Prof Enrico Motta

The Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute will commission internationally renowned artists Wesley Goatley and Georgina Voss to create an immersive, digital art installation with data from the Data Hub of the MK:Smart project and other sources, making Milton Keynes’ data and logistical infrastructures visible to audiences in a creative, dynamic and innovative way. Sited in the centre of Milton Keynes, the work will be presented for ten days during IF: Milton Keynes International Festival in July 2016 with a dynamic online version of the work by creative technologists Buckley Williams presented simultaneously at the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley.

CityLabs is a consortium led by The Open University, which includes Fronesys and ZTE as delivery partners, with additional external support from Milton Keynes Council. The main objective of CityLabs is to enhance in a highly focused way the research and innovation infrastructure already present in Milton Keynes thanks to the large investment brought in through the £18M MK:Smart project (www.mksmart.org), to contribute to unlocking the great innovation and economic potential that the smart city agenda (in general) and the recent infrastructure deployments (in particular) bring to the SEMLEP region. The project implements an advanced programme of innovation support and training for SMEs, which aims to address the existing limitations in the ability of SMEs to exploit the potential of big data and bring innovative solutions to market. Our highly innovative SME support and training programme will provide a number of unique elements: i) a focus on specific high-value technologies, such as large scale data integration and analytics; ii) a leading-edge start up and digital business training programme, which is based on methodologies for scientific research, enabling SMEs to formulate research-informed business models, and taking them on a journey from concept to delivery; iii) customised one-to-one sessions enabling exchange of advanced R&D know-how from experts at ZTE and The Open University to SMEs. As a result we will be able to deliver significant technical and market advantage to the SEMLEP region for the development of advanced, data-intensive solutions, stimulating growth and creating employment in the region. While technology innovation is complicated and needs a minimum scale of resources to succeed, the problem of commercialising research is made more difficult because the relevant business processes are not well understood. In markets, such as those operating in a Smart Cities context, where buyers and sellers have not yet worked out the right combination of products, services, pricing, value, etc, it is all the more important to set researchers and companies in the right direction. By combining a sophisticated technology infrastructure with business training tailored for R&D commercialisation of data-intensive solutions, the SEMLEP region can become the country’s leading location for the development of innovative new methods, products and services in a number of areas, including Smart Cities, Big Data, and Internet of Things (IoT). This programme of work is aligned with the strategic priorities set by the UK government in recent years. For example, a 2013 government report [BIS Research Paper #136 – Oct. 2013] estimated that the global market for smart city solutions will grow to around $400 billion by 2020 and set a target for UK industry to capture a 10% share of this market. Analogously, the area of Big Data has been identified by the government as one of the “Eight Great Technologies” , while a report by the Government Office for Science emphasises that the “Internet of Things has the potential to have a greater impact on society than the first digital revolution” . CityLabs is also aligned with the SEMLEP EU 2014-20 Programme Investment Priorities , in particular Priority 1: Strengthening and exploiting SEMLEP’s innovation and knowledge assets; Priority 2: Stimulating enterprise and enhancing the competitiveness of SMEs in target sectors and markets; Priority 4: Infrastructure for Growth; and Priority 5: Developing a skilled and adaptable workforce.

By partnering with the University concerning the Rexplore Software, the Sponsor’s ROS Social product will be able to provide registered users with a more in-depth personalised overview of the trends within their network / field of interest. The visualisation of the Klink algorithm will also be used in the ROS Social MVP.

The main objective of the Project is to create a GATEKEEPER, that connects healthcare providers, businesses, entrepreneurs, elderly citizens and the communities they live in, in order to originate an open, trust-based arena for matching ideas, technologies, user needs and processes, aimed at ensuring healthier independent lives for the ageing populations. By 2022, GATEKEEPER will be embodied in an open source, European, standard-based, interoperable and secure framework available to all developers, for creating combined digital solutions for personalised early detection and interventions that (i) harness the next generation of healthcare and wellness innovations; (ii) cover the whole care continuum for elderly citizens, including primary, secondary and tertiary prevention, chronic diseases and co-morbidities; (iii) straightforwardly fit “by design” with European regulations, on data protection, consumer protection and patient protection (iv) are subjected to trustable certification processes; (iv) support value generation through the deployment of advanced business models based on the VBHC paradigm. GATEKEEPER will demonstrate its value by scaling up, during a 42-months work plan, towards the deployment of solutions that will involve ca 40.000 elderly citizens, supply and demand side (authorities, institutions, companies, associations, academies) in 8 regional communities, from 7 EU member states.

The partnership between SIP and the University concerns the deployment of Rexplore-derived solutions in the Springer environment to support the editorial activities of Springer Editors.

Polifonia implements a digital ecosystem for European Musical Heritage: music objects along with relevant related knowledge about their cultural and historical context, expressed in different languages and styles, and across centuries. The ecosystem will include methods, tools, guidelines, experiences, and creative designs, openly shared according to F.A.I.R. principles. The aim is to provoke a paradigm shift in musical heritage preservation, management, studying, interaction, and exploitation. Ten pilots, spanning from historical bells and organ heritage, classification of polyphonic notated music, to the historical role of music in children's lives, will drive the development of the ecosystem through continuous validation of its technologies. The Web, its standard formats and protocols are used as its reference architecture. Knowledge graphs are the enabling technology for integrating, representing, and interlinking music-related data with heterogeneous and distributed provenance. Dedicated research in Semantic Web, Data Science, Machine Learning, Language Technologies, and Human-Machine Interaction will enable discovery and automatic analysis of massive data, as well as their reuse for research, consumption and promotion. The project is conceived by an interdisciplinary team of passionate researchers and curators: computer scientists, anthropologists and ethnomusicologists, historians of music, linguists, musical heritage archivists, cataloguers and administrators, and creative professionals. They bring real-world use cases to define the ten pilots. The planned dissemination and exploitation actions allow the creation of a stakeholder network since the early stage of the project. Specific initiatives address societal and economic challenges: increased accessibility to musical heritage for people with disabilities; reproducible and sustainable creative designs for promoting musical heritage; increased engagement of young female students in STEM curricula.

This ITEA 4 project is led by VTT Research Finland and aims to address the problem “how humans and AI can help each other to adapt to changes”. This will be achieved through the creation of a “Resilience by Design” framework, which will be applied to use cases in hospitals and other work settings. The consortium comprises 10 partners from Finland, UK, Portugal and Korea.