The CELTIC-NEXT 21st Anniversary was co-located with the Berlin 6G Platform Event at BCC in Berlin between the 2nd and 4th of July 2024!
On the morning of the 2nd of July 2024, CELTIC-NEXT celebrated its 21 years of existence on the scene of international cooperation fostering innovation in the ICT domain and its application verticals. During this day, opening keynotes were organised including a welcome keynote by the Chairman David Kennedy, followed by the Eureka Chair Dr Rudolf Haggenmueller celebrating Eureka in CELTIC, BMBF Ministry delegate Frau Dr Tina Kluwer.
Welcome keynote by Rudolf Haggenmüller on the Eureka Joint Presidency
All these high-level speakers from BMBF, Eureka and the Industry shared the floor of the plenary auditorium and expressed themselves on CELTIC, its great achievements and their vision of its future.
The session was followed by a Panel discussion on “Future Persuasive Networks – and how to build them” moderated by David Kennedy, CELTIC-NEXT Chairman.
Panel discussion on Future Persuasive Networks
This panel discussed the visions shared by 5 panellists:
› Mr Engelbert Beyer (BMBF, Dept 51),
› Mikko A. Uusitalo (Coordinator 6G Flagship Hexa-X II),
› Johannes Springer (DTAG),
› Maria Guta (ESA), and
› Hans Schotten (6G Platform Germany)
The context of the discussion was the following:
During the last 5 years, the Communications network, because of Corona and other factors, became recognised as a facilitator for changing not just how we work – but as a core enabler for a whole new structure of our lives. The new era communications networks will be pervasive, providing everything to everyone at any time – for the traveller, it will be continuous connectivity, for the remote worker, it will be additional processing, for the home entertainment, it will be high quality throughput at a low price and for the professional sectors, it will be a combination of processing, AI, low latency, low power and edge computing as and where they need it.
The question is how will this be provided? Clearly the new network must be highly software based and infinitely customisable. It must be flexible and easily repurposed and or expandable. In fact, it must be intelligent and capable of learning how to supply what the users want before even they themselves know. And it must be cost/resources and power efficient. And fully automatised while secure and trustable because it remains explainable and controllable.
After that a CELTIC-NEXT Awards Ceremony was organised, rewarding 3 projects in the fields of green networking, applications & services and outstanding innovation.
5 key steps & 5 factors for a successful CELTIC-NEXT proposal
Audrey Bienvenu
CELTIC Office
CELTIC-NEXT is an industry-driven European research initiative to define, perform and finance through public and private funding common research projects. As the follow-on programme to the successful Eureka ICT cluster Celtic-Plus and its predecessor “Celtic-Initiative”, the cluster has been defined for 8 years until the end of 2026. CELTIC is supported by nearly all major European players in telecommunications. Bringing the major European telecommunications vendors and operators together into an ambitious European intergovernmental R&D programme, CELTIC is the best option to address a “system view” of communications to complement other existing Clusters.
CELTIC has been key for initiating ambitious and innovative projects dedicated to end-to-end communications solutions. Until today, CELTIC has labelled, funded and performed 176 projects in all their research areas with a total volume of more than one Billion Euro. By facilitating these collaborative R&D projects, CELTIC has made a great contribution to help Europe to stay at the competitive edge of the telecommunications industry.
Through 21 years of successfully running, the office has gathered the best tips and 5 key steps to submit a high-quality proposal and a rewarding project.
Step 1 – Use the brokerage tool
In order to support you in preparing your project proposal for CELTIC-NEXT Calls, we have created an online Brokerage Tool. Its goal is to help you build your Consortium in preparation for your CELTIC-NEXT Project. The tool functionalities are the following:
› Submission form for your Project Ideas and Expertise Offers › Overview lists with search form › Contact request forms › Process owner support functions: approval process and contact request tracking
Step 2 – Attend to the call events
CELTIC-NEXT organises several events open to the public, which interested parties can attend to learn more about CELTIC-NEXT. We have typically one large CELTIC-NEXT Event per year, including an exhibition where running projects show their results. In addition, we are running several Launch Call Events and Proposers Days every year where interested parties can discuss their project ideas and potential project proposals with other interested experts and with representatives from the Public Authorities. Please watch out for upcoming CELTIC-NEXT Events.
Step 3 – Contact your public authorities
Projects can receive public funding, depending on the national funding rules. To speed up the funding decision process, each project participant should contact their national funding agency early in the process and follow their advice regarding national funding applications in parallel to the proposal submission. You may submit a short proposal abstract (including a short project outline, and intended consortium partners/countries) until one month before the deadline for a first check to the CELTIC Office.
Step 4 – Check your (funding) eligibility
Project proposals for CELTIC-NEXT Calls must meet specific criteria.The consortium should include at least two companies from different Eureka participating countries include at least one industrial partner from each of the countries and in a fair and well-balanced way. The project should generate an obvious advantage and added value resulting from the technological cooperation between the participants.
Step 5 – Submit your proposal in the CELTIC Proposal Submission Portal
First of all, you will need to create an account on the CELTIC Proposal Submission Portal https://cluster-projects.eurestools.eu/. Once your account is created, all steps and documents needed for upload will be explained.
5 factors for a successful project
› Targeting the research areas: Least but not last: CELTIC-NEXT focuses on telecommunication and ICT, connecting people and businesses securely and reliably. The topics in the picture are not prescriptive and are only meant to give you some idea of the wide scope. Any topic related to the CELTIC-NEXT vision of a Smart Connected World is eligible. › Market relevance and exploitation potential: These are Key aspects to motivate Public Authorities to fund your project. The market analysis includes the technological value chain and added value of the collaboration, value chain as the right mix of partners in the consortium, added value of the cooperation at a technology level, added value by the cooperation at a business level, and consortium/partner access to the market. › Technology innovation: Innovation above the State of the Art (SoA) is a Key Criterion; 50 % of criticism of the Cluster experts during proposal evaluation are related to insufficient description of the SoA. Strategic relevance and expected impact of your proposal on a per-country perspective such as what new businesses will be generated matters. › Right mix of participating countries: A large majority of successful projects in the past have been funded and built by a minimum of three different countries. A total of 44 European and non-European countries worldwide are participating in CELTIC-NEXT, of which 27 are coming from Eureka countries. › Knowing the process of the proposal submission: The CELTIC label decision is given in 3 stages: Proposal Submission by proposers, evaluation phase by Industry Experts and Public Authorities and lastly, Label Decision by the Public Authorities and CELTIC Core Group.
This year’s CELTIC Event took place in Valencia, Spain on 19th to 20th June. It was co-located with EuCNC, the European Conference on Networks and Communications, which gave CELTIC-NEXT additional attention among the 5,000+ EuCNC participants. The CELTIC Event consisted of a conference with award ceremony on day 1 and sessions for project proposers on day 2. In parallel, 15 selected CELTIC projects showed their results in the exhibition at the Valencia Conference Centre. One of the highlights of this year’s event was the emergency communication demo at the harbour of Valencia, which was performed by CELTIC project UNICRINF.
Eric Hardouin, Ambient Connectivity Research Valérie Blavette, chairperson of CELTIC-NEXT, Director at Orange
Keynotes and SME success story
In the first keynote, Eric Hardouin, Ambient Connectivity Research Director at Orange, presented a vision of future networks. He emphasised that beyond performance aspects, research on future networks has to address a number of additional challenges, including trust and resilience in multi-tenant environments, EMF-aware transmissions, the efficiency of energy and natural resource usage as well as digital inclusion. He pointed out that there is still a lot of research needed to deliver the full 5G potential. According to Mr Hardouin, the exploding complexity of networks due to multiple requirements for optimisation calls for system-level solutions.
In the second keynote, Diego R. Lopez from Telefónica I+D shared his insights on the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to network transformation for nurturing the Smart Network. According to Mr Lopez, such a network should be smart in all senses, i.e. fast, simple to use, easy to tune, and above all, intelligent in order to make the network scalable, adaptable, multi-purpose, and suitable for integration.
The third speaker, Steny Solitude from French SME Perfect Memory, shared the story of his company’s success, which is closely linked to its participation in CELTIC projects. Perfect Memory has created an innovative digital asset management (DAM) solution based on results by CELTIC projects MediaMap and MediaMap+.
Steny Solitude from French SME Perfect Memory Diego R. Lopez from Telefónica I+D
In the second keynote, Diego R. Lopez from Telefónica I+D shared his insights on the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to network transformation for nurturing the Smart Network. According to Mr Lopez, such a network should be smart in all senses, i.e. fast, simple to use, easy to tune, and above all, intelligent in order to make the network scalable, adaptable, multi-purpose, and suitable for integration.
The third speaker, Steny Solitude from French SME Perfect Memory, shared the story of his company’s success, which is closely linked to its participation in CELTIC projects. Perfect Memory has created an innovative digital asset management (DAM) solution based on results by CELTIC projects MediaMap and MediaMap+.
Panel on impact of CELTIC projects
After the opening keynote, the audience witnessed a lively panel session on the impact of CELTIC projects, which was emceed by David Kennedy, director of Eurescom. The five panellists represented six CELTIC projects: 4KREPROSIS – Marco Mattavelli, EPFL, Switzerland; flagship project SENDATE – Emmanuel Dotaro, Thales, France; NOTTS and MONALIS – Antonio Cuadra Sanchez, INDRA, Spain; SIGMONA – José Costa Requena, Cumucore, Finland; and UPSC – Isil Ozkan, Turkcell, Turkey.
Not surprisingly, all five panellists concluded that the industry-driven and close-to-market projects under CELTIC allowed their organisations to reap immediate benefits in terms of accelerating market innovations, sustained competitiveness, and a profound increase of their knowledge base and international business connections. The type and scope of these impacts varied widely, due to the fact that the panellists represented on the one hand large companies like Thales or Turkcell and on the other hand SMEs like Cumucore.
Panellists discussing the impact of CELTIC projects (from left):
José Costa Requena, Cumucore; Antonio Cuadra Sanchez, INDRA;
Emmanuel Dotaro, Thales; Işıl Özkan, Turkcell; Marco Mattavelli, EPFL
CELTIC Awards
The first day of the CELTIC Event ended with a highlight – the CELTIC Awards. Four CELTIC projects won the CELTIC Award for their outstanding work. Three of these projects were awarded for their excellence in the areas of networking technologies, applications, and multimedia. The fourth was honoured with the Innovation Award for its outstanding market innovation beyond the project lifespan. The awards were presented to representatives of the winning projects by CELTIC-NEXT chairperson Valérie Blavette and handed over by Juana Sanchez from CDTI, the representative of the Public Authority in Spain.
Excellence Award for Multimedia:
4KREPROSYS – 4K ultraHD TV wireless REmote PROduction SYStems
The project partners have been very successful in their specialized video production ecosystem. The business relevance of the developed 4KREPROSYS solution has been evaluated as very high. The successful involvement in major events like the FIFA World-Cup 2018 underlines the competitiveness of the solutions brought forward by the project.
François Valadoux, AMP Visual TV, France and Marco
Mattavelli, EPFL, Switzerland, from 4KREPROSYS;
Juana Sanchez, CDTI, Spain; and Valérie Blavette,
CELTIC-NEXT Chairperson
Excellence Award for Network Technologies: SOOGREEN – Service-oriented optimization of Green mobile networks
SooGreen’s main objectives were to reduce the energy consumption of services and to improve the mobile network architectures and content delivery, taking advantage of the smart grids by using a holistic approach at the level of network components, architecture, management and control. The project has addressed the need to reduce the energy consumption of services in different mobile network architectures, focusing on topics like modelling and measurement of services energy consumption in mobile networks; dynamic optimization in access; energy-efficiency aspects of emerging virtual and cloud RAN architectures; and interaction between service delivery in mobile networks and smart grids.
Valérie Blavette, CELTIC-NEXT Chairperson; Dominique
Bodere, SOOGREEN Project Coordinator from Orange,
France and Juana Sanchez from CDTI, Spain (from left)
Excellence Award for Applications:
E3 – E-health services Everywhere and for Everybody
E3 designed and implemented an end-to-end platform to make e-health services available in both rural and urban areas, to patients and professionals. E3 used and extended the results from the awarded CELTIC project HIPERMED. E3 developed the HIPERMED results further by addressing other communication types and compression techniques. In addition, E3 extended the type of scenarios by testing the developments in 15 healthcare scenarios, which were validated by doctors and professors who tested the platform results.
E3 project coordinator Oscar Chabrera from Vilynx, Spain
and Juana Sanchez from CDTI, Spain, and Valérie Blavette,
CELTIC-NEXT Chairperson
Innovation Award:
NOTTS – Next generation Over-The-Top multimedia Services
The project had developed a sustainable integrated solution to guarantee the OTT content delivery from the customer’s perspective for the whole content distribution chain. The main activities included new media distribution architectures for OTT contents, and novel methods for Quality of Experience (QoE) estimation. NOTTS technology has supplied European content providers, service providers and telecoms network operators with new technologies that allow increasing revenue from new OTT business models.
NOTTS Project Coordinator Antonio Quadra Sanchez from
INDRA Spain, Juana Sanchez from CDTI, and Valérie Blavette,
CELTIC-NEXT Chairperson
Exhibition
In the EuCNC exhibition area, 15 commercially important CELTIC projects presented their results. Visitors had the chance to experience first-hand prototypes of solutions which have been developed in the selected CELTIC projects. The demos allowed visitors to experience the technological progress made by those projects in an interactive and playful way.
Exhibition – High media interest in CELTIC projects, here the VIRTUOSE project
Live emergency demo at the harbour
Shortly before the EuCNC social event on 18th June, CELTIC project UNICRINF showcased a live emergency demo at the Port of Valencia. The demo attracted a large number of visitors who witnessed how the UNCRINF solution enabled the communication between emergency teams on land, in the air, and at sea.
See also the article about UNICRINF in this edition of CELTIC News.
Sessions for proposers
The sessions on the second day were dedicated to helping proposers learn about making a good proposal for the upcoming autumn call in October and finding the right partners for their consortium. In the first session, CELTIC Office Director Peter Hermann presented best practices for proposers and explained how to set up a successful CELTIC project. The ensuing round-table with representatives of Public Authorities provided practical information on funding and research topics in different EUREKA countries.
The afternoon was dedicated to project idea pitches and networking. This offered ample opportunities for meeting other experts from the ICT community to discuss emerging R&D needs and proposals for related collaborative projects. Session moderator Christiane Reinsch, Programme Coordinator at the CELTIC Office, introduced 17 new project ideas. This was followed by proposers, who pitched their innovative project ideas for the upcoming CELTIC call in short elevator pitches. The CELTIC Event ended with open networking and bilateral discussions between proposers and representatives of Public Authorities.
How CELTIC-NEXT is delivering on its new ambitions
Xavier Priem
Director CELTIC Office
For CELTIC-NEXT, 2021 was a year of renewal and change. 2022 is a year of implementation: translating the new roadmap into partnerships and calls, designing the Space ICT flagship programme, acquiring new Core Group memberships, and implementing the first official inter-cluster joint thematic call of the Eureka Clusters Programme on accelerating industrial sustainability.
Solidarity with Ukrainian colleagues
Before going into the other topics, let me first share on behalf of the CELTIC Office our deepest compassion with our Ukrainian colleagues and their families. We are worried about the destiny of those who were not able to flee or had to stay and fight the invader. Our attempt to contact them was not successful. Our only hope is that this is because our contact attempt was their lowest priority, and they did not find the time and energy to answer.
Translating the new roadmap into partnerships and calls
In the first half of 2022, we have pursued the implementation of CELTIC’s new roadmap by running several actions, and we will continue to do so in the second half. We are presenting this roadmap in our Proposers’ Days, to allow consortia to propose innovative projects in the large number of fields of technologies, applications, and verticals of the roadmap. This is our traditional bottom-up approach. We will continue to run our Spring and Autumn Calls as per our successful history. This is a unique selling point of CELTIC as a Eureka Cluster compared to other international funding schemes. And it will remain so in the future.
Secondly, we are entering into new partnerships to enhance our funding impact in the global ICT community, as well as in other industries. Those partnerships will nourish further our roadmap and attractivity to Public Authorities to fund impactful innovative projects across and beyond the Eureka and European countries. This is already bearing fruits with the joining of two new CELTIC Core Group members: SES S.A. and CELLNEX Telecom.
One of the new partnerships has already been signed with ESA, the European Space Agency, in the form of a Memorandum of Intent (see the Space ICT article in this issue of CELTIC News). CELTIC and ESA will coordinate efforts and exchange on terrestrial network and non-terrestrial network convergence and cooperation. Some of those new partnerships, as for example the one with ESA, will be translated into flagship programmes and associated calls.
Designing the Space ICT flagship programme
Space ICT has become a subject of high attention for industry and governments, and this has been strongly reinforced by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. A clear sign has been also sent by 3GPP, which has now opened wider doors for the inclusion of SatCom besides the traditional backhauling role. The MoI will encourage terrestrial ICT and Space ICT industry collaboration with other industry verticals to facilitate the adoption of advanced Space ICT technologies in the business models and processes of all industry sectors.
CELTIC-NEXT and ESA are working together to define a joint roadmap of technologies, use cases and agenda of calls. ESA is a key actor in the development of all aspects and fields of space activity. Once the first roadmap and an agenda of calls are ready, CELTIC and ESA will advertise them. The joint roadmap and agenda should be defined during the first half of 2022, and the first CELTIC Space ICT flagship call should be announced for the second half of 2022.
New Core Group members
CELTIC has started to approach potential new Core Group members to enrich its DNA. And CELTIC is proud to have added two strong new members with headquarters based in Europe to its Core Group:
SES S.A. is a leading satellite operator. With over 70 satellites in two different orbits, their reach is unlike any other. They combine a vast, intelligent network of satellites and ground infrastructure with industry-leading expertise to manage and deliver high-performance video and data solutions virtually everywhere on the planet. SES S.A. already delivered a keynote in the ECP Joint Sustainability Call 2022 Webinar in Luxembourg.
CELLNEX Telecom is a leading infrastructure operator for wireless telecommunication in Europe. Cellnex has made a firm commitment to developing its network, which currently comprises around 128,000 sites. 71,000 of them are already in the portfolio and the rest in the process of closing or planned roll-outs up to 2030, which perfectly positions the company to develop new-generation networks. CELLNEX provides services in Spain, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden thanks to the investments undertaken to boost its transformation and internationalisation. CELLNEX already delivered a keynote in CELTIC’s Spring Call 2022 Proposers’ Day.
Other prospective new Core Group members will be approached this year.
MoI signature (from left): Eureka Chairman Miguel Bello Mora, Elodie Viau – Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications and Head of ECSAT at the European Space Agency (ESA), and CELTIC Office Director Xavier Priem
First inter-Cluster joint thematic call on sustainability
After having led the two pilot pre-ECP joint calls on AI, CELTIC-NEXT has contributed to the first ECP Joint Call targeting the acceleration wof industrial sustainability, with the two sub-topics chosen by the 16 participating Public Authorities:
› Green ICT › Space-Earth-ocean integrated systems for better observation and data exploitation
Timeline of the Eureka Clusters Sustainability Call 2022
Outlook
2022 is and will remain a challenging year for many topics. Joint collaborative innovation and knowledge exchange are among the best weapons against pandemics and wars. Our ICT community is one of the best positioned to understand and support this. Cybersecurity, resilience of critical infrastructures (for example with SatCom), and misuse of ICT technologies against people and nations are certainly topics to be ranked now as absolute priorities in the new world that is in front of us. CELTIC has made a collaborative proposal to its fellow Clusters within Eureka and will try to elaborate a strategic programme in that direction towards Eureka funding bodies.
The Celtic Next project H-OPTO aimed at establishing best practices and creating new knowledge in the installation, operation and maintenance of optical access networks. Until recently, most of the research effort on optical networks has mainly focussed on increasing capacities and developing new optical components. Less research has gone into analysing the overall deployment costs and the operations and maintenance costs. H-OPTO has focused on these costs with the ambition to build up practical knowledge and stay ahead of industry needs when deploying and operating such networks. While optical access networks are currently still far from ubiquitous, deployments are rapidly increasing. As these networks grow and start to age, quality and operation issues become progressively important. It is this network rollout and operational holistic view that H-OPTO brings to the world of optical fibre access.
The project set out to answer some specific questions such as: “How do optical networks age?” and “How do we transform network maintenance into a data-driven business?” These questions have largely been answered by the project. Cost savings in network maintenance have been achieved both for the optical access network and for fibre-fed commercial indoor wireless networks. The combination of optics and wireless expertise within the project has led to some notable results, including a new business model for one of the project partners, which significantly reduces both costs and the environmental impact for in-building mobile distribution. The project also had two successful forward-looking innovation strands, one looking at the techno-economics of optical access deployment (eventually this model will add 5G transport cost analysis capability) and the other looking at methods to secure a disturbance-free Wi-fi in-door environment.
On the optics side, the project has brought together the main actors in Sweden, bringing with them their experience and expertise they have gained in deploying optical fibre networks throughout the country. Almost every home, even in rural areas, now has a fibre connection in Sweden. This expertise was combined with that from the Polish optics industry that maintains a global position in the production and testing of optical components. From the UK, BT added experts on optics, networks and techno-economics. And partners from Turkey and Sweden added further proficiency in the area of in-door wireless solutions including international standards experience. The success of this project is a direct result of the competence and engagement of all the participating partners. Figure 1 shows the deployment of fibre and fibre cable by Telia from 1985 until 2019 throughout Sweden.
Cables, connectors and ducts were extensively examined during the H-OPTO project, with the aim of identifying the significant reasons for network faults, which were extracted from fault logs using data mining techniques.
Fibre and fibre cable deployment in Sweden
Summary of the estimated aging of optical component results
Cables used during the past 25 years have not undergone any significant degradation. Cable lifetime is mostly dependent upon cable size (i.e. fibre count) and if a cable has needed to be replaced due to under-capacity. Problems noted for old cables have been related to material compatibility, which is now prevented by implemented aging tests in the qualification test programme.
Connectors are generally a weak point and cause problems for customers when high quality components are not used. However, aging has not been found to be an issue. Problems are most likely to arise due to poor fibre cleaning methods used by technicians.
Ducts: cost-wise the ducts are the most important component in a network, as re-trenching should be avoided whenever possible. Internal friction increases over time after a cable has been installed inside a duct, which can make removing cables and installing further cables difficult. However, this friction has been found to be reversible with the correct cleaning and lubrication techniques.
Conclusion and outlook
H-OPTO has been a driver in creating a new forum for technical discussions involving several different network owners in Sweden. Telia and other partners in the project have shared experience, data and quality requirements. This Swedish cooperation is expected to continue in the future, which will be beneficial for everybody connected to a fibre network within the Swedish market. In addition, other parts of the project have developed analytical cost models, investigated future network architectures based upon white-box hardware and open source software, in-home wireless interference mitigation techniques and developed remote headend mobile distribution equipment. The H-OPTO project will be continuing under the Celtic-Next banner with additional partners under the name A5gard.
At the EUREKA Stakeholder Conference in Amsterdam on 5th September 2019, the CELTIC projects 4KREPROSYS and E3 were among the happy winners of the prestigious EUREKA Awards. The EUREKA Awards were presented on the main stage of the DeLaMar Theater by Odilia Knap, Chairwoman of the EUREKA Network.
Three months earlier, in June 2019, both projects had already received CELTIC Excellence Awards at the CELTIC Event in Valencia – 4KREPROSYS for excellence in multimedia and E3 for excellence in the applications domain.
EUREKA Award Winnner 4KREPROSYS
4KREPROSYS (4K ultraHD TV wireless REmote PROduction SYStems) investigated and developed a new integrated cost-effective approach for the production of 4K TV content. The goal was to cover a wide range of 4K TV production needs, from indoor studio production to large outdoor events, such as Olympic Games, cycling, and car races. 4KREPROSYS was involved in major events like the FIFA World Cup 2018, which underlines the high relevance of the project’s solutions.
The project consortium included: AMP VISUAL TV (coordinator), France; WorldLinX Alliance NV, Belgium; Siru, Finland; Supponor Oy, Finland; TUT-Tampere University of Technology, Finland; INSA de Rennes (IETR), France; Kalray, France; NuLink SA, Switzerland; European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Switzerland; EPFL – Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale Lausanne, Switzerland.
E3 (E-health services Everywhere and for Everybody) designed and implemented an end-to-end platform which enables patients and professionals in both rural and urban areas to cost-effectively access e-health services based on high-quality video conferencing technology. The platform was successfully tested in 15 healthcare scenarios and validated by doctors and professors.
The project consortium included: ViLynx Spain S.L.U., Spain; Calboquer S.L., Spain; IDI EIKON, Spain; SeniorSome Oy, Finland; eHOIVA Palveluverkko Oy, Finland; Institut Mines Télécom, France; Université de Lorraine, France; Vitec Multimedia, France; Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center, Poland; Galaksiya Bilisim Teknolojileri, Turkey; SoSoft, Turkey; Vestel Electronics, Turkey.
Sometimes it takes a few years until you see the full benefits of research results. CELTIC project HIPERMED is a perfect example. When it ended in 2013, nobody would have thought that seven years later its results would contribute to a telemedicine solution which is used in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. However, that is exactly what has happened, due to the work of medVC, a Polish SME located in Poznań. MedVC has already connected 35 Polish hospitals with patients at home via its free video service STOP-CORONA, in order to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
More hospitals in Europe will follow. There are already inquiries for using STOP-CORONA from hospitals in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. MedVC is expecting also demand from hospitals in Central European countries and beyond.
The STOP-CORONA service
STOP-CORONA is an easy-to-use patient-to-hospital video communication service, which is offered by medVC free of charge to hospitals around the world. “We want to help by giving all hospitals the possibility to unblock their telephone lines, reduce the need for ambulances to go to patients, and stop patients from overcrowding the emergency rooms,” explained Piotr Pawałowski, CEO of medVC.
The service enables each hospital that registers to let its doctors see the patients using videoconferencing. The main benefit of the STOP-CORONA system is to keep the patients at home by allowing them to have audio-visual contact with the hospital. The doctor not only hears, but, above all, sees the patient. In this way doctors can initially assess the patients’ health status. Patients stay at home, not spreading the virus.
The system is intuitive and very easy to use. The patient only has to press the link on the hospital’s website to enter the system’s virtual waiting room. The solution is browser-based and uses WebRTC. Thus, no other software needs to be installed, which makes the system easy to use for less technically inclined and elderly patients. MedVC ensures that the STOP-CORONA system is secure and encrypted, and no data is being recorded.
Background on medVC
MedVC goes back to a group of engineers from the Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center, Poland (PSNC), who founded the company in 2014. They had participated in the award-winning CELTIC project “HIPERMED – High Performance Telemedicine Platform” and its successor project “E3 – E-health services Everywhere and for Everybody”. Using CELTIC project results as a basis, medVC developed a commercial remote collaboration tool for medical professionals, which allows real-time audio-visual communication.
The CELTIC-NEXT Proposers Day in Istanbul on 25th September highlighted the strong interest of the Turkish RDI community in building international partnerships. The audience witnessed inspiring presentations, engaged in interesting discussions, and learned about twelve new interesting proposal ideas.
The event took place at the Istanbul Technology University. It was organized by CELTIC-NEXT and the Turkish Public Authority TÜBİTAK with the support of Sabancı University and Enterprise Europe Network. The programme consisted of interesting keynote speeches, practical information about the CELTIC-NEXT programme and the national funding programmes in Turkey and Spain, a lively panel discussion about the business impact of CELTIC projects, and a session for project proposal pitches.
In the morning, Mr. Tarık Şahin from TÜBİTAK, Ms. Valérie Blavette, CELTIC Chairperson from Orange, and Mr. Rıza Durucasugil, CELTIC Vice-chair from NETAŞ, opened the event and welcomed the participants. After the opening, Ms. Fatma Kesik from Sabancı University presented the opportunities of the Enterprise Europe Network. In the following keynote speech by Mr. Mustafa Eruyar from ISBAK, he shared the future vision of smart cities and presented exemplary scenarios and use cases from the city of Istanbul.
The Public Authority representatives, Mr. Tarık Şahin from Turkey and Ms. Juana Sánchez Pérez from CDTI in Spain, highlighted their support of the CELTIC-NEXT programme and presented the funding opportunities in Turkey and Spain. Guidelines and recommendations on how to submit a CELTIC-NEXT project proposal were presented as well.
Speakers and organisers of the Proposers Day (from left): Hakan Çelik from ISBAK, Rıza Durucasugil, Vice-chair
of CELTIC Core Group from NETAŞ, Juana Sánchez Pérez from CDTI (Spanish Public Authority), Valérie Blavette,
CELTIC Chairperson from Orange, Mustafa Eruyar from ISBAK, Maria Barros Weiss, CELTIC Office at Eurescom,
and Umut Ege from TÜBİTAK (Turkish Public Authority)
Panel discussion
The ensuing panel discussion was moderated by Ms. Işıl Özkan, CELTIC Core Group Member from Turkcell, and focused on the business impact of CELTIC projects. In the discussion, Mr. Burak Görkemli from Argela mentioned the importance of international collaboration and referred to the projects his company has been involved in, namely TILAS, H2b2Vs and SIGMONA.
Mr. Yaşar Burak Savak, from Vestel Electronics, stressed the impact created by awards, based on the example of CELTIC and EUREKA awards received by the E3 project. Mr. Mehmet Dağlı, from NETAŞ presented the impact of the VIRTUOSE project on the different organizations in the consortium, referring to the patent submissions, prototypes and field trials. He also mentioned new and improved products implemented by the project. In addition, he highlighted a start-up on cloud gaming created in Spain, which uses the video encoders implemented in the project. Mr. Mustafa Eruyar from İSBAK stressed the importance not only of the impact on business but also on the quality of living, highlighting results of CELTIC projects like COMOSEF. The social impact created through the services offered by the projects to the public was also recognised during the discussions.
The panellists also discussed challenges of CELTIC projects and international collaborations in general, like for example the size of the consortium or dealing with the requirements of multiple funding agencies. They also pointed out the contradiction between agile processes and short deadlines used by many companies and the long deadlines of project proposals, which are hard to reconcile. Many times the companies’ strategies change during the long duration of project set-up and implementation, which could become a risk for projects.
They mentioned leadership roles in CELTIC-NEXT as beneficial for the organizations, and they especially appreciated the bottom-up character of the programme, which they considered to be a big advantage for the alignment of project work with the companies’ strategies. The impact of project collaborations for academia was also stressed, as well as the importance of having academic partners in projects, proven for instance by the 110 high-quality papers published by CELTIC projects SIGMONA, H2B2VS, and TILAS combined.
Timely technology and quality of the project implementation, as well as a strong coordination and valid use cases were factors indicated as crucial for the success and business impact of the projects.
Proposal pitches and networking session
During the proposal presentations session, twelve potential project ideas were presented to the audience, covering topics like 5G, artificial intelligence, big data, IoT, blockchain, automation, and others. The proposed applications of such technologies ranged from a wide spectrum of vertical industries, such as banking, supply chains, self-driving vehicles, assisted living, smart energy, and smart agriculture, just to name a few. The interest of the audience in the project ideas was demonstrated not only by the full room, but also through the lively networking session at the end and the interactions among the event participants and feedback to CELTIC and Public Authority representatives.
Outlook
The Proposers Day in Istanbul was part of a series of events co-organised by CELTIC-NEXT to support interested proposers in finding collaboration partners and building international project consortia. Besides the several proposers days organized in different EUREKA/CELTIC countries, CELTIC also offers Proposers Sessions via web-conference. The pitch presentations presented during all the proposers days or sessions are available for download on the CELTIC-NEXT website.
Panel on the business impact of CELTIC projects (from left): Mustafa Eruyar, İSBAK, Mehmet Dağlı, NETAŞ,
Burak Görkemli, Argela, Yaşar Burak Savak, Vestel Electronics, and moderator Işıl Özkan, CELTIC Core Group
Member from Turkcell.
Major catastrophes demand efficient coordination and control of resources in order to ensure people’s safety. In the era of 5G and IoT, networks and applications play a fundamental role in monitoring and decision making in all areas involved. CELTIC project UNICRINF plans to use the available communications infrastructures to create a global integrated platform to monitor catastrophes, create ad-hoc communication infrastructures, communicate with emergency teams, and advise citizens.
Areas involved in a major catastrophe include emergency services, affected people, hospital resources, communications networks, infrastructure, and more. The fundamental objective during an emergency situation is the safety of the people. Technology should help and allow information to flow smoothly between all people involved.
Emergency scenarios and application domains
Emergencies come in different shapes – it could be an earthquake, a tsunami, a flood, a volcanic eruption, a toxic explosion, or a big fire. What all these disasters have in common is that they can compromise communications, which is vital for emergency services and affected people.
However, communications must also include the monitoring of the affected infrastructures, the contact with the people within the affected area regardless of the operator that serves them, the warning of the nearby population by all means available with action guidelines or the evacuation route of victims and available resources.
The UNICRINF project aims to facilitate effective disaster communication solutions covering a variety of scenarios and use cases, including:
Helping to up the part of the optical trunk network using a contingency truck that replaces the affected node as well as the priority services.
Updating a local 5G or 4G VPN network using small cell or portable nodes
Facilitating access to the internet and external servers through an ad-hoc satellite connection
Performing a national pseudo roaming in order to have the affected people listed and located in the affected area regardless of the operator that serves them
Currently not even the geolocation is available in 112 calls as well as the broadcast of the same service.
Allowing the transmission and reception of images taken by unmanned aerial, land or sea drones, both to the control centre and to people on the ground through augmented-reality glasses
Multiscreen display in the control centre of the state of physical, human and image resources
Control of victims with digital triage and allocation of vehicular and hospital resources with online monitoring
Traffic control by emergency services for greater fluidity in the evacuation of people and victims
Monitoring and control of damaged infrastructure and possible toxic spills (air or sea) through IoT sensors
Notice to the population of the affected area with action guidelines or evacuation orders
Information for emergency decisions
For correct decision making in an emergency situation, the state of the communications network, the acquisition of data and its presentation in a user-friendly way are important. Applications that facilitate the coordination and control of resources should be included and handled in a simple way. The collection and processing of data from sensor networks must be able to be filtered according to programmable criteria. There are many areas where current information to facilitate the resolution of problems from the control centre is required.
