Towards a Platform for Widespread Embedded Intelligence - ERCIM

2.Europe-specific security and dependability:
Europe has a very specific heterogeneous
culture and history and set
of attitudes to trust and society that
requires specific research profiling.
3.Infrastructure robustness and availability:
Further research efforts are
needed for the assurance of ICT network
and service infrastructures, as
well as the robustness and availability
of critical infrastructure, such as
health, energy, transport or finance.
4.Interoperability: Research on the
interoperability between security and
dependability technologies and standards.
5.Processes for developing secure and
dependable systems: Research on the
systematic improvement of secure and
dependable system development
(including hardware and software)
from their design phase.
6.Security and dependability preservation:
In an increasingly complex world
of evolving requirements, technologies
and systems, maintenance of
effective system security and dependability
is critical and is essential for
preserving user confidence.
7.User-centric security and dependability
standardisation: Strengthen the
structured involvement of end users
and their respective representatives
into relevant standardization activities
involving security and dependability
technologies.
8.Security and dependability of service
oriented architectures (SOA): The
need to establish and maintain trust
and manage policy regulations and
service level agreements in an SOA
context, together with commensurate
advances in software engineering to
deliver service expectations.
9.Technologies for security: Research is
needed to provide a higher assurance
of trusted communication and handling
of digital information.
Cryptology and trusted functionality
and computing need to be considered.
In addition to these nine key research
areas, four future grand challenges covering
a 10-20 year vision are presented
by the Advisory Board. They illustrate
possible longer-term possibilities and
implications:
1.Countering vulnerabilities and threats
within digital urbanization: This challenge
addresses open problems that we
will face in security and dependability
from the expansion and globalization
of digital convergence by 2010-2015.
2.Duality between digital privacy and
collective security: digital dignity and
sovereignty: This challenge deals with
future privacy issues of all the stakeholders,
whether citizens, groups,
enterprises or states. It addresses the
problem of how to override the 'Big
Brother' syndrome and 'dark security',
ie, the future assurance of digital
sovereignty and dignity for the various
stakeholders.
3.Objective and automated processes:
This challenge addresses the problem
of how to attain a controllable and
manageable world of complex digital
artefacts by 2015 and how to inject
regular, quantitative techniques and
engineering to make the field truly scientific.
4.Beyond the horizon: a new convergence:
This last challenge deals with
the preparation of a new convergence
at a horizon of 2020 and beyond,
which is the bio-nano-info-quantum
'galaxy' and the new security and
dependability challenges that will
emerge.
Links:
The full report of the SecurIST Advisory
Board recommendations:
http://www.securitytaskforce.eu/
Please contact:
Jim Clarke, Waterford Institute of
Technology, Telecommunications Software
and Systems Group, SecurISTCoordinator
E-mail: jclarke@tssg.org
European Research Advances in Embedded Intelligence
The IST Results news service features numerous European
research organisations and industrial partners whose work on
embedded intelligence has been funding under the European
Commission's Information Society Technologies (IST) R&D
priority.
These research projects focus on many different applications
of embedded systems, for example:
• the ASAP project team has produced an open source programming,
analysis and optimisation toolkit for pervasive
computing systems using Constraint Logic Programming
(CLP) languages. It has been validated in a series of case
studies and is expected to open the way to more effective
and efficient embedded systems development in the future.
• The Embedded WiseNts project has brought together
twelve partners from the top research institutions in wireless
communication, distributed computing and cooper-
EUROPEAN SCENE
ating objects in ten different European countries to focus on
the development of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and
their applications, especially in the form of Cooperating
Objects (CO), to help develop a roadmap for innovative
future applications.
• A new technology, dubbed Embedded and Communicating
Agents, has allowed researchers at Sony's Computer
Science Laboratory in France to add a new level of intelligence
to a robotic dog. Instead of teaching the dog new
tricks, the algorithms, design principles and mechanisms
developed by the ECAgents project allow the robotic pet to
learn new tricks itself and share its knowledge with others.
For more examples of recent research results related to
embedded intelligence and other current ICT themes, visit
IST Results at http://istresults.cordis.europa.eu
ERCIM News No. 67, October 2006
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