Platform Building, standardisation and Up-scaling of the ‘Cloud-Edge-IoT’ Solutions (Horizontal Activities - CSA) -

Expected Outcome

Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Supporting the Commission and the constituency in coordinating the proposal portfolio in particular resulting from HORIZON-CL4-2024-DATA-03, and ensure consistent exploitation of the outcomes.
• Alignment with national or regional initiatives will create an expanding innovation eco-system, anchored in local contexts across Europe.
• Underpinning an emerging open edge ecosystem including midcaps, SMEs and start-ups, critical to establishing a mature European supply chain.
• Outcomes are expected to accelerate the pick-up of novel advanced edge technology in most important sectors for Europe’s economy, and competitiveness as well as an analysis of cross cutting aspects like open standards, open-source frameworks, data compliance, security as well as synergies across sectors.

Scope

CSA actions provide consistency and linkages between the pilots and complement them by addressing horizontal challenges critically important for the take-up of edge computing at the anticipated scale. Support programme implementation across projects and topics in the area of Cloud-Edge-IoT, especially foster consensus on interoperability and standards as well as ecosystem building in and across verticals, an environmental and green impact. The CSA should ensure an efficient interplay of the various elements of computing, network connectivity, AI and learning, etc. establish a concept through a forum to link to relevant European and national initiatives and partnerships like KDT JU and add value by active cross-fertilisation across academia and industry and sectors.

A fertile communication strategy for broader stakeholder engagement is expected. Concrete activities should include trend scouting, portfolio analysis, a variety of participatory workshops, analysis of emerging business cases, accelerator of technology up-take and promotion of open calls, especially for SMEs and midcaps.

Better international collaboration with trusted partner regions, guaranteeing a minimum level of interoperability, portability thereby fostering competition in the Cloud/Edge services market for the European cloud/edge and software industry and facilitate European access to foreign markets

Multidisciplinary research activities should address all of the following issues:

• Proposals should involve appropriate expertise in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), in particular in relation to privacy preservation and security at the edge.
• Activities should build on existing standards or contribute to standardisation. Interoperability for data sharing should be addressed.
• Projects should build on or seek collaboration with existing projects and develop synergies with other relevant European, national or regional initiatives, funding programmes and platforms; such as KDT JU – explore links to INSIDE and EPOSS especially on Cyber Physical Systems and Smart Systems Integration.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

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