from the Monitoring Committee, as well as eight external evaluators. The assessment covered the 52 national infrastructures integrated into the RNIE at the time, as well as three other infrastructures identified by the FCT Governing Board as being of high strategic relevance and which would be integrated into the RNIE in 2020.
The vast majority of the infrastructures analyzed were considered by the Monitoring Committee to be of medium (37%) or high (46%) maturity.
Following completion of this maturity assessment, in June 2020, the FCT published an update to the RNIE, reflecting the integration of a total of 16 new national research infrastructures into the Roadmap, as determined in orders no. 5220/2020, no. 4958/2020, No. 7557/2019, and No. 4157/2019 of the Minister of Science, Technology, and Higher Education.
The report describing the evaluation process and its results can be obtained here.