ICT Research & Innovation

Summertime! A good time to reflect on what's next in FET.

Research and development remains vibrant in the Spanish solar market industry, an example of which is the European Union (EU)-funded LIMA project. The project shows that Spain continues to benefit from the strong infrastructure developed in the country over the last 20 years.

Imagine you are rushing to catch a train but must first park your electric car inside the station garage. You lose precious time searching for a space, ideally one where you can charge your vehicle, which might cause you to miss the train. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just drop off the car in front of the station and let it do the rest? Soon it will be possible, thanks to V-CHARGE, an EU ICT research project. Successful tests took place at Stuttgart airport in April 2014.

Research partnerships between the EU, the private sector and Member States presented their first calls for projects and partners under Horizon 2020, the EU's €80 billion research and innovation programme, at an event in Brussels on 9 July 2014.

Airports are big energy consumers – and that’s before a plane takes off or lands. The daily electricity and thermal energy used by a large airport compares to that of a city of 100,000 people.

Thanks to the PARTERRE project citizens can now influence urban & environmental planning of their community more easily. During several years PARTERRE has demonstrated and validated its business potential. New e-participation methods and tools for spatial and strategic planning at the European level are now more reachable.

Public-private partnerships set up under the EU's new research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020, will launch their first calls on 9 July 2014 in Brussels. The partnerships work in strategic areas such as medicines, fuel cells, air and rail transport or electronics. They represent an essential investment into Europe's economy and in a better quality of life.

They will launch calls for projects and partners at a stakeholder event in Brussels, which will be attended by the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso along with the Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn as well as Commission Vice-Presidents Siim Kallas, responsible for mobility and transport, and Neelie Kroes, responsible for the digital agenda.

This workshop will focus on reducing the dependency of public entities on a specific vendor of ICT products or services (lock-in). Those involved in ICT procurement are invited to participate.

eEnviPer is an integrated web-based platform for the application, administration and consultation of environmental permits. By making the environmental permits process more transparent, accessible and efficient, eEnviPer helps to reduce the environmental impact of economic activities with the implementation of a cost-effective environmental permits process.

e-SENS - European Simple Electronic Networked Services is a large-scale cross-border pilot project (LSP) in the area of digital public services (eGovernment) that has been active since April 2013. e-SENS encompasses all previous piloting domains of the LSP family (e-CODEX, epSOS, PEPPOL, STORK and STORK 2.0, SPOCS) thus striving to bring interoperability and standardization to the EU e-Services sector.

CAPS2014 is a two-day international event, organised under the aegis of the European Commission. On July 1, the CAPS2014 OFF part of the event, held at The Egg, will offer a dynamic schedule of talks, unconferences, workshops, hands-on sessions and networking moments. On July 2, the CAPS2014 Conference part, held at the European Commission, will provide participants with an overview of current projects and initiatives, and with detailed information of the upcoming CAPS Call under Horizon 2020.

ESOF2014 offers a platform where researchers, journalists, policy makers, students and organisations can meet and debate European research and global challenges.

The 2014 meeting is entitled “Science Building Bridges”. The aim of this event is to raise awareness of science in the public and to strengthen the effective “bridges” between science and society.

The scientific programme, covering 8 themes, consists of keynote lectures, seminars, workshops and engaging formats for debating the latest research.

In 30 years’ time, there will be 150 million older people living in the EU. Where will you live? What kind of shape will you be in? Will you still be healthy and independent? Society is ageing. But making sure our golden years are happier and healthier is not just down to the individual, it’s also down to the whole society, public and private sectors together. Improving the quality of life of older people is a priority for the European Commission.

Would you like to help researchers understand the workings of our sun, or discover how large crowds of people can work together? While you may think such breakthroughs are the preserve of highly-specialised scientists with expensive equipment, the EU-funded project SOCIENTIZE allows you to lend your skills and time to some exciting research.

You are welcome to register by following the link below! The ICT Proposers' Day 2014, organised by the European Commission together with the Italian Presidency, is specifically dedicated to networking and promoting research and innovation in the field of Information and Communication Technologies.

The overall aim of the Robot-Era project (Implementation and integration of advanced Robotic systems and intelligent Environments in real scenarios for the ageing population) is to develop an advanced, three-tier robotic system that can improve quality of life and care for elderly people and facilitate independent living.

The EU-funded project ReAAL aims at assessing the impact of common open platforms on the market penetration in the domain of active and independent living. For this purpose, nine different piloting initiatives involving over 5000 users in six European countries are porting different AAL applications and services to universAAL, the open source software platform for AAL systems, as their common open platform. In order to enlarge the project impact and involve more stakeholders participating in the assessment, the ReAAL project has recently decided to issue an open call for "associated pilots".

The Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme has recently created a website containing all public deliverables from the projects it funds.

STOPandGO (Sustainable Technologies for Older People – Get Organised) is a Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (PPI) Pilot project funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

Hard to imagine, but yes – some of us go entire days without a thought for the future of the tooling industry. Few of us, however, go entire days without handling products the sector helped to shape, such as a toothbrush or a smartphone. A team of EU-funded researchers has developed innovative products as well as guidance on business models to help Europe’s tooling manufacturers remain competitive.