IoT and Edge Computing: Future directions for Europe

The purpose of the workshop is to bring key European stakeholders together to:

• Share views on the emerging needs and opportunities for European Edge IoT
• Learn from key voices in industry and public sectors
• Identify the most promising paths forward

Background

With the proliferation of IoT, the need to develop critical Edge computing is becoming urgent. By bringing responsiveness and innovation to where it is needed, intelligent IoT devices accelerate the convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) and fuel the digital transformation of areas like energy, agri-food, automotive, manufacturing and smart cities & communities.

Computing at the Edge has grown steadily over the past decade, driven by the need to support computing and analytics closer to things in the physical world in order to reduce latency and tackle data deluge due to billions of connected devices and systems. Edge computing lies between physical things in the real world as monitored and controlled by IoT devices (sensors and actuators), via layers of Edge nodes to data centres. In addition, the emergence of AI as a major force in IoT efforts is simultaneous with several important IoT-related trends like cloud-based IoT services and the dramatic increase of AI capabilities in data centres.

Massive IoT data generation is pushing network capacity to its limits across industries; analysing data close to where the data is generated in the physical world (rather than passing data up to a data centre) reduces network load, saves energy and costs as well as reducing the time lag (latency) between generating data and acting on it. Time is critically to optimise industrial processes, automation in connected/autonomous driving, mobile health and integration of volatile energy sources into grid operations. Localisation of data and computation can improve privacy, security, reliability, resilience and safety, which, taken together, comprise trustworthiness.

The workshop will draw attention to future opportunities of Edge Computing including its role of safely connecting devices; and provide insights into the requirement for orchestration with cloud services, the importance of integrating connectivity and computing with AI-based reasoning and automation, while addressing the challenges and barriers for European stakeholders across different sectors.

The workshop is hosted by the Next Generation IoT (NGIoT) CSA project and organised together with the European Commission and the Alliance for IoT Innovation (AIOTI), to reflect on opportunities and challenges, the position of European stakeholders and possible measures to reach consensus on an agenda and roadmap European IoT research, innovation and deployment in the world.

The NGIoT Strategic Roadmap sets the future course for IoT in Europe. It is based on broad community input including companies, public sector, researchers and NGOs. It is intended as a basis for dialogue towards the selection of priorities in the IoT domain. Access the Draft Roadmap here and contribute your expert opinion on one of the most important digital technological advancements of our era. Download the paper here.

The Strategic Research Agenda for Electronic Components & Systems 2020 White Paper may also be of interest and is available here.

AGENDA (Slides of the agenda availables here PDF)

10:00 – 10:10 Welcome: Max Lemke, Head of Unit IoT, DG CONNECT, European Commission

10:10 – 10:20 Setting the Scene

• Rolf Riemenschneider, Head of Sector, IoT, DG CONNECT, European Commission (Presentation available here PDF)
  
• Martin Brynskov, Coordinator, Next Generation IoT (NGIoT), Aarhus University (Presentation available here PDF)
  
• Parm Raeewal, Chair, Alliance for IoT Innovation (AIOTI) Steering Board, Vodafone

10:20 – 10:30 Together on the edge

• Monique Calisti, CEO, Martel Innovate (Presentation available here PDF)
  

10:30 – 11:30 Session 1: Five years from now – Key Scenarios and Emerging needs in Edge IoT

• Connected Road Infrastructure (Presentation available here PDF)
  – Tom Jell, Program Manager at Siemens
• Food / Farming (Presentation available here PDF)
  – Harald Sundmaeker, SmartAgriHubs
• Smart Energy (Presentation available here PDF)
  – Oliver van der Mond, Co-Founder & CEO Lemonbeat
• Smart Communities
  – Davor Meersman, CEO of Open & Agile Smart Cities

11:30 – 11:40 “COFFEE” BREAK – Informal chat in breakout rooms available

11:40 – 12:30 Session 2: Cross-cutting Issues

• Cross-cutting issues: Data spaces, processing and networking (Presentation available here PDF)
  – Nuria de Lama & Aurora Ramos, Atos
• Architectures, interoperability and orchestration (Presentation available here PDF)
  – Omar Elloumi, Nokia
• Demand, supply and regulators
  – Ilkka Lakaniemi, Business Development at Combient

12:30 – 13:15 “LUNCH” BREAK – Informal chat in breakout rooms available

13:15 – 14:15 Session 3: Technology: Hardware, Software, Systems

• Smart Sensors and Systems
  – Gerald Fritz, Senior Manager Innovation Projects and Funding at TTTech Computertechnik
• The Grid and the Edge (Presentation available here PDF)
  – Henrik Madsen, Technical University Denmark
• Specialised Silicon (Presentation available here PDF)
  – Ilja Ocket, Program Manager at imec
• Orchestrating the Edge (Presentation available here PDF)
  – Marc Duranton, CEA

14:15 – 14:25 “COFFEE” BREAK – Informal chat in breakout rooms available

14:25 – 15:55 Interactive Session on Enabling Technologies

• Introduction by the session moderator
  – Ovidiu Vermesan, SINTEF
• Short interventions/presentations from the audience floor
  – Antonio Skarmeta, University of Murcia
  – Mirko Presser, Aarhus University
  – Artemis Voulkidis, Synelixis (Presentation available here PDF)
  – Natalie Samovich & Stefan Vanya, AIOTI (Presentation available here PDF)
  – Antonello Monti & Alberto Dognini, RWTH Aachen (Presentation available here PDF)
  – Csaba Kiraly, Digital Catapult UK (Presentation available here PDF)
  – Poonam Yadav, University of York
  – Open slots… (please reach out in the chat if you would like to contribute)

15:55 – 16:00 Closing Remarks

• EC, NGIoT, AIOTI

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