AALIANCE2 Project is a Coordination Action funded in the FP7-ICT-2011.7, which focuses on the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions based on advanced ICT technologies for ageing and wellbeing of elderly people in Europe. One of its main objectives is to build consensus upon research priorities in the AAL roadmap and Strategic Research Agenda for the upcoming decades.

This first workshop will focus on the functional areas associable to the AAL application domains (AAL4Person, AAL in the Community) and the relative activities/application scenarios. The objectives are to refine, classify, organize and improve the contents of the first AALIANCE Roadmap, published in March 2010.

Suitable persons for the AALIANCE2 Workshop are experts in the AAL domain, which have experience in some of the following tasks: designing, developing, producing, experimenting, and assessing AAL technologies or studying and defining the main aspects of AAL field. Experts should be AAL technology developers and researchers, ICT service providers and technology suppliers, policy‐makers, standardization organizations, health and care service organizations, caregivers, etc.

We would like to invite you (or some of your staff) to participate in this Workshop as Experts in the field of the AAL or responsible in Projects related to AAL and Ageing Well. The participation in the Workshop is limited to a small number of experts, therefore we ask you to confirm your participation as soon as possible, since the experts will be accepted based on the “who first confirms, first participates in”.
We gently ask you to extend this invitation also to all partners of the AAL project in which you are involved in.

If you accept to participate in the Workshop, you will receive guidelines to participate in the event and contents of the previous AALIANCE Roadmap.

The video features an interview with the OASIS project coordinator Silvio Bonfiglio (FIMI), as well as scenes from piloting and user forums in Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and Romania.

OASIS is a Large Scale Integrating Project — partially funded by the European Commission (FP7-ICT 215754) – with the aim to develop an open and innovative reference architecture, based upon ontologies and semantic services, that will allow plug and play and cost-effective interconnection of existing and newly developed services in all domains required for the independent and autonomous living of older people and their enhanced Quality of Life.

For more information: www.oasis-project.eu

A related video can be found at http://youtu.be/gOme8Qa-s9U which presents the OASIS project concept.

Keynotes speeches will be given by:
Vittorio Colao, CEO, Vodafone Group
Anne-Sophie Parent, Secretary General, AGE Platform Europe
Rodolfo Cattani, Secretary & Chair of the ICT Expert Group, European Disability Forum

The event will be followed by a reception & buffet dinner

RSVP by 29 November smartawards2011@vodafone.com.

The event will be held in English with translation into sign language.

September 7, 2011

OASIS (www.oasis-project.eu), a research project partially funded by the European Commission under FP7, promises to revolutionize the interoperability, quality, breadth and usability of services addressed to older persons through ontologies and semantic web services.

First results will be presented at the 10th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2011) in Bonn, Germany (October 23 – 27, 2011).

How to support holistically the independent living and mobility of the older citizens across Europe? How to connect services for the elderly in an one-stop-shop fashion and interrelate and integrate those services?

OASIS (Open architecture for Accessible Services Integration and Standardisation), a research project partially funded by the European Commission (FP7-ICT, GA# 215754), has developed an open and innovative reference architecture, based upon ontologies and semantic web services. This architecture enables plug & play and cost effective interoperability, seamless connectivity and sharing of content between existing and newly developed services in all domains required for the independent living of older people and for the enhancement of their Quality of Life.

The project addresses the issue of direct re-usability of information across heterogeneous services and devices through the common understanding and sharing of contextual information.

The OASIS platform allows aggregation of different services which offers the unique benefit of enhancing each of the services through a synergic exchange of information. In consequence, each application can adapt to the specific needs of the user

By fostering interoperability, standardization and organizational / business arrangements based on cooperative and aggregating models, OASIS addresses some of the main weaknesses in this area. These include fragmentation and duplication, poor cooperation among the key players of the value chain and lack of sustainable business models. “By these means, OASIS aims to contribute to the sustainability and efficiency of social and health care systems” says Project Coordinator Silvio Bonfiglio.

OASIS will moreover boost and improve the competitiveness of the markets for innovative products and services, responding to the ageing challenge at both EU and global level, thus creating new opportunities for businesses.

The research work carried out by the OASIS Project in the field of ontologies and semantic web services will be discussed during the half-day OASIS Symposium (October 25, 2011:14:00-18:00), co-located with the 10th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2011) in Bonn, Germany ( October 23 – 27, 2011).

Press is invited to attend the Symposium.

Contact: Dagmar Roeller – Email: DRoeller@polisnetwork.eu

—————————————————————————————–

OASIS Symposium at the ISWC 2011: Hyper-Ontologies and Modularity for Semantic Interoperability

The aim of the OASIS Symposium is to serve as a forum to exchange ideas with regard to the realization of a semantic interoperability of services.

The common vision of the Semantic Web is the achievement of seamless and transparent interoperability of services across diverse providers by making the meaningful content of those services openly accessible. For content to become ‘meaningful’ it must be related to more general information schemes for which some semantics has already been provided. Such information schemes range from tag collections, which impose an indirect semantics by means of induced similarity across tagged entities to formal ontologies, which explicity represent class-subclass relationships, the attributes of such classes as well as additional information that may be known about combinations of such classes and their instances. Whereas the semantic information that is explicitly maintained in ontologies might appear ideal for realizing the Semantic Web vision, substantial problems still render this goal difficult in practice. The symposium will address these problem areas.

More specifically OASIS addresses:

(i) the inherent complexity of constructing the high quality formal specifications necessary for trustworthy reasoning and (ii) the tendency for many formal specifications to emerge with little overlap in their coverage, modeling styles and intended semantics.

The solutions being explored involve: the replacement of large-scale ontologies by small-scale, application-specific ontologies maintained by those who know their data best, the system developers; automatic and semi-automatic support tools for allowing system developers to flexibly relate their data with re-usable ontologies in their domains of application; and the automatic generation of code supporting seamless data transfer across and within applications. The resulting framework relies on the well supported inter-linking of heterogeneous ‘ontological modules’, which we term a hyper-ontology.

The symposium will present results achieved to date and – through the contribution of highly qualified speakers, external to the OASIS Consortium – will raise issues in the formal foundations and guidelines for future hyper-ontology work and discuss opportunities for new standardization initiatives in the area of hyperontology-driven interoperability.

Specific attention will be devoted to interoperability spanning complex services in the areas of Independent Living, Autonomous and Smart Homes and Workplaces and to the provision of cross-domain networked ontologies, a goal which is itself a substantial research challenge.

Relevant topics that will be raised during the OASIS Symposium presented by renowned experts both internal and external to the OASIS Consortium, include:

• Modular Ontology Design
• Reasoning over content from multiple sources
• Query processing over multiple linked datasets
• Creating applications drawing on multiple data sources
• Open Ontology Repositories
• Information and design quality of ontologies
• Semantic Web Services and support tools

The program is completed by a Round Table discussion titled “Interoperability, Applications and Hyper-ontologies: the way forward”.

You can sign up for the OASIS Symposium when registering for the ISWC.

For further information about the OASIS Symposium, please contact info@oasis-project.eu or :

John Bateman – Chair of the Symposium Organizing Committee

E-mail: bateman@uni-bremen.de

Silvio Bonfiglio – OASIS Project Coordinator

Email: Silvio.Bonfiglio@philips.com

Evangelos Bekiaris – OASIS Project Technical Manager

E-mail: abek@certh.gr

For further information about the OASIS Project, please visit the web site www.oasis-project.eu

These settings correspond to the main areas of life of a person in general, and will need to be supported as we are ageing. The settings stand for priorities in life, and are not location-based or mutually exclusive. In principle, not all elderly citizens may need equal support in all of the above areas. However, the significance of defining these four settings is that they comprehensively cover the main aspects related to active ageing and well being of the elderly.

This booklet presents a collection of illustrative scenarios for the different life settings.

The roadmap will include: (a) Clear proposals on what technologies need to be supported (e.g. eye tracking, voice/gesture reckoning, wearable devices, smart displays); (b) Clear inputs on what methodologies have to be investigated (e.g. adaptive UI design, accessibility evaluation guidelines for devices, services and applications); (c) Clear contributions on what kind of tools should be developed (e.g. automatic accessibility verification/design tools, accessible user interface description languages).

This is a unique opportunity to shape the thinking and direction of future research funding by the European Commission in this area, and the aim is to gather input from a diverse range of stakeholders. A Wikispace has been set up to collect as much input as possible, visit
http://userinteraction-sdd-cardiac.wikispaces.com/Round+1-Generation.

• Social participation: This refers to applications which help users to participate actively in today’s society and benefit from the facilities that the new technologies can offer, whatever their age, disability and/or capacity (E.g. use the web and social media through mobile devices, contact people using mobile devices to the same extent as everyone, etc).
• Independent living: This refers to applications which help users to be more autonomous and perform daily tasks independently (E.g. using domestic appliances such as washing machine or refrigerator, opening doors safely, etc).
• Mobility: This refers to applications which enable users to move around more freely and safely using the whole range of transport modes. It can also refer to the use of mobile devices to be guided in unknown environment (e.g. using GPS option, etc).
• Wellbeing: This refers to applications which improve the users’ health and as well as overall feeling of wellbeing.

The competition is open from 14 June 2011 to 15 October 2011. All qualifying entries will be evaluated in November by a jury, consisting of representatives from AGE Platform Europe, European Disability Forum and Vodafone Foundation. Twelve finalists will be selected and requested to present their application before the final jury in Brussels in early December 2011 at a live final, where the four overall winners will be chosen. The total prize fund of the €200k will be split equally between the four winners.
Vodafone Foundation Director, Andrew Dunnett said “The Vodafone Foundation is keen to help as many people as possible benefit from new technologies. The Smart Accessibility Awards will help developers create apps that can really make a difference to people’s lives – we are thrilled to be able to support such an important initiative.”
Anne-Sophie Parent, AGE Platform Europe Secretary General, said “We are pleased to be involved in a project that supports our efforts towards building a more inclusive society. Digital inclusion is key to ensuring as many people as possible remain actively involved in their communities and we should make sure every citizen is empowered to do so, whatever their age or capacities. We hope this competition will help reach that goal and also contribute to the ‘European Year 2012 for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations’ where the objective is to increase older people’s active participation in society and promote independent living in old age. ”
Rodolfo Cattani, EDF Executive Member, said; “Being part of this competition is very important for us. Communication technologies are vital to making possible the inclusion of persons with disabilities. When the mobile applications are not accessible, it can create new obstacles and can lead to new forms of discrimination. We look forward to seeing accessible apps.”
For more information on the contest and submit your entry: http://developer.vodafone.com/smartaccess2011/+

The European Commission is seeking the views of public and private organisations, companies and individual citizens on how Europe could scale up innovation to meet the challenges of the ageing population in Europe, and in particular on a pilot European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on active and healthy ageing, as set out in the Innovation Union Flagship Initiative, presented on 6 October by Maire Geoghegan Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science and Antonio Tajani, Vice-President for Industry and Entrepreneurship. Between 2010 and 2030, the number of Europeans aged over 65 will rise by nearly 40%, posing huge challenges but also offering great opportunities for Europe’s society and economy. The EIP, which the Commission has proposed should be launched in 2011, would seek to meet three goals: to improve the health and quality of life of older people, enabling them to live active and independent lives; to contribute to the sustainability and efficiency of health and social care systems; and to foster competitiveness and business opportunities . The online consultation runs until 28 January 2011.
John Dalli, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy said: “Europe needs to prepare for the future ageing of its society and the use of innovation shall be one of the tools at our disposal. This is why I am very pleased that the very first of the Partnerships is on Active and Healthy Ageing: it will imply a close cooperation across different policies covering public health, research, digital and industrial policy.”
Neelie Kroes, Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda said: “People are living for longer – and should be able to do so as actively and independently as possible, with the help of innovative solutions such as fall-detection and prevention devices, easy to use social interaction services to overcome loneliness, and smart use of ICT in the home. We need input from stakeholders to make sure the future Innovation Partnership can help to make these ideas a reality for Europe’s senior citizens.”
The consultation invites interested stakeholders, such as organisations representing the elderly and patients, hospitals and care service providers, health and care professionals, insurers, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and health companies, public authorities and individual citizens, to help identifying current barriers to innovation and opportunities in the field of active and healthy ageing. Contributors can also share existing and future initiatives which could be undertaken at European level and advanced in a collaborative way. These should focus on how innovative solutions can bring promising and tangible outcomes to benefit the elderly.
The European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, as a headline target, aims to increase the average healthy lifespan in the EU by two years by 2020. It seeks to improve older people’s quality of life and to lead to more efficient care solutions. It will focus on applying innovation on a larger scale than today in areas such as health promotion, prevention, early diagnosis and treatment, integrated and collaborative health and social care systems, independent living and assistive technologies for older people.
The Commission will analyse the responses to the consultation, in order to obtain a clear view of the innovation potential and capacity in the multiple areas that affect ageing today. The responses will help the Commission to plan the next steps for the EIP.
The online consultation runs in parallel to a Conference on the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, which is taking place in Brussels today. More than 150 stakeholder representatives are due to discuss their ideas for the partnership to convert into concrete actions.
Background
The European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing is part of the EU’s “Innovation Union” strategy, one of the Europe 2020 flagship initiatives, to turn ideas into jobs, green growth and social progress (IP/10/1288). The Innovation Union has a three-fold goal: making Europe into a world-class science performer; revolutionising the way public and private sectors work together, notably through Innovation Partnerships, and removing bottlenecks – like expensive patenting, market fragmentation, slow standard setting and skill shortages – that currently prevent ideas getting quickly to market.
This corresponds to the Digital Agenda for Europe’s objective to harness the potential of ICT to boost prosperity and improve people’s quality of life (see IP/10/581, MEMO/10/199 and MEMO/10/200). The Digital Agenda seeks inter alia to ensure that ICT allows a more independence for people who are frail or suffer from chronic conditions and for persons with disabilities. It aims to double the take-up of independent living arrangements for the elderly by 2015.
Similarly, “fostering good health in an ageing Europe” was identified as one of the three main objectives of the EU’s Healthy Strategy “Together for Health”.
The consultation document is available here.

Equally, all relevant stakeholders are also welcome to our Pan-European Workshop on 30 November 2010 the day after where all interested parties will be able to join the debate.

Preliminary program

November 29 2010

• 10:00 – 12:00 VERITAS SAB meeting
• 13:30 – 17:00 User Forum
• 13:30 – 17:00 VUMS clustering meeting (in parallel with User Forum)

November 30 2010 – 1st Pan-European VERITAS Workshop

• 9:00 – 9:15 Welcome by the Dean of CVUT FEL
• 9:15 – 9:30 Project overview (FhG)
• 9:30 – 10:00 Technical Description (CERTH/ITI) – Models presentation, tools, architecture
• 10:00 – 10:30 Examples from the developers (LMS/HS)
• 10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break
• 11:00 – 11:30 User requirements (MCA / LMS)
• 11:30 – 12:00 Task analysis (MCA)
• 12:00 – 13:00 Lunch break
• 13:00 – 14:30 Abstract user models (UPM / UNITN / ITACA)
• 14:30 – 15:00 Coffee break
• 15:00 – 15:45 Use cases (CERTH / HIT) – Discussion & prioritization
• 16:15 – 16:30 Invited speakers from cluster
• 16:30 – 17:00 Wrap-up & Closing (FhG/CERTH/ITI)

To participate, please complete the registration form.

The topics that will be covered are:

• Universal access and assistive technology
• Inclusive design for older people
• Benefits of cognitive training systems in older adults
• Drivers and barriers to the adoption of ICT by older people
• Exploitation of cognitive support technology for older people

The workshop exhibition will showcase a range of innovative research and applications using interactive technologies.

When
15th December 2010
From 10 am to 5 pm

Where
Richard Hoggart Building
Lecture Theatre 309
Goldsmiths – University of London
Lewisham Way – SE14 6AF – London, UK

Registration details
The fee is £25 and includes all workshop materials and refreshments.
To register, please contact Andrea Miotto or Arjan Geven.

Download the full announcement.