National computing resources
Data services
JISC and the Research Councils each operate a number of data services, some of which are free to all academic users, and others of which deliver subscription services or are restricted to grant holders of the relevant Research Council. Users should check the access details provided by each service.
Help can be provided by the GIS Advisor via the IT Support Office for those services delivering spatial data. For other types of data or service consult the University Library and Archives.
JISC
The two JISC data services, Edina and MIMAS both deliver a range of free and subscription services.
Amongst other services for example, Edina host Digimap, delivering Ordnance Survey digital data (subscription) and UKBorders, delivering administrative, electoral and census boundary data (free for registered Census data users), whilst MIMAS host the Landmap satellite and aerial photography imagery service and the ESDS International econometric data service (both free). The University Library and Archives manage the University's subscription for Digimap.
Research councils
Research Council data services include:
- the Archaeology Data Service (ADS)
- the Economics and Social Sciences Data Service (ESDS)
- the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC)
The ESDS includes access to the Census Data Service and the UK Data Archive. In addition to the BADC, the Natural Environment Research Council NERC also provide a number of specialist services, primarily for the use of NERC grant holders, as do a number of other research councils.
Details of these services and of access arrangements are available from the services and research councils concerned.
Compute services
The Research Councils, together with the Higher Education Funding Councils, fund a number of high performance compute facilities, including parallel and array processing capabilities.
These include:
- the Central Computing Laboratory (CCL) of the Science and Technology Facilities Council at the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratories. Access is usually arranged through provision in research proposals submitted to the various Research Councils.
- the National Grid (computing) Service funded by JISC, of which the White Rose Grid, based at the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York, is a constituent part. Access for York users is arranged through the White Rose Grid service, who also provide relevant user support.
Hosting services
Eduserv provides secure hosting services for government and education.
Collaboration
JISCMail is the National Academic Mailing List Service, designed specifically for the further and higher education and research communities.
JISCMail uses the web and email to enable groups of academics and support staff to talk to each other and to share information. There are thousands of groups covering many categories and it is possible to create groups of your own.