IoT systems today tend to be built around the concept of IoT/cloud convergence, integrating heterogeneous data streams within cloud infrastructures, and thus benefiting from the scalability, performance and capacity of the cloud. This approach is very efficient for some IoT applications such as big data processing problems. However, these architectures promote a centralized data collection and processing approach, which introduces several limitations in terms of supported applications and business models that they enable. The main goal of M-Sec project is to empower IoT stakeholders to develop, deploy and operate novel IoT applications based on a scalable highly decentralized paradigm, which facilitates incentivized peer-to-peer interactions between objects and people. The project will explore semantically interoperable interactions between people/objects according to a given social context, beyond their simple peer-to-peer information exchange and internetworking. Overall, the M-Sec paradigm will enable the introduction and implementation of specific classes of applications and services that are not efficiently supported by state-of-the-art architectures. The M-Sec project will deliver a set of concrete and added value main results: 1. M-Sec distributed, self-organized, robust and trusted IoT infrastructure that empowers IoT stakeholders to develop, deploy and operate novel multipurpose IoT applications for smart cities on top of smart objects. 2. An open IoT market of applications, data and services that provides the framework upon which objects and people can exchange value and defines the motivation incentives for humans and smart objects to interact. 3. A sustainable ecosystem of stakeholders, roles, tools and infrastructures upon which new entrants and other players can build and experiment with the future application services. 4. A parameterized model on how to replicate the M-Sec approach further and guarantee its return of investment and benefits.

The development of the Internet of Things is set to have a strong impact on many aspects of society. Test-beds and experimental facilities, both of small scale and up to city scale, will be an essential enabler to facilitate the development of this vision. Facilitating the access to these test-beds to a large community of experimenters approach is a key asset to the development of a large and active community of application developers, necessary to address the many challenges faced by European and Japanese societies. FESTIVAL project’s vision is to provide IoT experimentation platforms providing interaction facility with physical environments and end-users, where experimenters can validate their Smart ICT service developments in various domains such as smart city, smart building, smart public services, smart shopping, participatory sensing, etc. FESTIVAL testbeds will connect cyber world to the physical world, from large scale deployments at a city scale, to small platforms in lab environments and dedicated physical spaces simulating real-life settings. Those platforms will be connected and federated via homogeneous access APIs with an “Experimentation as a Service” (EaaS) model for experimenters to test their added value services. There have been long years of research work in Europe and Japan on federation of testbeds and more recently on IoT testbeds. FESTIVAL will as much as possible make reuse of existing software and hardware available in Europe and in Japan for building such testbeds. Mutually applying European enablers for Japanese testbeds and vice versa in real-life trials that the project will organize, FESTIVAL will bring have a strong impact in bridging the gap among the aforementioned component technologies. FESTIVAL, as a common testbed infrastructure for efficient communication and collaboration among stakeholders, will push European and Japanese IoT testbeds and their practices one step beyond the current state of the art.

Longevity is one of the biggest achievements of modern societies. By 2020, a quarter of Europeans will be over 60 years of age. Combined with low birth rates, this will bring about significant changes to the structure of European society, which will impact on our economy, social security and health care systems. The most problematic expression of population ageing is the clinical condition of frailty. Frailty develops because of age-related decline in multiple physiological systems. It is estimated that a quarter to a half of people over 85 years are frail , and this is set to reach epidemic proportions over the next few decades. While frailty increases, the average amount of health spending increases as well with the frailty level in a range from 1,500 to 5,000 €/person year, depending upon the frailty status and the setting of care. Frailty usually comes along associated with another risk facto; loneliness. Then, ageing, frailty and loneliness constitute overlapping conditions submitted to multiple health and care interventions. eCARE project aims to deliver disruptive digital solutions for the prevention and comprehensive management of frailty to encourage independent living, wellbeing and to relieve health and care services budget pressure, throughout the implementation of a Pre-Commercial Procurement scheme. Solutions should improve outcomes for frailty in old adults entailing the physical and the psychosocial factors. The target group are the pre-frail/frail old adults with emphasis on those that feel lonely and/or isolated. The project will procure the development, testing and implementation of digital tools/services and communication concepts to facilitate the transition to integrated care models across health and social services and country-specific cross-institutional set-ups, including decentralised procurement environments and collaboration across institutions.