Community Research and Development Information Service - CORDIS

Future networks became a central topic with a large debate whether moving towards the new-networked society will be evolutionary or disruptive. In the future networked society the physical and the digital worlds will merge based on the massive usage of wireless sensor networks. Objects will be able to identify and locate themselves and to communicate through radio interfaces. Self-organized edge networks will become more and more common. Virtualisation and programmability will allow for providing different networking environments over the same infrastructure. Autonomic networking will deal with the increasing complexity of IandC systems. End-users empowerment will increase with his capacity of providing services and content, as well as connectivity support.

This new environment forces the scientific community to develop new principles and methods to design/dimension/control/manage future multi-technology architectures. The new paradigms raise new challenging scientific and technological problems embedded in complex policy, governance, and worldwide standards issues. Dealing with the diversity of these scientific and socio-economic challenges requires the integration of a wide range of research capacities; a role that Euro-NF will fulfil.

Indeed, Euro-NF extends, in scope and duration, the successful Euro-NGI/FGI NoE that has integrated the required critical mass on the networks of the future and is now a major worldwide player in this area. The consortium has evolved in order to have an optimal coverage of the new scope. Euro-NF will therefore cover the integration of a wide range of European research capacities, including researchers and research and dissemination activities. As such Euro-NF will continue to develop a prominent European centre of excellence in Future networks design and engineering, acting as a "Collective Intelligence Think Tank", representing a major support for the European Society leading towards a European leadership in this area.