FIF and ceFIMS-CONNECT ACTIVITIES

The 14th meeting of the Future Internet Forum (FIF) of Member States and Associated Countries (MS / AC) was held in parallel with ICT 2015 Innovate, Connect, Transform in Lisbon, Portugal, during 20-22nd October, 2015. The main topics of coverage during the 14th FIF meeting included follow ups from the 13th FIF meeting held during Net Futures 2015: born to scale, status of the discussions on the future strategy of the FIF in the coming year, successes in relation to 5G-PPP, IoT and FIWARE and how relevant activities in the MS / AC on these topics could be leveraged in the EU programme and vice versa.

For more information Click Here…

Photo from Future Internet Forum meeting at INNOVATE CONNECT TRANSFORM, Lisbon, Oct. 2015.

Top row (L-R): Peter NÕU, Andrius PLEČKAITIS, Pål GRETLAND, Rolf RIEMENSCHNEIDER, Nico DEBLAUWE, Rainer MOORFELD, Ülo PARTS, Simon LEINEN, Jesus VILLASANTE

Front row (L-R): Pedro MATOS, Francisco MEDEIROS, Aviv ZEEVI BALASIANO, Jorge PEREIRA, Nikos PRONIOS, Lisbeth MOSNIK, Piotr KĘPSKI, Pedro CARNEIRO, Jesus CAÑADAS FERNÁNDEZ, Mário CAMPOLARGO, Jose Tomas ROMERO, Daniela FAZENDA, Thibaut KLEINER, Doina BANCIU, Willie DONNELLY, Jim CLARKE

Missing from photo: Didier DERAYMAEKER (Photographer), Geoffroy HERMANN

CEFIMS-CONNECT FIF REPOSITORY DATABASE

A number of new features have been added to the FIF Repository Database (FIF RDB) since the last newsletter including a feature to capture National and EU funded projects (both private and public). The addition of this functionality has enabled projects from the FIRE area and 5G to be added to the FIF RDB in the last period.

Another feature enabling bulk upload of project information has been added also, to facilitate the population of large amounts of data in one upload.

The first phase of FIF RDB population with the direct engagement of FIF members has started. An initial survey has been prepared and sent to the FIF representatives. All received responses have been uploaded to the repository by project partners and these projects were highlighted especially during a dedicated ceFIMS-CONNECT workshop entitled “Benefits from the FI projects Repository Data Base” in October, 2015 during the 14th FIF meeting in Lisbon. The workshop focus was on presentation of the current status and benefits of the use as well as on gathering feedback and requirements (requests for change) on the further development of FIF RDB from the FIF members. The project partners also presented a short report on the first phase of RDB population and announced a release of live demo of FIF RDB available online and invited the FIF members to enter data into the FIF RDB for MS/AC.

CEFIMS-CONNECT MONITOR: NEWS FROM NATIONAL INITIATIVES

Since December, 2014, ceFIMS-CONNECT runs a Monitor service, which is an ongoing tool for Member States and Associated Countries to publish and share their national best practices, success stories and developments in the area of Future Internet and 5G, as well for European initiatives to share their news with national stakeholders, on a regular basis. If you would like to publish an item via the ceFIMS-CONNECT Monitor service, please email to the contacts given at the end of the newsletter. The Monitors are published in the publications section of the site.

AUSTRIA

The Austria FIF member has provided information for the FIF Repository Database (FIF RDB) on recently nationally funded projects in relation to Future Internet related activities. These projects are funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), which is the national funding agency for industrial research and development in Austria.

The projects include projects in the areas related to Open data and Internet of Things, including the ADEQUATe project (Analytics & Data Enrichment to improve the QUAliTy of Open Data). The ADEQUATe partners include the Semantic Web Company (coordinator), Danube University Krems, and Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Another project featured includes the agriOpenLink project (Adaptive Agricultural Processes via Open Interfaces and Linked Services), which will provide an extendible interface model for agricultural machines via an open-source library and a design methodology for adaptive process control based on linked semantic services and data, and will verify and popularize these results in a user study targeting developers of ICT applications for smart farming. The partners involved in agriOpenLink project are: The Telecommunications Research Center Vienna FTW (coordinator), Josephinum Research, MKW electronics GmbH, and University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna.

IRELAND

In February, 2016, a €1 million telecoms research project, O’SHARE, has been launched at the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) research centre, CONNECT, in Trinity College Dublin. The four year project, funded through the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Investigator Programme, will involve collaboration with several industry partners including Bell Labs and Vodafone

Led by Dr Marco Ruffini, Assistant Professor in Optical Network Architectures in the School of Computer Science and Statistics, the project will explore ways of improving the capacity of optical networks to cope with the surges in demand experienced at large gatherings such as concerts and sporting events.

O’SHARE will explore ways of dynamically allocating resources to areas of poor connectivity as the need arises during large scale events with a focus on multi-tenancy that allows several service providers to operate the optical access networks at the same time. This will also lead to greater competition in the market, resulting in cheaper data plans for users, since it will result in ways of cleverly sharing network resources, which will lead to reduced costs while delivering the services users need.

O’SHARE also plans to develop an international testbed to demonstrate Passive Optical Network virtualisation with the testbed in Trinity linking to the ‘Bristol is Open’ programmable network developed by the University of Bristol. The plan is to demonstrate how operators can use virtualisation to control different parts of network infrastructure and offer seamless services spanning multiple network domains.

LATVIA

FOODIE project – Baltic Open (Geo) Data Hackathon 2016

In order to prove the potential of open (geo) data, contributions, expertise and knowledge were gathered! Baltic Open Hackathon identified possibilities of open (geo) data exploitation, pitched new ideas, promoted data, demonstrated how to re-use available open (geo) data & software technologies to create new data, software, apps, or visualisations. The event provided many proposals and expectations for future developments. And, last but not least, people met people and spent three wonderful days in Riga!

The Baltic Open Data Hackathon invited also end users. Organizers invited different types of developers, data specialists and users from different fields:

Open data providers
Web GIS developers
Web designers
Semantic web experts
Database experts
User interaction experts
Mobile developers
Developers of apps in different areas like transport, tourism agriculture, planning
Hardware experts focused on sensors, communication and machinery tracking
GIS specialists for analysis
Geographers
Earth observation experts
Experts on land use, landscape and land cover
Spatial and urban planers
Transport planners and managers
Agronomist and farmers
Travel agencies and tourism specialists
Regional development agencies
Environment protection experts
Managers and investors interested to check or find new ideas
Marketing experts
Data journalists

For more information Click Here..

PORTUGAL

IPN brings together European start-ups with innovative ideas in the area of intelligent cities

54 European projects, 15 of which Portuguese, were presented to investors and municipalities. The event fi@Coimbra took place on 2- 3 February at the Instituto Pedro Nunes (IPN, Coimbra*Portugal). This initiative, aimed to present to investors and municipalities, had more than 50 European start-ups – 15 of which Portuguese, that came to share their innovative projects in the domain of intelligent cities and using FIWARE technology.

The first day (2.Feb) was dedicated to training and coaching of the start-ups. The second day (3.Feb) was directed to the municipalities and investors. The welcome to all guests was made by Teresa Mendes – President of IPN, Manuel Machado – mayor of the Coimbra Municipality, Carlos Bento – SOULFI coordinator and Jesus Villasante – head of unit Net Innovation from Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG Connect) at the European Commission.

The event was promoted by the SOUL-FI (Start-ups Optimizing Urban Life with Future Internet), an European project led by Instituto Pedro Nunes and funded by the European Commission.

More information: SOUL-FI

SPAIN

Telefónica I+D, the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism, the local ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Madrid region, IMDEA Networks, Ericsson and AMETIC (Association of companies within the Electronical, IT, Telecommunications and Digital Content industries) have signed a collaboration agreement with a view to support the development of 5G technologies, products, and services in the framework of the Advanced 5G Network Infrastructure for Future Internet Public-Private Partnership (5G PPP) program.

As a part of the program public and private organizations underline their commitment to developing 5G technologies. This multilateral agreement focuses particularly on the Advanced 5G Network Infrastructure for Future Internet Public-Private Partnership (5G PPP), and European Technology Platform for Communications Networks and Services (ETP Networld 2020) programs, promoted by the European Commission within the Horizon 2020 program.

Ericsson is a founding member of various initiatives focusing on 5G development on a global level, including the European program 5G PPP (5G Infrastructure Public-Private Partnership Association) founded in February 2014. Ericsson is also a member of the METIS Consortium, a project under the EU that aims to lay the foundations for 5G technologies and5G Exchange (5GEx), a newly launched project which is jointly financed by the European Commission with a view to creating a unified European market for 5G infrastructure services that integrates a wide range of operators and technologies.

For More information Click Here…

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A very substantial improvement has been announced by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism (MINETUR) of its funding conditions for Celtic-Plus project:

The maximum grant amount based on the innovation criteria is considerably increased to a rate of
- up 50% for SMEs
- o up to 40% for large industry
The loan, that was previously mandatory is now optional

Celtic-Plus encourages interested Spanish companies to become active in future Celtic-Plus Calls on coming February 26 and May 25.

These improvements were discussed at a meeting in December 2015 at MINETUR in Madrid, which brought together two Spanish Ministries MINETUR and CDTI, the three Spanish Celtic-Plus Core Group industry Members ATOS, INDRA and Telefonica and two EUREKA Clusters Celtic-Plus and ITEA3.

It was agreed to investigate how the flexibility of public funding could be further improved to allow industry to better react on changing market conditions.

It is expected that these improvements strengthen the participation of Spanish organisations in Celtic-Plus projects.

SWEDEN

VINNOVA, Sweden’s Innovation Agency, has facilitated the stakeholders engaged within the areas related to the Future Internet to come together and analyse and propose what needs to be / should be done in the Future Internet. The Future Internet agenda describes strategy, and plans for further development of the global internet. The agenda will contribute to unleash the potential and unused resources in several sectors of society relating to internet development: resources that have both social and economic benefits. This agenda has evolved from five workshops with a multitude of internet infrastructure stakeholders. During the workshops, several development areas have been identified and the following six were prioritized. 1. Research, innovation and entrepreneurial development; 2. Identity and access management; 3. Internet access; 4. Resource management in private networks; 5. Personal privacy and digital trace; 6. Open and de facto standards. This agenda report is currently undergoing a public review process. The lead partner in the study is Royal Swedish Academy Of Engineering Sciences and other partners involved included Karlstads Universitet, Ericsson AB, Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Uppsala University, Internetstiftelsen I Sverige (The Internet Foundation In Sweden), and Teliasonera. Additional information can be found here.

UNITED KINGDOM

On 6th January, 2016, Ed Vaizey, Minister of State for Culture and the Digital Economy, announced a new interdisciplinary Research Hub to drive forward United Kingdom’s research activities in the Internet of Things (IoT). Entitled the PETRAS IoT Hub, the consortium of nine leading UK universities will work together over the next three years to explore critical issues in privacy, ethics, trust, reliability, acceptability, and security. Funding for the Hub includes a £9.8 million grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) which will be boosted by partner contributions to approximately £23 million in total.

The project is part of IoTUK, an integrated £40 million, three-year, Government programme that seeks to advance the UK’s global leadership in IoT and increase the adoption of high quality IoT technologies and services throughout businesses and the public sector.

The Hub is a consortium of nine leading universities led by UCL with Imperial College London, University of Oxford, University of Warwick, Lancaster University, University of Southampton, University of Surrey, University of Edinburgh and Cardiff University. The Hub will draw in substantial support and leverage from over 47 partners from industry and the public sector.

For More information Click Here…

NEWS FROM JOINT EUROPEAN INITIATIVES

FIWARE Consolidates as Open Source IoT-enabled Smart Services Platform of Reference With Launch of FIWARE Foundation

The open source API platform FIWARE — which, to date, has released 42 standardized software components aimed at helping startups and enterprise build the next generation of smart applications and services for cities, industries, e-health or agribusiness — has announced the formation of the open FIWARE Foundation.

The open FIWARE Foundation includes membership from the current FIWARE Core Industry Group (Atos, Engineering, Orange and Telefonica) and will be joined by other governing members at a FIWARE Founders Forum in June (to be held in Vienna). The Foundation will support the growth of the FIWARE platform as an open source project, and be governed by a Board of Directors and CEO, serving the broader FIWARE community.

The Foundation will bring support to FIWARE activities including the continuing technical evolution and support of the platform that is necessary for the uptake in the smart cities, industrial Internet of Things and agri-food sectors, among others. FIWARE established its independent open community last year to support members to adopt best open source practices based on openness, transparency and meritocracy. This way FIWARE will become the open source community of reference for setting the platform de-facto standards used when developing sensor-enabled, data-driven, smart applications and services.

To find out more Click Here…

5G-PPP

Phase 2 Pre-structuring Model version 2 just released !!

The Pre-structuring Model version 2.0 (final version) has been released by the 5G Infrastructure Association on 04.03.16. The version 2.0 has been elaborated on the basis of the version 1.0 released on 02.11.15, considering the feedbacks received through the public consultation and the first EC Info Day organized on 21.01.16 in Brussels.

The Model version 2.0 will be presented and discussed in the context of the forthcoming EC Info Days (18.05.16 in Warsaw and 01.07.16 in Athens). The PPP Phase 2 Brokerage Platform will be available in April 2016. This Platform will facilitate connections between proposals under preparation and organizations expressing interest in participating to proposals.

The goal is to ensure that the forthcoming set of projects (portfolio) will cleverly work together in Phase 2, between Phase 2 and Phase 1 and later on between Phase 2 and Phases 3. The Model is focused on Phase 2 projects portfolio and related projects, not on proposals, and is building on the EC Work Programme (Strategic Objectives and related Strands). The Model version 2.0 released by the 5G Infrastructure Association members on 11.03.15 addresses:

ICT-07-2017: 5G PPP Research and Validation of critical technologies and systems:
- RIA Strand 1: Wireless Access and Radio Network Architectures/Technologies.
- RIA Strand 2: High Capacity Elastic – Optical Networks.
- RIA Strand 3: Software Networks.
- CSA
ICT-08-2017: 5G PPP Convergent Technologies:
- IA Strand 1: Ubiquitous 5G Access Leveraging Optical Technologies.
- IA Strand 2: Flexible Network Applications.
- RIA: Cooperations in Access Convergence.
EUJ-01-2016: RIA 5G – Next Generation Communication Networks.
EUK-01-2016: RIA 5G – Next Generation Communication Networks.

The Phase 2 Pre-structuring Model version 2 can be downloaded HERE.

MIND THESE DATES!!!

Most important Future Internet and 5G related events planned in the coming weeks.

Mobile World Congress 2016 22 – 25 Feb 2016 Barcelona Spain. For more information Click Here.

ICIN 2016 – innovations in Cloud, Internet and Networks 1 – 3 March 2016 Paris, France. Click Here for more information.

NEM Tech Platform General Assembly, 15th Mar, 2016, Crowne Plaza, Brussels.

Info Day on Media and Content Convergence, 16th Mar, 2016, Avenue de Beaulieu 25, Brussels.

Net Futures 2016 (next in series after Net Futures 2015), 20-21 Apr, 2016, Brussels. Please note that if you are a member of the FIRE board, a meeting will be held in the afternoon of 21 April, 2016. Registration is required, Please Click Here..

ZOOM SMART CITIES, 18-19 May, 2016, Lisbon, Portugal. For more information Click Here.

STARGATE May 23 Vienna, Austria. For more information Click Here.

Celtic-Plus Proposal Submission, deadline May 25, 2016, For more information Click Here.

The Internet of Things Week 2016. 31 May – 2 June 2016. For more information Click Here.

MONROE workshop 13 – 14 June 2016 Oslo Norway.

eIDAS high-level event | A big leap in the eIDAS journey: new trust services for a Digital Single Market. Online registration will close on Wednesday 29/6/2016, to registor please Click Here. For more information Click Here

EuCNC’2015 (European Conference on Networks and Communications) 27 – 30 June 2016 Athens, Greece. For More information Click Here

IEEE PIMRC 2016 4 – 7 September 2016 Valencia, Spain. For more information Click Here

FOODIE at the INSPIRE Conference, 26 September 2016 – 30 September 2016, Barcelona, Spain. For more information Click Here.

RAWFIE Open Call December 2016 – February 2017. For more information Click Here.

ceFIMS-CONNECT contacts:

Project Coordinator: James Clarke: jclarke (at) tssg (dot) org

Dissemination Coordinator: Alicja Laskowska: alicja (at) man (dot) Poznan (dot) pl

ceFIMS-CONNECT web portal: http://www.cefims.eu/

ceFIMS-CONNECT group @ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/ceFIMS-CONNECT-8130294

ceFIMS-CONNECT @ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ceFIMS

Newsletter February 2016