More than 450 visitors attended ITEA 2's 2007 Symposium entitled Using ICT to deal with societal challenges, which was held in the Berliner Congress Center in Berlin, Germany from 18-19 October, 2007. This event provided participants with a unique opportunity to gain an insight into one of Europe’s most important strategic ICT initiatives.

ITEA 2 family day

The symposium began with a ‘family day’. Rudolf Haggenmüller, chairman of ITEA 2, emphasised ITEA 2’s attractiveness, efficiency and societal relevance. He reported a growing number of partners with Iceland as a new partner country plus success stories involving Ireland, Turkey and South-Korea. Affirming that ICT has a lot to offer the developing world in areas such as medical diagnosis and treatment, clean water, improved sanitation, food security and disaster relief coordination, he pleaded for greater integration of ICT into virtually all aspects of the economy and society, concluding: “Let's make ITEA 2 the driver of this integration.”

Gérard Roucairol, vice-chairman of ITEA 2, introduced the wide range of projects that were presented at the symposium and emphasised the importance of the ITEA 2 roadmap, which charts the key domains in which ICT can make a contribution, positioning projects and initiatives within a common framework: “ITEA 2 has the ambition to provide generic technologies and integrated industrial solutions across the complete spectrum.”

Fopke Klok, office director of ITEA 2, presented key facts & figures. He stated that “ITEA 2 will continue to build on its strengths as an industry-driven approach with strong SME involvement, large European projects with medium-term societal and business impact, plus support for national and regional initiatives.”

Louk Teunissen, Deputy Director for Innovation at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, claimed in his presentation on ICT and Societal Innovation that many societal problems can be solved with technology-based applications. He identified mobility, health care, ageing, water treatment and management, security and energy as key issues. He stated: “Economic and societal innovation can go hand in hand. Society benefits because relevant problems can be solved and the economy is stimulated because companies can export their expertise and solutions. He also put in a plea for a Europe-wide approach: “A common strategy is essential and cooperation can be stimulated through flagship projects such as those based on ITEA 2 and ARTEMIS platforms.”

Industrial and political visions

On the second day, the symposium was opened up to an external audience with presentations that included industrial and political visions. Manfred Dietrich, Head of the DG Information and Communication at the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), spoke on Why Germany supports R&D in ICT. Rosalie Zobel, Director of the Directorate for Components and Systems of the DG Information Society and Media of the European Commission, broadened this topic in her speech on Why and how the EU supports R&D in ICT. Olivier Baujard, Chief Technology Officer of Alcatel-Lucent in France then elaborated on solutions to the societal problems at the heart of the symposium in his presentation entitled Innovation in ICT: solutions for today’s societal challenges.

ICT as motor of innovation

In a major speech on Grand challenges for software-driven innovations: megatrends in ICT, Wolgang Wahlster of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence at DFKI presented a vision of a Web-based service economy. He described the move towards ambient mobile multimodal systems, giving a glimpse of the Internet of the future, low-cost products with a digital memory, Green ICT (low-power computers and software) and Web 3.0 (Semantic Web + Web 2.0). Finally he described the promise for emerging markets, where ICT can be used in real-time matchmaking for micro businesses and to provide ITC-based financial services for people without access to banks. Language barriers can be overcome with contextual intelligence and semantic peer-to-peer communication. He concluded that “ICT is the No. 1 innovation motor and software is the fuel.”

Industry perspectives

Harald Hönninger, Vice-President Advance Engineering for Software-Intensive Systems at Corporate Research and Advanced Development, Robert Bosch, Germany painted a picture of the car of the future in his presentation on Mastering the change from electronics to embedded systems thinking in the automotive domain. Professor Michael Heiss, Vice-President Knowledge, Innovation, Technology at Siemens IT Solutions & Services extended this discussion to include The role of IT in innovation in the field of health care. He claimed that “by 2015 all necessary health data as well as all current medical knowledge will be available electronically for authorized persons.”

2007 Achievement Award

The ITEA Achievement Award rewards high-level technical contributions – based on true European collaboration – that lead to significant results and thus further promote the programme and its goals. This year, for the first time, awards were presented for three outstanding projects. The Gold Award went to the AMEC project, the Silver to AGILE and the Bronze to HD4U.

1.         Ambient intelligence

AMEC envisages a future in which everyday devices in the home become interconnected. The project consortium convincingly demonstrated how people’s lives in their connected homes will soon supported by an ambient ‘ecology’ of products, services and content that are adaptive and intuitive to use. Project leader, Gavin Proctor of Philips Design: “Eco-systems of connected devices, content, applications and services still need to ‘learn’ how best to adapt and evolve … and, in our vision, people should be free to tailor their digital media and ‘wired’ experiences to their own unique situations.”

2.         Faster software development

Using 64 industrial case studies, the AGILE consortium proved that the Agile methodology can lead to massive improvements in software engineering. This methodology resulted in high-quality software that has been developed in a shorter time for lower cost then was ever possible with traditional techniques.

3.         HDTV comes of age

The HD4U project team set up a high-definition television (HDTV) demonstrator on three types of distribution network. They developed a high-definition video encoder, improved picture quality, and ensured the interoperability of receivers. Demonstrations showed the impressive improvements in quality that are available with new MPEG4-AVC video-encoding technology.

Largest ever exhibition

At the symposium exhibition, team members working on 45 ITEA projects and no less than 22 non-ITEA booths demonstrated the impact of their work, many of them with real life demos. Of crucial importance to ITEA 2 nowadays is cooperation with EU framework programmes, as was demonstrated in the Information Society Technologies (IST) booths, with competitiveness clusters (shown at the Pôles de Compétitivité booths), with European Technology Platforms (ETP) as well as with the German Federal Ministries of Research & Innovation (BMBF) and Science & Technology (BMWi).

Exhibition Award 2007

This award goes to the team that communicates the purpose, objectives and – where relevant – the results of its project in the most understandable and vivid way. The Gold Award went to NUADU (Improving long-term healthcare & wellbeing through networked services at home and on the move), the Silver to ANSO (Autonomic Networks for Small Office/home office users) and the Bronze to AGILE (agile software engineering).

Automotive corner

A special area of the exhibition was dedicated to automotive projects. One of these – the ITEA 2 project TIMMO – is developing a common, standardised infrastructure that will handle timing issues during the design of embedded real-time systems in the automotive industry. This will shorten the development cycle and make it more predictable. The German AUTOSAR development partnership for automotive open system architecture was also present as were several IST automotive projects. There were two real-life demonstrations: a fuel-cell car and a sensory car.

Positive results

The overall impression of the symposium was that it was a lively event with ample opportunity for international networking between industry and public authorities. ITEA 2 has confirmed its position as a key contributor to successful innovation in software-intensive systems and services and its role in the creation of successful innovation partnerships, particularly those involving small and medium-sized enterprises. Next year's symposium will be held in the Netherlands.