Road2CPS priorities and recommendations for research and innovation in cyber-physical systems

This document summarises the findings of the Road2CPS project, co-financed by the European Commission under the H2020 Research and Innovation Programme, to develop a roadmap and recommendations for strategic action required for future deployment of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). The term Cyber-Physical System describes hardware-software systems, which tightly couple the physical world and the virtual world. They are established from networked embedded systems that are connected with the outside world through sensors and actuators and have the capability to collaborate, adapt, and evolve. In the ARTEMIS Strategic Research Agenda 2016, CPS are described as ‘Embedded Intelligent ICT Systems’ that make products smarter, more interconnected, interdependent, collaborative, and autonomous. In the future world of CPS, a huge number of devices connected to the physical world will be able to exchange data with each other, access web services, and interact with people. Moreover, information systems will sense, monitor and even control the physical world via Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things (HiPEAC Vision 2015). Cyber-Physical Systems find their application in many highly relevant areas to our society: multi-modal transport, health, smart factories, smart grids and smart cities amongst others. The deployment of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) is expected to increase substantially over the next decades, holding great potential for novel applications and innovative product development. Digital technologies have already pervaded day-to-day life massively, affecting all kinds of interactions between humans and their environment. However, the inherent complexity of CPSs, as well as the need to meet optimised performance and comply with essential requirements like safety, privacy, security, raises many questions that are currently being explored by the research community. Road2CPS aims at accelerating uptake and implementation of these efforts. The Road2CPS project identifying and analysing the relevant technology fields and related research priorities to fuel the development of trustworthy CPS, as well as the specific technologies, needs and barriers for a successful implementation in different application domains and to derive recommendations for strategic action. The document at hand was established through an interactive, community-based approach, involving over 300 experts from academia, industry and policy making through a series of workshops and consultations. Visions and priorities of recently produced roadmaps in the area of CPS, IoT (Internet of Things), SoS (System-of-Systems) and FoF (Factories of the Future) were discussed, complemented by sharing views and perspectives on CPS implementation in application domains, evolving multi-sided eco-systems as well as business and policy related barriers, enablers and success factors. From the workshops and accompanying activities recommendations for future research and innovation activities were derived and topics and timelines for their implementation proposed. Amongst the technological topics, and related future research priorities ‘integration, interoperability, standards’ ranged highest in all workshops. The topic is connected to digital platforms and reference architectures, which have already become a key priority theme for the EC and their Digitisation Strategy as well as the work on the right standards to help successful implementation of CPSs. Other themes of very high technology/research relevance revealed to be ‘modelling and simulation’, ‘safety and dependability’, ‘security and privacy’, ‘big data and real-time analysis’, ‘ubiquitous autonomy and forecasting’ as well as ‘HMI/human machine awareness’. Next to this, themes emerged including ‘decision making and support’, ‘CPS engineering (requirements, design)’, ‘CPS life-cycle management’, ‘System-of-Systems’, ‘distributed management’, ‘cognitive CPS’, ‘emergence, complexity, adaptability and flexibility’ and work on the foundations of CPS and ‘cross-disciplinary research/CPS Science’

DISCOVERING NEW DIGITAL BUSINESS MODEL TYPES – A STUDY OF TECHNOLOGY STARTUPS FROM THE MOBILITY SECTOR

In the 1990s, the broad diffusion of the internet allowed firms such as Amazon, eBay, and Google to invent new digital business models. Since then, research has formalized recurring configurations as digital business model types, still frequently being used to analyze existing business models and develop new ones. Now, the next wave of digital transformation – enabled by ongoing improvements in processing power, the miniaturization of hardware, and ubiquitous wireless connectivity – is again driving innovation. For instance, in the mobility sector, startups such as Uber, Turo, and Streetline have formed business logics that cannot be understood with existing types. Therefore, we identified and formalized new business model configurations by systematically analyzing a comprehensive data set of technology startups from the US mobility sector. We found that, in order to adequately account for the new digital logics, 14 digital business model types must be added to existing collections: app developer, autonomous products/robots manufacturer, data analytics provider, integrator of third-party services, IT-enabled self-service provider, IT-guided service provider, manufacturer of connected physical products, manufacturer of connectivity devices for physical products, mobilized service provider, P2P goods sharing platform, P2P information sharing community, P2P service provision platform, seller of sensor information, and sensor-enabled service innovator

Pathways to Innovation in the Global Network Economy: Asian Upgrading Strategies in the Electronics Industry

This working paper was prepared for the Workshop on 'Transnational High-tech Strategies in a Global World," Institute of Advanced Social and Management Studies, Lancaster, University, United Kingdom, June 2003.

Scientific Workflows: Past, Present and Future

International audienceThis special issue and our editorial celebrate 10 years of progress with data-intensive or scientific workflows. There have been very substantial advances in the representation of workflows and in the engineering of workflow management systems (WMS). The creation and refinement stages are now well supported, with a significant improvement in usability. Improved abstraction supports cross-fertilisation between different workflow communities and consistent interpretation as WMS evolve. Through such re-engineering the WMS deliver much improved performance, significantly increased scale and sophisticated reliability mechanisms. Further improvement is anticipated from substantial advances in optimisation. We invited papers from those who have delivered these advances and selected 14 to represent today's achievements and representative plans for future progress. This editorial introduces those contributions with an overview and categorisation of the papers. Furthermore, it elucidates responses from a survey of major workflow systems, which provides evidence of substantial progress and a structured index of related papers. We conclude with suggestions on areas where further research and development is needed and offer a vision of future research directions

Investing in rural infrastructure

Rural areas ; Rural development

DIGITISING AGRIFOOD Pathways and Challenges. November 2019

As climate change increasingly poses an existential risk for the Earth, scientists and policymakers turn to agriculture and food as areas for urgent and bold action, which need to return within acceptable Planet Boundaries. The links between agriculture, biodiversity and climate change have become so evident that scientists propose a Great Food Transformation towards a healthy diet by 2050 as a major way to save the planet. Achieving these milestones, however, is not easy, both based on current indicators and on the gloomy state of global dialogue in this domain. This is why digital technologies such as wireless connectivity, the Internet of Things, Arti cial Intelligence and blockchain can and should come to the rescue. This report looks at the many ways in which digital solutions can be implemented on the ground to help the agrifood chain transform itself to achieve more sustainability. Together with the solution, we identify obstacles, challenges, gaps and possible policy recommendations. Action items are addressed at the European Union both as an actor of change at home, and in global governance, and are spread across ten areas, from boosting connectivity and data governance to actions aimed at empowering small farmers and end users

Software for Exascale Computing - SPPEXA 2016-2019

This open access book summarizes the research done and results obtained in the second funding phase of the Priority Program 1648 "Software for Exascale Computing" (SPPEXA) of the German Research Foundation (DFG) presented at the SPPEXA Symposium in Dresden during October 21-23, 2019. In that respect, it both represents a continuation of Vol. 113 in Springer’s series Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering, the corresponding report of SPPEXA’s first funding phase, and provides an overview of SPPEXA’s contributions towards exascale computing in today's sumpercomputer technology. The individual chapters address one or more of the research directions (1) computational algorithms, (2) system software, (3) application software, (4) data management and exploration, (5) programming, and (6) software tools. The book has an interdisciplinary appeal: scholars from computational sub-fields in computer science, mathematics, physics, or engineering will find it of particular interest