COVID-X will bridge the collaboration divide between eHealth solution providers -with emphasis on lean startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)-, and the healthcare professional system to fight COVID-19. The purpose is to boost an end-to-end agile validation programme of cutting-edge technology in three real-world clinical scenarios, located in hotspots of the pandemic: Italy, Spain and Sweden. The project will fast-track value streams between the two poles under consideration: 1) attract, invest and empower a community of European eHealth SMEs –the beneficiaries of an acceleration program, selected by open calls- that will provide market-ready fast, cost-effective and easily deployable sampling, screening, diagnostic and prognostic systems and/or data-driven services and tools, already certified with -or close to receive- the CE marking (type 1 of the call); 2) actively involve some of the most relevant hospitals of Europe that have the resources, critical mass and ambition to scale-up their capabilities in the COVID-19 response; thanks to the support of an innovative data sandbox, released as an in-house asset of COVID-X, to facilitate access easily, uniformly and securely to various health data sources, and providing data services including Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based decision support systems, data security, visual analytics and intuitive dashboards capabilities. The project will invest dedicated efforts to enforce data privacy and security, ethical compliance and user acceptance. Besides a solid consortium to access world class startups/SMEs, deliver highly valuable technological & business services, provide an innovative data Sandbox with AI capabilities for COVID related services and access 3 piloting sites, COVID-X targets to attract +155 applications and select 31 to undertake through the COVID-X Programme, investing a total of €4.0mil in high impact solution providers.

The smart energy ecosystem constitutes the next technological leap of the conventional electrical grid, providing multiple benefits such as increased reliability, better service quality and efficient utilization of the existing infrastructures. However, despite the fact that it brings beneficial environmental, economic and social changes, it also generates significant security and privacy challenges, as it includes a combination of heterogeneous, co-existing smart and legacy technologies. Based on this reality, the SDN-microSENSE project intends to provide a set of secure, privacy-enabled and resilient to cyberattacks tools, thus ensuring the normal operation of EPES as well as the integrity and the confidentiality of communications. In particular, adopting an SDN-based technology, SDN-microSENSE will develop a three-layer security architecture, by deploying and implementing risk assessment processes, self-healing capabilities, large-scale distributed detection and prevention mechanisms, as well as an overlay privacy protection framework. Firstly, the risk assessment framework will identify the risk level of each component of EPES, identifying the possible threats and vulnerabilities. Accordingly, in the context of self-healing, islanding schemes and energy management processes will be deployed, isolating the critical parts of the network in the case of emergency. Furthermore, collaborative intrusion detection tools will be capable of detecting and preventing possible threats and anomalies timely. Finally, the overlay privacy protection framework will focus on the privacy issues, including homomorphic encryption and anonymity processes

Artificial Intelligence has become a major innovative force and it is one of the pillars of the fourth industrial revolution. This trend has been acknowledged also by the European Commission that has already pointed out how high-performance, intelligent, and secure networks are fundamental for the development and evolution of the multi-service Next Generation Internet (NGI). While great progress has been done during the last years with respect to the accuracy and performance of AI-enabled platforms, their integration in potentially autonomous decision-making systems or even critical infrastructures requires end-to-end quality assurance. AI@EDGE addresses the challenges harnessing the concept of “reusable, secure, and trustworthy AI for network automation”. In AI@EDGE European industries, academics and innovative SMEs commit to achieve an EU-wide impact on industry-relevant aspects of the AI-for-networks and networks-for-AI paradigms in beyond 5G systems. Cooperative perception for vehicular networks, secure, multi-stakeholder AI for IIoT, aerial infrastructure inspections, and in-flight entertainment are the uses cases targeted by AI@EDGE to maximise the commercial, societal, and environmental impact. To achieve the goal, AI@EDGE targets significant breakthroughs in two fields: (i) general-purpose frameworks for closed-loop network automation capable of supporting flexible and programmable pipelines for the creation, utilization, and adaptation of the secure, reusable, and trustworthy AI/ML models; and (ii) converged connect-compute platform for creating and managing resilient, elastic, and secure end-to-end slices capable of supporting a diverse range of AI-enabled network applications.

With the evolving threat of climate change and the consequences of industrial accidents to becoming more severe, there is an increasing need for First Responders to access reliable and agile information management systems that offer as higher Situational Awareness and better Common Operational Picture. To match with current trends, the RESPOND-A project aims at developing holistic and easy-to-use solutions for First Responders by bringing together the complementary strengths of its Investigators in 5G wireless communications, Augmented and Virtual Reality, autonomous robot and unmanned aerial vehicle coordination, intelligent wearable sensors and smart monitoring, geovisual analytics and immersive geospatial data analysis, passive and active localisation and tracking, and interactive multi-view 360o video streaming. The synergy of such cutting-edge technological advancements is likely to provide high-end and continuous flows of data, voice and video information to First Responders and their Command & Control Centres for predicting and assessing the various incidents readily and reliably, and saving lives more efficiently and effectively, while maximising the safeguarding of themselves, before, during and after disasters. To this end, RESPOND-A envisions at exercising First Responders for getting familiar with the project technological outcomes, and demonstrating their real-world performance and effectiveness in the classified training facilities of our Responder Partners under hydrometeorological, geophysical and technological disaster scenarios.

The success of 5G technologies depends closely on their ability to attract vertical stakeholders, seeking the move of their services from cloud to the edge to meet unique KPIs. 5G-INDUCE project is based on the belief that such attractiveness requires vertical stakeholders and Network Application (nApp) developers to be able to smoothly deploy and manage applications in distributed 5G network environments, in a secure fashion and with strict KPI requirements. 5G-INDUCE relies on the deployment of an open ETSI NFV compatible 5G orchestration platform for the deployment of advanced 5G nApps. The platform’s unique features provide the capability to the nApp developers to define and modify the application requirements while the underlay intelligent OSS can expose the network capabilities to the end users on the application level without revealing any infrastructure related information. This process enables an application-oriented network management and optimization approach that is in line with the operator’s role as manager of its own facilities, while it offers the operational environment to any developers and service providers through which tailored made applications can be designed and deployed, for the benefit of vertical industries and without any indirect dependency through a cloud provider. The project focuses on the Industry 4.0 vertical sector, as one of the fastest growing and most impactful sectors in European economy with high potentials for service development SMEs and with the capability to tackle all diverse cases of service requirements. The platform is integrated over 3 5G Experimentation Facilities in Spain, Greece, and Italy, and extended with links towards specific Industries, for the showcasing of nApps in real 5G environment. The consortium includes all the required stakeholders (MNOs, Industries, System integrators and SMEs) from the benefited business sectors evaluated in the project, while significant part of the work (>50%) is conducted by innovative SMEs.