The journey towards the creation of a European hub to grow a sustainable and comprehensive ecosystem for the next generation Internet of Things (IoT) took a leap forward with the Kick Off Meeting of the EU-IoT project, the Coordination and Support Action funded by the European Commission to support the Next Generation IoT initiative (NGIoT).
Europe intends to excel in the development and adoption of trustworthy, sustainable, safe and secure IoT that benefits our economies, societies and industry. EU-IoT will act as an accelerator for the whole European IoT ecosystem supporting researchers and innovators to promote their work, to learn from each other’s success stories/best practices, to offer and/or benefit from dedicated educational/learning materials and sessions, to propose and/or learn about new business models applying to IoT solutions and value-chain scenarios, and ultimately to put together the European R&I agenda, identifying main challenges and opportunities in the transition towards Horizon Europe.
The EU-IoT consortium gathers committed and expert organisations within the European IoT arena, such as IntraSoft, BluSpecs, Fortiss and Aarhus University that, under the lead of Martel Innovate (the EU-IoT Project Coordinator) will assist stakeholders to engage and create value, as well as set up a self-sustaining European IoT community.
Partners launched the action in October amid a complex environment of the COVID-19 crisis, the transition from H2020 to Horizon Europe and a large and varied IoT landscape encompassing the EU Data Strategy, the EU Industrial Strategy, the Recovery Plan for Europe and the European Green Deal.
IoT is an important element of the ongoing transition towards a digital continuum: in combination with other advanced technologies, such as AI, 5G and Cloud Computing, IoT is expected to inject into the European Data economy and the European Industry strategy ambition, contributing also to achieve the European Green Deal objectives.
In this respect, the EU-IoT project will contribute liaising and supporting collaboration among relevant initiatives at a pan-European level, including the European Cloud Initiative, the GAIA-X initiative, as well as upcoming public private partnerships such as the Smart Networks and Services JU and the AI, Big Data and Robotics cPPP. Dedicated partnerships with some of the key European Associations such as AIOTI, BDVA, 5GIA, EU Robotics and Euro HPC will also be facilitated.
The EU-IoT ambition is to support the transformation of the current IoT community of researchers and innovators in Europe into an increasingly cohesive, dynamic, participatory and sustainable ecosystem, by working in close collaboration with the European Commission as well as with other H2020 ICT-56 projects and other relevant H2020 projects actively engaged in related domains.
Download here the presentation of the Kick-off meeting (PDF)
Areas of activity for EU-IoT
During the kickoff meeting, an overview of the key activities of EU-IoT to support NGIoT were outlined:
- Strategy across the NGIoT ecosystem: EU-IoT will establish a coordination board, engage in consultation and dialogue with experts. The initiative will also provide strategic guidance and policy recommendations.
- NGIoT community building and innovation strategies: EU-IoT will undertake community building and stakeholders’ engagement, open source ecosystem building and provide input to IoT Standardisation.
- Positioning and strengthening IoT as a driver: EU-IoT will propagate success stories and best practice use cases, provide training and mentoring for IoT skills development via an e-learning platform and provide business models and acceleration support.
- Outreach and impact creation: EU-IoT will disseminate and communicate via a communications and marketing strategy for cross-programme coordination as well as assessing impact, exploitation and sustainability.
Consortium partners
Consortium partners are BluSpecs, Fortiss, Aarhus University, Intrasoft International and Martel Innovate that coordinates the project.
Stay tuned on the NGIOT channels, more to come soon!
Further reading: the NGIoT Roadmap, listing priority domains for Europe: https://ngiot.eu/resources/publications/
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