EternalS Project

EternalS provides a platform for mutual awareness and cross-fertilization among four “ICT Forever Yours” FET projects: CONNECT, HATS, LivingKnowledge and SecureChange. These projects are funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme.
Project at a glance
In recent years the rapid diffusion of ICT into the daily work activities has contributed to the development of its core research areas. At the same time, the demand for more effective software systems from the user’s viewpoint is increased. The latest research
work within ICT, also thanks to the presence of the European Frameworks, has allowed to pinpoint the most important and urgently required features that future systems should possess to meet users’ needs. More specifically, there is growing demand for systems capable of evolving in time to meet future changes in the user requirements and application domains. However, time is only one dimension of the adaptability problem: time, location, legacy of decisions made in the past, and so on, are relevant aspects, where the diversity of the context plays a major role for the system ability of adapting to changes. Based on the awareness of context, systems must exploit the ever-emerging diversity of open environments, which also require the management of changes in their security
conditions. These capabilities, when effectively implemented, constitute a remarkable step towards the design of Trustworthy Eternal Systems (EternalS).
EternalS creates the conditions for mutual awareness and cross-fertilization among the 4 ICT-Forever Yours - FET projects : LivingKnowledge, HATS, Connect and SecureChange. These projects are currently conducting research in key ICT areas: (i) automatic learning of systems capable of analysing knowledge and diversity with respect to their complex semantic interactions and evolution over time (e.g. diversity of opinions due to sequences of events), (ii) exploitation of formal methods for the design and networking of adaptive and evolving software systems, where security policies and fully connected environment represent fundamental properties of effective present and future systems.
Thanks to the indirect participation of the above-mentioned projects, EternalS will actively involve many researchers from both academic and industrial world in its action. This will allow for (a) thoroughly studying eternal systems' dimensions such as diversity & time awareness and selfadaptation & evolution by automatic learning, in fields of relevance, i.e., Knowledge, Software, and Networked and Secure Systems; and (b) writing the roadmap for interesting and successful future emerging technology.
Objectives
* Building a cross-fertilization environment for research on eternal systems
* Defining roadmaps for upcoming research on eternal systems
* Building research communities and disseminate results on eternal systems
Workplan
The research and development activities of the project are structured in the following tasks:
* WP1: Task force management. The various players that are concerted within the EternalS action come from a range of
different research communities that work with different methods, tools, and agendas. The goal of the action is to identify synergies among these communities, to find ways of integrating the respective agendas, and to stimulate further research.
* WP2: Vision and Strategy Roadmap will use the outcomes of the engagement with the key stakeholders in WP1 to provide recommendations to the ICT Forever Yours Programme, ICT-FET programme and the broader FP7 programme. The constituencies who could benefit from these recommendations include the European Commission, other R&D projects and industries (via ETPs) interested in how best to develop future Eternal Systems that enjoy the trust and confidence of the citizen and, thus, maximize their potential for acceptance and adoption by society.
* WP3: Building & supporting EternalS community will facilitate the interactions between the consortium and the outside research community (both academia and industry). The reach of the dissemination activities is not limited in scope to the EU.
The community building activities will pay special attention to creating research liaisons among EU players but, yet again, will take all chances to broaden the scope beyond EU borders whenever possible.
* WP4: Project Management. will carry out the project management of the Coordination Action. Focus will be on the co-ordination of the work carried out in all work packages, safeguarding the fulfilment of their objectives and liaison with the European Commission. In addition to core project management activities, it will also include the organisation of events (principally, the schedule of meetings and workshops), external liaison with other projects, initiatives and bodies, and the dissemination and communication elements of the project.
Contributions
The following EternalS activities will serve the purpose of spreading excellence, exploiting
results, and disseminating knowledge:
* Web portal: The EternalS Web portal will be the primary tool to enable the EternalS community to virtually gather and communicate about its research agenda both internally and externally. The Web site will be set up so as to ease timely contribution by the community, in particular exploiting latest Web technologies.
* Task force leadership: The EternalS Task Force will be encouraged by their respective leaders so as to promote enthusiastic participation of the task force members and thus ensure timely contribution to all EternalS actions.
* Research conferences and workshops: EternalS will organize open (multidisciplinary) research conferences and workshops to spread EternalS research excellence at large that is within the community that it builds but also beyond so that the community keeps evolving.
* Mobility of researchers: It is one of EternalS’ intended goals to foster mobility of researchers among involved organisations, from short term visits to employment from one to another, thanks to EternalS community building.
* Publications on state of the art and roadmapping: Through the regular publication of state of the art surveys and roadmaps related to enabling eternal systems, the EternalS project will be the reference to pinpoint leading results and prospective research by the community.
* Publications archiving: As part of its Web portal, EternalS will maintain an archive of publications contributing to building eternal systems, again being a reference for pinpointing research excellence in the area.
* Virtual courses & training: Virtual courses on eternal systems will also be contributed to by the EternalS community and be made available on the EternalS Web portal. These will moreover form the basis to foster organisation of training events like seminars, short courses and summer schools.
* Open source software: Open source software implementing solutions to making systems eternal that are developed by the community will similarly be gathered and made available from the EternalS Web site.
* Contribution to standards: Standards relevant to eternal systems will be identified as part of the task force activities and advertised within the community, to foster exploitation as well as contribution.
Related Projects
Other projects related to EternalS's objectives:
* Emergent Connectors for Eternal Software Intensive Networked Systems (CONNECT)
* Highly Adaptable and Trustworthy Software using Formal Models (HATS)
* LivingKnowledge
* SecureChange

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