General view of DPAC

In 2007 ESA issued an Announcement of Opportunity to select one scientific consortium in charge of the design, management and reduction of the data produced by Gaia. The European Scientific community, organized in the DACC (Data Analysis Coordination Committee) that included members of our team, responded with a proposal (see reference below) by the Gaia Data Processing & Analysis Consortium (DPAC) selected by ESA. The DPAC is basically organized around Coordination Units (CUs) and supervised by the DPAC Executive Committee (DPACE).

Our participation in DPAC take place in the CU2 (Data Simulations), CU3 (Core Processing), CU5 (Photometric Processing) and CU9 (Catalogue Access). The DPACE supervises the formation and coordination of the different parts of the Consortium and coordinates the work with ESA. In parallel, ESA selected a senior body, the Gaia Science Team (GST), representing the scientific community.

The DPAC funding agencies and ESA have adopted an overall agreement (Multi Lateral Agreement, MLA) to define the terms and conditions ruling the commitment of the Parties for the Gaia data processing. In our case, in addition to the tasks in the different CUs, it is worth highlighting the participation in the DPCB (Data Processing Center Barcelona) together with the Centro Nacional de Supercomputación – Barcelona Supercomputing Center (CNS-BSC) and the Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Cataluña. (CSUC).