U-Hopper – an intro from Daniele Miorandi
Daniele Miorandi is executive VP for research and development at U-Hopper, a research-intensive technology-driven company. U-Hopper builds solutions for other companies through data analytics tools.
Daniele focused on U-Hopper’s earlier engagement with environmental projects before Scent, how smaller communities can benefit from Scent and how Scent can become a ‘lighthouse project’.
Our Second ‘Spotlight’ entry focuses on the work of ICCS, the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, a research institute based in Athens. ICCS conducts research across several application areas, including security, transport, logistics and the environment. For the latter, ICCS interests include information and communication technologies for environmental applications, including sensors, sensor networks and embedded devices.
What fundamentally links Scent to a diverse set of EU-funded research projects and to a global movement/campaign is the theme of citizen science and its development as a citizen observatory project.
Last month, Andrea Cuoghi from Scent partner organisation U-Hopper, attended a round table with EU-funded digital platform Commonfare and local stakeholders in Trentino (Italy) in the interest of Scent and with the importance of making citizen observatory digital tools available to people across Europe in mind, to further develop projects like Scent.
The Scent project is pleased to announce the launch of its web site today. The web site will be a core communication channel for all stakeholders involved, including the general public. Read more →
Bd. Hristo Botev, nr.3, ap. 6 Web: www.sor.ro
030231, Sector 3, Bucharest
Romania
SOR is a non-profit Romanian NGO that protects birds and nature with the support of members, volunteers, donations and project based funding. The organisation has established itself as a key stakeholder for species preservation around the Danube Delta. They have a nationwide presence in Romania through local branches and school groups. SOR advises and on local, regional and national protection of birds and raises public awareness on the importance and value of birds and habitats as natural capital. They have important links with other local stakeholders, other NGOs and public organisations for the protection of the Danube Delta reserve as well as a strong interest and extensive experience in the impact of climate change on natural reserves in general. The organisation lobbies the Government to ensure compliance with and implementation of national and EU level environmental legislation. SOR has been a national partner organisation of BirdLife International since 1997.
The Romanian Ornithological Society (SOR) will play a key role in the work on the Scent toolbox requirements and architecture. SOR will provide the perspective of a volunteer-based citizen association that focuses on the protection of birds and the natural environment in general. Their input is key to finding the optimal characteristics of a ‘citizen observatory’, especially with respect to the crowd-sourcing and gaming app features relevant to their use by NGOs and volunteer organisations. SOR will also lead the task that aims to describe and benchmark available in-situ monitoring systems in the pilot sites. They will be in charge of organising the Danube Delta pilot.
Via Antonio da Trento, 8/2 Web: www.u-hopper.com
38122 Trento
Italy
Twitter: www.u-hopper.com
U-Hopper is a research-intensive high-tech SME founded in 2010 and headquartered in the Trentino area in Italy. The company provides big data-enabled solutions and technologies to the government, retail and marketing sectors. It builds its solutions on the concept of fully exploiting the information and knowledge hidden in the enormous amount of data that can be collected using mobile devices and Internet-of-Things technology. Using cutting-edge data mining techniques and data analytics tools, U-Hopper’s solutions enable customers to identify and extract relevant patterns that can be applied to a variety of domains. These include mobile advertising, environmental monitoring in-store analytics and citizen-centric participatory services. U-Hopper is a spin-off of the international research centre CREATE-NET. U-Hopper focuses on the design, prototyping and evaluation of innovative distributed and mobile sensing solutions. U-Hopper solutions target both public bodies as well as organisations in the private sector. UH’s staff has significant experience in the design of participatory platforms and services.
U-Hopper will lead the development of an innovative crowd-sourcing platform to be used in the Scent pilot sites for monitoring land use change. They will steer the analysis of requirements and platform design, features development and integration activities as well as the activities that will enable the customisation of the platform at the pilot sites. Furthermore, U-Hopper will lead the exploitation and sustainability activities aimed at maximising the ability of partners to jointly achieve a long-standing impact on science, technology and society. With extensive experience in the analysis of requirements for ICT-centric projects, U-Hopper will also lead the identification and analysis of requirements for the Scent toolbox.
165 Babadag Street Web: www.ddni.ro
Tulcea 820112
Romania
DDNI, established in 1970, is a Romanian State-owned public institution under the authority of Education and Scientific Research Ministry. It focuses on basic and applied research in the field of ecology and environmental protection. The institute provides scientific support for the management of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve (DDBR) and other wetland areas of national and international interest for biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Since 2009, the institute has been a sub-unit of the National Institute for Research and Development for Environmental Protection. The DDNI has extensive experience in leading multidisciplinary projects across a range of issues, including environmental impact assessment, environmental protection, geographic information systems and sustainable use. They also have considerable expertise in land use analysis by earth observation. Furthermore, the DDNI has participated in numerous EU FP projects and other EU-funded interregional projects, such as NATURNET – REDIME, GEM-CON-BIO and DANUBEPARKS. The institute’s expertise and potential was recognised at European level in 2000 when it was selected as a Centre of Excellence for Deltas and Wetlands within the European Commission’s Centres of Excellence Programme.
The Danube Delta National Institute (DDNI) will lead the work package on the Scent toolbox requirements and architecture. The institute will play a key role in defining end-user and stakeholder needs relevant for the Scent toolbox in order to form an active and self-sustainable citizen observatory. It will collect information on existing in-situ monitoring systems in the Danube Delta pilot site and organise workshops/interviews to identify knowledge and information gaps relevant to the pilot. DDNI has vast experience in research on environmental issues relevant to the Danube Delta. It will provide the GEOSS portal with valuable information on flood hazards and vulnerability in the test area of the Danube Delta.
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education
Westvest 7
2611 AX Delft
The Netherlands
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education (formerly UNESCO-IHE), based in Delft, the Netherlands, is the largest international water education facility in the world. Its mission is to contribute to the education and training of water professionals, carry out water-related research and support organisations active in the fields of water and environment. Since 1957, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education has provided graduate education to more than 15,000 water professionals from 162 countries. Over 150 PhD fellows are currently enrolled in water-related research and more than 120 water research and capacity development projects are carried out throughout the world at any one time. The institute has vast experience in research projects. It led EU FP6 project SWITCH (Sustainable city of the future) and FP7 project KULTURisk, and is currently leading the H2020 project PEARL (Preparing for Extreme and Rare Events in Coastal Regions). IHE Delft Institute for Water Education is a partner in many other projects, such as FP7 ICeWater, LENVIS, WeSenseIt, Waternomics and DemEAUMed.
IHE Delft Institute for Water Education will lead the work package on turning observations into spatio-temporal flooding patterns. The institute will coordinate the development of hydrodynamic and hydrological models for the two pilot areas of Scent. With extensive experience in flood modelling for creating flood risk maps and analysing flooding patterns, they will also play a key role in identifying contributions of crowd-sourced data to aspects of flood risks, such as flood hazards, exposure and vulnerability. They will then provide recommendations for the use of these in flood modelling and risk management.
As the project partners met for the kick-off meeting in Athens during September 2016, we took the opportunity to ask some of those gathered to describe what the SCENT project means to them.
There are two versions below – a shorter version of approx 2′ 15″ duration and a longer edit of approx 5′.
Video
AtlantOS
Optimising and Enhancing the Integrated Atlantic Ocean Observing Systems
https://www.atlantos-h2020.eu
ECOPOTENTIAL
Improving future ecosystem benefits through earth observations
http://www.ecopotential-project.eu/
GEO CRADLE
Coordinating and integRating state-of-the-art Earth Observation Activities in the regions of North Africa, Middle East, and Balkans and Developing Links with GEO related initiatives towards GEOSS
http://geocradle.eu/
GROUND TRUTH 2.0
Environmental knowledge discovery of human sensed data
http://www.gt20.eu/
LANDSENSE
A Citizen Observatory and Innovation Marketplace for Land Use and Land Cover Monitoring
http://www.landsense.eu/
GROW Observatory
A citizens’ observatory for family farmers, gardeners and growers
https://growobservatory.org/
WeObserve
An Ecosystem of Citizen Observatories for Environmental Monitoring
https://www.weobserve.eu/
ConnectinGEO
Coordinating an Observation Network of Networks EnCompassing saTellite and IN-situ to fill the Gaps in European Observations
http://www.connectingeo.net/
SWOS – Satellite-based Wetland Observation Service
Earth Observation for Wetlands
http://swos-service.eu/
ERA-PLANET
The European network for observing our changing planet
http://www.era-planet.eu/
CITI-SENSE
Development of Sensor-based Citizens’ Observatory Community for Improving Quality of Life in Cities
http://www.citi-sense.eu/
WeSenseIt
WeSenseIT: Citizen Observatory of Water
http://wesenseit.eu/
COBWEB
Citizen Observatory Web
https://cobwebproject.eu/
Citclops
Citizens’ Observatory for Coast and Ocean Optical Monitoring
http://www.citclops.eu/
OMNISCIENTIS
Odour Monitoring and Information System based on Citizen and Technology Innovative Sensors
www.omniscientis.eu
IBM R&D Labs in Israel
Haifa University Campus, Mount Carmel
Haifa, 3498825
Israel
The IBM Research Laboratory in Haifa, Israel opened in 1972 and has conducted decades of research that have been vital to IBM’s success. The lab’s activities involve advanced research and development under the guidance of the IBM Corporation’s Research Division. The IBM Haifa Research lab is the second largest of IBM’s twelve global research labs. IBM strives to lead in the creation, development and manufacture of the industry’s most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, networking systems, storage devices and microelectronics. IBM participates in, and contributes heavily to the work of standards consortia, alliances, and formal national and international standards organisations. Throughout several decades, the group has worked on various computer vision problems, such as automated medical imaging diagnosis, handwriting recognition, and product placement inspection for supermarkets. Today the group specialises in developing state of the art technologies in the areas of 2D/3D computer vision, augmented reality and immersive telepresence. The group has previous EU project experience in digitising cultural assets (IMPACT), research in immersive robotic telepresence (BEAMING) and usage of augmented reality for smart home energy awareness (IDEAS).
IBM’s role in the project is to lead the computer vision and analysis related aspects of the work package on the Scent intelligence engine. With many years of experience with technical project management and coordination, IBM will be the technical coordinator of the project. IBM’s team of experts will focus on developing existing technologies for natural outdoor scene recognition as well as new state of the art technologies for object recognition within scenes.
I-SENSE Group Tel: +30 210 772 2398
ICCS
Iroon Politechniou str. Polytechnic Campus,
15773 Zografou,
Athens,
Greece.
Fax: +30 210 772 3557 (or -2291)
Email: a.amditis@iccs.gr
Web: i-sense.iccs.gr
ICCS is a non-profit academic research body established in 1989 by the Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs. It was created to carry out research and development activities in the area of telecommunications systems and techniques, computer systems and their applications in a variety of areas. The personnel of ICCS consists of 47 Collaborating Faculty Members, 12 permanent or long term Researchers, 10 permanent or long term Administrative Personnel and more than 700 researchers (including all levels of researchers) across 25 statutory research Laboratories. ICCS has a strong presence in European research and has been the coordinator of many projects co-funded by all Framework programmes of the European Union. ICCS is certified to conform to the ISO 9001 quality management system standard. The I-SENSE Group that is responsible for the Scent project activities was founded in 2002 and is one of the Research Groups within ICCS. It has extensive expertise working on EU-funded research projects and has a significant presence in international conferences and scientific journals. The Group is very active in areas dealing with ICT for environmental applications, embedded systems and sensor networks, modern telemetry, alerting systems, emergency communications and gateway design and implementation. It is also active in other fields, such as Intelligent Transport Systems, Virtual & Augmented Reality as well as Logistics and Supply Chain management. The I-SENSE Group has participated in more than 70 projects to-date, serving as either the Project Coordinator or Technical Manager.
The Institute of Communications and Computer Systems (ICCS) is the Scent project coordinator. Moreover, it leads the Scent Innovative Sensors work package and the Scent toolbox system architecture. Finally, it is responsible for the Scent authoring tool, destined for policy makers and will also develop the Scent harmonisation platform, translating relevant Scent data to common environmental standards, such as the OGC, and feeding them to relevant repositories, such as GEOSS.
Project Objectives
Methodology
The citizen-centric and participatory Scent methodology is divided into three phases:
Scent and the Open Research Data Pilot
Scent participates in the Pilot on Open Research Data launched by the European Commission along with the Horizon 2020 programme.
The Open Research Data Pilot aims to improve and maximise access to and re-use of research data generated by Horizon 2020 projects. It takes into account the need to balance openness and protection of scientific information, commercialisation and Intellectual Property Rights, privacy concerns, security as well as data management and preservation questions. While open access to research data thereby becomes applicable by default in Horizon 2020, the Commission also recognises that there are good reasons to keep some or even all research data generated in a project closed. The Commission therefore provides robust opt-out possibilities at any stage.
The Scent consortium supports open science and the large potential benefits to the European innovation and economy stemming from allowing reusing data at a larger scale. The majority of data produced in the project may therefore be published with open access.
The Scent Concept
Scent aims to demonstrate the huge potential of an active citizen observatory that will complement existing infrastructure through the Scent toolbox. It will lead to a significant pool of observations on changes in land cover and related environmental phenomena. Data will be fed via web services into existing repositories, such as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) portal. Scent will provide policy-makers with a near real-time view of land-use changes while directly involving citizens in the decision-making process.
The Scent concept is built around three pillars:
Pillar I: Increased involvement of citizens in the process of land cover and land use monitoring through a set of participatory solutions
Pillar II: Better use of available data, repositories and monitoring systems through innovative tools and algorithms
Pillar III: Development of a co-design strategy, involving both citizens and public authorities with the aim of creating a sustainable citizen observatory
Illustration of the Scent Toolbox
Impact
The impact of the project will be felt in many ways, especially in the environmental, societal, technical and industrial field.
Environmental
Citizens often feel that their efforts won’t have much impact on environmental policies and climate change. Scent will show that citizens in fact can have a real impact in environmental monitoring and identification of flood risks.
Major environmental agencies and decision-makers have agreed to promote the project outcomes, which will guarantee EU-wide environmental impact.
Societal
Scent will foster innovation and create jobs in SMEs, which will help fight unemployment in Europe.
Scent will also improve the accuracy of existing flood risk maps by more than 15% and thus make areas close to floodplains less vulnerable to disasters.
Scent promotes an open method of coordinating environmental policies. It will include regional environmental groups, public-private partnerships and citizen communities in land-use monitoring, which will encourage innovative governance schemes.
Technical
Scent will bring about new technological developments and products through the SCENT toolbox, and citizens’ contributions to environmental data will be fed directly into the Scent intelligence engine. These will be key in generating precise and up-to-date land-use maps and flood risk maps for decision-makers.
Scent will also extend the GEOSS and Copernicus repositories through frequent updates of local monitoring of land-use changes using the Scent Toolbox.
Industrial
Scent will introduce low-cost state-of-the-art tools that will encourage further innovation and boost the development of new people-centric apps, products and services.
The Scent observatory will promote Europe in the global environmental monitoring market. Citizen engagement will foster the creation of new SMEs and boost innovation in current European SMEs. Scent will reveal an untapped potential for the gaming industry and the crowd-sourcing and social media industries to enter the environmental field.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 688930.