Issue #3 published by the ALMANAC project, Reliable Smart Secure Internet of Things for Smart Cities - May, 2015

ALMANAC at SIdO and SummIT 2015

The ALMANAC demo was presented at both events, attracting the IoT industry as well as visitors with general interest in IoT and capillary networks.

At the SIdO IoT event, which took place on 7-8^th April in France, especially the capillary network capabilities of the ALMANAC platform caught the attention of the visitors.

- Several telco and hardware companies were interested in how ALMANAC transmits data from the waste bins to the platform, which in ALMANAC is done through the OneM2M technology developed by partner Telecom Italia, says Research Associate, Jose Angel Carvajal Soto from Fraunhofter FIT.

The ALMANAC demo also showed the integration as well as the high level aggregation capabilities of the platform: How data are collected from several sources through a back-end SCRAL interface; processed through a Data Fusion Manager and presented to the application side through the Smart City Resource Allocation Layer so that applications are able to work with the data.

Big Data and IoT were hot subjects at the SummIT event, a high level meeting between stakeholders in IT research and business, set in Aarhus, Denmark on 18^th March.

- At the ALMANAC stand, we explained the relation between ALMANAC and IoT to the visitors who were both from the industry looking for solutions as well as journalists who were very interested in the concept of Internet of Things, explains Thomas Gilbert, Software/ICT Engineer at the Alexandra Institute.

Collaboration with SmartBin for real-life data

ALMANAC and the software company SmartBin have entered into a partnership giving ALMANAC access to real-life sensor data on fill levels from waste containers.

SmartBin is an award-winning, global SaaS solutions company, based in Dublin, Ireland, which provides intelligent monitoring solutions for many types of remote waste container assets. They are collaborating with ALMANAC to develop a platform which can unite and manage a broad range of existing and dissimilar municipal applications, services and systems and thus overcome the hurdle of implementation of Smart City projects.

- SmartBin lets us access real-life data about the fill levels of waste containers. This is an ideal basis for testing the functionality of the ALMANAC platform. And this information is also invaluable for profitability forecasts and for the evaluation of business models, says Dipl.-Inf. Marco Jahn, from Fraunhofer FIT.

At the moment ALMANAC focuses on collecting data and on integrating existing waste management and water management applications, because here pollution and cost can be significantly reduced without fundamentally altering the existing hardware and software infrastructures.

Improve the waste collection system in the city of Turin

This was the challenge of the hackathon arranged by ALMANAC in collaboration with the COMPOSE project at the IoT 360 Summit in Rome, October 2014.

Participants were given access to relevant ALMANAC data, tools, APIs and maps as well as instructions on how to use the components. In turn they were asked to develop a proof-of-concept application which helps the city of Turin optimise the waste collection systems, both in terms of sustainability and cost.

The winners were a group of PhD students with a prototype for route optimisation for waste bin collection, semantic discovery and forecasting.

- The hackathon has given the project some valuable feedback on the ALMANAC platform, and organising it was a fine exercise in collecting information and assessing the state of development. Evaluation received from the participants showed that in general the components given were good and easy to use, which shows us that we are on the right track, says Project Coordinator, Dr. Maurizio Spirito from Istituto Superiore Mario Boella.

Want to have a go? Find the ALMANAC challenge on the IoT 360 website.

Second demo version shown at IoT 360

A second version of The ALMANAC smart city platform was demonstrated at the IoT 360 conference in Rome in October 2014.

New features included how to handle data from many waste bins and different cities, integrate ETSI Machine to Machine technologies, mark and react on complex situations and build an ALMANAC application quickly from scratch.

The platform is continuously being extended with more features and functions, and a new release of demos is expected in early June 2015.

See the demo poster on the project website

Promoting ALMANAC throughout Europe

Within the context of the European Research Cluster on the Internet of Things (IERC), Maurizio Spirito from Istituto Superiore Mario Boella (ISMB), is coordinating the Activity Chain 3 "IoT innovation and pilots" on behalf of ALMANAC.

The aim of the IERC is to address the large potential for IoT-based capabilities in Europe and to coordinate the convergence of ongoing activities, bringing together EU-funded projects and defining a common vision on the IoT technology and R&D challenges at European level.

The IERC has created a number of activity chains to favour close cooperation between projects addressing IoT topics, thus forming an arena for exchange of ideas and open dialogue on important research challenges.

Visit the IERC website

Among the activities of the AC3, ALMANAC contributed to a booklet issued by the IERC with the title 'Internet of Things - From Research and Innovation to Market Deployment' presenting current IoT research and innovations and the status of different deployments in the field of IoT applications.

Read the booklet

More specifically, ISMB contributed to the definition of the "Internet of Things Research and Innovation Agenda" of the Cluster, and coordinated the chapter "Internet of Things Applications - From Research and Innovation to Market Deployment" where selected EU-funded research and innovation projects are described, providing an overview of how they have planned and executed their activities and what strategies they have adopted to maximise impacts and ensure market uptake of the proposed solutions.

Furthermore, during the SIdO event that took place in Lyon, France, in April, the AC3 contributed to the realisation of an IERC Projects' Portfolio and collectively provided support to the IERC projects that attended the event.

See the portfolio of projects

In the near future, the AC3 will also coordinate a session during the IoT Week 2015 in Lisbon, Portugal, to be held during the "Innovation day" on 18^th June with focus on "Innovations and experiences from IoT deployments and demonstrators".

Visit the IoT Week 2015 program