BONVOYAGE will design, develop and test a platform optimizing multimodal door-to-door transport of passengers and goods. The platform integrates travel information, planning and ticketing services, by automatically analysing non-real-time data from heterogeneous databases (on road, railway and urban transport systems); real-time measured data (traffic, weather forecasts); user profiles; user feedback. The platform is supported by an innovative information-centric communication network that collects and distributes all the data required. The highly heterogeneous, distributed and mobile nature of data, coming from data-centers, sensors, vehicles, goods and people on the move, calls for an innovative networking paradigm. Current networks (e.g. Internet) limit themselves to “just” providing communication channels between hosts. Our paradigm, called Internames, allows communications among entities identified by names, without the constraint of a static binding to a particular location. The request of a “user” (be it a person or a parcel) to travel from source to destination is managed by the platform with several tools: Metadata Handler collects and elaborates data related to the request and generates a corresponding Context; User Profiler creates a personalized profile, conveying requirements including Quality of Experience parameters and special needs; Multi-Objective Optimizer develops personalized travel instructions, optimal for the Context and User Profile. The user may give feedback, before accepting the travel itinerary. If a trip is not available at request time, the user is notified if it becomes available later on. An Actuator triggers the necessary services. A Tariff Scheme Designer exploits platform data to define multi-part tariff schemes. BONVOYAGE will trial and demonstrate the platform and communication network in integrated, large-scale, real life application scenarios, incorporated into the normal business operations of our transport operator partners.

ELEGANT aims to solve the ever-increasing problem of software fragmentation in the IoT/Big Data interoperability domain. Software fragmentation prohibits the unification of these two ecosystems severely limiting the ability to regard them as a single system and tune the whole infrastructure towards defining its a) Performance, b) Energy Efficiency, c) Security, d) Reliability, and d) Dependability (PESRD) requirements. ELEGANT proposes a novel software programming paradigm, along with an associated set of methodologies and toolchains, to program IoT and Big Data frameworks using a unified programming framework. Its key proposed innovations in the areas of: a) Light-weight application virtualization, b) Automatic code extraction compatible with both IoT and Big Data frameworks, c) AI-assisted Intelligent Orchestration, d) dynamic code motion, and e) advanced code verification and cybersecurity mechanisms, will enable the seamless operation of end-to-end IoT/Big Data complex systems. This way, users employing the ELEGANT software stack and methodologies will be able to seamlessly define the pareto-optimal point in the PESRD optimization space while the entire system will be able to dynamically adjust itself during execution. To achieve its ambitious goals, ELEGANT assembles a consortium of experts across all domains ranging from low-level system software, IoT, Big Data, AI-assisted scheduling, and DevOps. Finally, the proposed solutions will be evaluated against pre-defined KPIs across a wide range of operational use cases from four distinct domains: health, automotive, smart metering, and video surveillance.

The goal of PETRA (Photonic Environment moniToring & Risk Assessment) is the design and the IPR transfer of a radically new precommercial photonics based prototype for noninvasive continuous remote monitoring system for geo-technical risk assessment. PETRA will step from the ERC-funded project PHODIR that successfully carried out the realization and the field trial of the first photonic based radar prototype, and from the contacts that were made between CNIT and industrial partners during the PoC PREPaRE, that focused on the preindustrial design and IPR selling of an optics based radar for integrated traffic control in airports. The specific application on which PETRA will focus is the high precision real time analysis and mapping of potential risk areas for health protection, disaster prevention and for new civil engineering buildings (as bridges or power plants) where the advances of photonics will be of practical interest in a short-medium term, and it will: i) study the technical requirements and the current limitations of earth monitoring systems, to define the technical specifications for a commercial photonics based integrated radar system; ii) accordingly modify the radar structure and the data processing tools defined during the PHODIR project, allowing a short/medium-term industrial realization and commercialization with an attractive cost/performance ratio; iii) boost the IP transfer of each single subsystem preindustrial design to companies either through already filed patent selling or by encouraging companies to patent the presented design.

ACTPHAST 4R is a unique one-stop-shop photonics technology access and support centre for European researchers which is perfectly aligned with their needs in bridging the gap between fundamental research at TRL1-2 and applied research up to TRL4-5. Driven by the deployment ambitions and capabilities of a critical mass of European top-class researchers -in particular non-photonics researchers for whom advanced photonics is a key enabling technology to the realisation of so many exciting and diverse new applications and products, ACTPHAST 4R will directly support the accelerated deployment of existing cutting-edge photonics technologies by providing them with action-oriented solutions on two complementary levels. In the first instance, ACTPHAST 4R will provide researchers with one-stop-shop access to the photonics expert know-how and mature technologies of 24 of Europe’s leading competence centres. The photonics technology platform capabilities of ACTPHAST 4R cover the entire integrated supply chain from design to packaging. Through intensive technology coaching, leading to focused innovation projects involving transnational internships and hands-on working with the advanced photonics technologies at the host institutes, the goal is to turn the researchers’ scientific conceptual breakthroughs into industrially-relevant demonstrators. In parallel, ACTPHAST 4R will provide researchers with expert business coaching to help foster their entrepreneurial mindset and deployment capabilities, with guidance to pathways for further scaling of their demonstrators and financing of innovation in the industrial domain. Ambitious targets are set for commercial valorisation successes by “star performing” researchers in the form of patents, licensing deals and spin-outs. As a result, ACTPHAST 4R will be a game-changer in strengthening the European innovation ecosystem and improving the cross-fertilisation of photonics with other technology areas.

In traditional industrial control systems and critical infrastructures, security was implicitly assumed by the reliance on proprietary technologies (security by obscurity), physical access protection and disconnection from the Internet. The massive move, in the last decade, towards open standards and IP connectivity, the growing integration of Internet of Things technologies, and the disruptiveness of targeted cyber-attacks, calls for novel, designed-in, cyber security means. Taking an holistic approach, SCISSOR designs a new generation SCADA security monitoring framework, comprising four layers: i) a monitoring layer supporting traffic probes providing programmable traffic analyses up to layer 7, new ultra low cost/energy pervasive sensing technologies, system and software integrity verification, and smart camera surveillance solutions for automatic detection and object classification; ii) a control and coordination layer adaptively orchestrating remote probes/sensors, providing a uniform representation of monitoring data gathered from heterogeneous sources, and enforcing cryptographic data protection, including certificate-less identity/attribute-based encryption schemes; iii) a decision and analysis layer in the form of an innovative SIEM fed by both highly heterogeneous monitoring events as well as the native control processes’ signals, and supporting advanced correlation and detection methodologies; iv) a human-machine layer devised to present in real time the system behavior to the human end user in a simple and usable manner. SCISSOR’s framework will leverage easy-to-deploy cloud-based development and integration, and will be designed with resilience and reliability in mind (no single point of failure). SCISSOR will be assessed via i) an off-field SCADA platform, to highlight its ability to detect and thwart targeted threats, and ii) an on-field, real world deployment within a running operational smart grid, to showcase usability, viability and deployability.