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Background of BRICS Astronomy and the BRICS Astronomy Working Group
BRICS, an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, represents a consortium of five prominent emerging economies. These BRICS member nations wield substantial influence in regional affairs. The core objective of the BRICS mechanism is to foster peace, security, development, and collaboration, all while making significant contributions to the advancement of humanity and the establishment of a more equitable and just world.

The Second BRICS STI Ministerial Meeting convened in Brazil in March 2015, witnessed the signing of a pivotal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) cooperation among the BRICS nations. This MoU introduced three principal governing bodies: the BRICS STI Ministerial Meeting, the BRICS STI Senior Officials Meeting, and the BRICS STI Working Groups. The latter are entrusted with advancing cooperative initiatives within specified priority areas, with a mandate to meet at least once annually.

At the Third BRICS STI Ministerial Meeting in Moscow in October 2015, the Work Plan was adopted, and it was decided that South Africa would host the inaugural BRICS Astronomy Working Group Meeting during the first two weeks of December 2015 in Cape Town.

In the context of establishing the BRICS Astronomy Working Group, South Africa will largely adhere to the operational model utilised by other BRICS member nations leading working groups and hosting BRICS STI workshops. Subsequent to this inaugural workshop, additional BRICS astronomy workshops will be conducted on an annual basis in South Africa, or as agreed upon elsewhere.

The inaugural BRICS astronomy meeting held in December 2015 included a BRICS Astronomy Workshop and marked the founding session of the BRICS Astronomy Working Group. Additionally, participants had the opportunity to embark on-site visits to the Square Kilometer Array and the Southern African Large Telescope.

Astronomy was designated as one of the five thematic science areas within BRICS during a ministerial meeting in South Africa in 2014. The subsequent year saw the establishment of the BRICS Astronomy Working Group (BAWG), charged with the responsibility of advancing collaborative initiatives in astronomy's priority domains. In the 2017 annual BAWG meeting, it was decided to initiate a BRICS "flagship" program, leading to a subsequent call for concept proposals. Eighteen proposals for flagship projects were presented during the 2018 BAWG meeting, and a Task Team identified three thematic areas to proceed to the next proposal stage:


 * Optical transient network
 * Big data/computing in the era of large surveys (e.g., SKA, Rubin Observatory LSST)
 * Neutral Hydrogen / 21 cm cosmology

The criteria for the selection of these thematic areas were based on: Revolution, and involvement of the private sector.
 * 1)  Representation and involvement by all BRICS countries where possible but with a minimum of three countries.
 * 2)  Scientific excellence and international competitiveness
 * 3)  Socio-economic impact which includes but is not limited to technology development and transfer, outreach, human capital development programmes (student exchanges, etc.), relevance to the next/4th Industrial
 * 1)  Socio-economic impact which includes but is not limited to technology development and transfer, outreach, human capital development programmes (student exchanges, etc.), relevance to the next/4th Industrial
 * 1)  Ability to leverage existing and future national facilities.
 * 2)  A scalable project with a phased approach.

The three fully developed proposals were presented, discussed and rated at the October 2019 BAWG meeting, with the result that the BAWG elected to support a flagship programme based on a merger of the transients and big data proposals. The combined programme, entitled the BRICS Intelligent Telescope and Data Network (BITDN) will involve astrophysical transients, survey science and time-domain astronomy. It will involve forefront observational facilities and the big data/compute infrastructure needed to support them. Existing and new facilities in all 5 BRICS countries will be harnessed and developed to support the programme. The programme strongly supports the human capacity development agenda within BRICS and will foster scientific collaboration on the frontiers of astronomy between scientists in all the BRICS countries and beyond.

Mission of the BRICS Astronomy Working Group
The mission of the BRICS Astronomy Working Group is to promote cooperation between BRICS member countries in the field of astronomy and enabling technologies through joint activities of government, universities, research institutions, and industry, as relevant, to develop astronomical sciences, generate new knowledge, train human capital, develop new technologies and applications, and improve public understanding of science.

BRICS Intelligent Telescope Data Network (BITDN) Project
The flagship scientific programme will develop a network of astronomical telescopes, some already existing, and an associated intelligent data network which is the enabler for the science programme. This will leverage existing and planned new telescope and cyber facilities within the BRICS countries and will also draw on the opportunities presented by other multi-wavelength space- and ground-based facilities within, or accessed by, the BRICS group. The programme focuses on two key areas:


 * 1)  the scientific advance, within the BRICS partners, of the rapidly expanding domain of wide-field multi-wavelength imaging sky surveys and the detection and study of transient and time-variable phenomena in the Universe, one of the pillars of modern astrophysics, and
 * 2)  technical solutions to the associated enormous Big Data and Big Compute challenges arising from such worldwide networks of transient detectors and imaging surveys, including the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), leading global projects in which many BRICS countries are actively involved.

Thanks to their unique, worldwide geographical distribution, BRICS countries are well placed to take the global lead in this quickly evolving and compelling research area, utilizing both existing and future telescopes within BRICS. The latter includes an ambitious plan for a global network of optical telescopes with the unprecedented ability to observe the entire sky continuously on a timescale of less than an hour, greatly increasing our ability to monitor the changing cosmos. New science would not happen without innovation in both instruments and big data science methods and systems, and this project will therefore bring together teams within BRICS to lead programmes in data innovation in each partner country.

The collaboration will include academia and industry from partner countries and will focus on developing technologies of the 4th industrial revolution. An essential human capital development programme is designed to create a new generation of data-savvy scientists and engineers within BRICS, strengthening the scientific community in the global South. Cross-disciplinary and links with industry will be a key focus of this project, accelerating technological spin-offs and working actively to promote science for development. The depth and breadth of this network, embedded through this project, will benefit the BRICS participants beyond what we could achieve as individual countries.

The nature of this proposed flagship programme is such that it creates the potential to stimulate conversations across disciplines to tackle current global challenges such as COVID-19, using data skills, training and infrastructure.