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In March 2000 the Lisbon Council of Ministers agreed that by 2010 Europe should “...become the most competitive and
dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion.”
The renewed Lisbon agenda (2005) aims at markets and competition in Europe, a more attractive place to invest and work, knowledge
and innovation for growth and creating more and better jobs.
To be a genuinely competitive knowledge economy, Europe must be better in producing knowledge through research,
diffusing it through education and applying it through innovation. The European Research Area is a “single market”
for research with free movement of knowledge, researchers and technology and increasing co-operation.
The 7th Framework Programme will provide about 50.5 billion Euro of support to European research over
the 2007-2013 period (Commission modified proposal, May 24, 2006). 32.3 billion Euro will be assigned
to trans-national cooperation (from collaborative projects and networks to the coordination of national
programmes, to gain leadership in key scientific and technology areas). 27% of these (9.1 billion Euros)
are related to information and communication technologies. If we have a deeper view on this topic, we find the issues of
- Miniaturisation (from micro to nano scale electronics)
- ICT drawing on other sciences and technologies (e. g. ICTs inspired from the living world)
- Systems able to learn and evolve (advanced robotics)
- Convergence (computing, communications and media technologies)
Among the key societal challenges is the need for a new way of using ICT digital content and the role of ICT as a facilitator
for more efficient public services. It helps modernise administrations and public services and allows more participation in
democracy and public life.
In the environmental area we are challenged by an increasing demand for natural resources:
- 1-2% per year for energy and growing water consumption.
- Natural and industrial disasters has doubled in one decade, killing 500.000 people and causing more than 600 billion of damage.
In the Work Programme, a total of 24 objectives is expressed within 7 challenges. On the horizontal level we have the basic
technologies: network and service infrastructures (No 1), cognitive system interaction and robotics (No 2),
components and systems engineering (No 3). On the vertical level issues are added like digital libraries and content (No. 4),
ICT for health (No. 5), ICT for mobility and sustainable growth (No6) and ICT for independent living and inclusion (no 7).
The draft issues related to challenge No. 6 are
- Safety of vehicles and their energy efficiency have improved, but the “zero-accident scenario” is
still a distant goal and current vehicle active safety (driver warning, hazard detection …) is still limited to stand-alone systems
- Risk management systems provide isolated solutions, no co-ordinated ICT-triggered alert of
rescue and security forces
- Infrastructures are not sufficiently energy efficient (transport, buildings, production)
- Intelligent Vehicle Systems including secure and reliable vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication systems and optimised traffic management at large scale and obility services
- Fully integrated management systems for warning and reacting to environmental and other risks
- Intelligent monitoring of energy production, distribution, trading and use
We are heading for a "Single Information Space for the Environment" in Europe. For that purpose we need
- Collaborative systems for environmental management
- From monitoring to reporting, management, alert and response
- Enhanced capacity to assess population exposure and health risk
- Visionary concepts, as well as evolutionary integrated systems
- Generic solutions with typical validation focus on water and air
- Coordination and Support Actions
- Adoption of common open architectures (INSPIRE, GMES, GEOSS)
- ICT research for risk reduction and disaster and emergency management
- ERA-Net in the field of ICT for environmental sustainability
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