CORDIS Archive : ISTweb | KA3

KA3 Calls

The Raison D'etre

"The aim of this work is to improve the functionality, usability and acceptability of future information products and services, to enable linguistic and cultural diversity and contribute to the 'valorisation' and exploitation of Europe's cultural patrimony, to stimulate creativity, and to enhance education and training systems for lifelong learning. Work will cover new models, methods, technologies and systems for creating, processing, managing, networking, accessing and exploiting digital content, including audio-visual content. An important research dimension will be new socio-economic and technological models for representing information, knowledge and know-how. The work will address both applications-oriented research, focusing on publishing, culture and education and training and generic research in language and content technologies for all applications areas, and will include validation, take-up, 'concertation' and standards."
(Council Decision adopting the IST programme, 1999)

KA3's Calls

For information about specific calls by units within Key Action 3: Multimedia Content and Tools, follow these links:

Interactive Electronic Publishing
Digital Heritage and Cultural Content
Education and Training
Language Technologies
Information Access

Follow this link for information about all calls for proposal published in the IST domain.

Work Programme 2002

The work programme 2002 supports the 8th and last call in IST under Framework 5. It was published on 16 November 2001 and is due to close on 21 February 2002.

KA3 context and rationale

In the course of FP5, KA3 has built a portfolio of over 300 actions covering research, application and take-up, addressing the processing and use of multimedia content in various application settings. In view of completing and consolidating said activities:

Action Line 3.5.1 provides opportunities for aggregating the results emerging from KA3 actions launched in FP5 and to document and disseminate them widely so as to improve knowledge and best practice sharing, and accelerate technology take-up and roll-out, across Europe.

In preparation for FP6, an effort is devoted to the preparation and organisation of future research activities in KA3 areas, and to support RTD activities that link the current and future research priorities. It will include two types of actions:

Action Line 3.5.2 intends to initiate a number of activities to prepare for RTD roadmaps and explore collaborative schemes that can be implemented using the new instruments proposed by the Commission for the next Framework Programme.
Action Line 3.5.3 aims at future paradigms for next-generation knowledge and interface technologies.

To improve cohesiveness in the approach, all action lines are designed as "spanning" over all KA3 research areas. The table below relates these actions to their implementation modalities:

IST2002 - III.5.1 KA3 Specific Support Measures

Objective:: To consolidate and disseminate results emerging from recent and ongoing research activities established within the Fifth Framework Programme.
Focus:: Proposals are invited (see Calls for Proposal) for the identification, analysis and documentation of research results, and their dissemination across and beyond the programme. The aim is to facilitate the exploitation of systems, tools and methods resulting from KA3 actions. In the case of de facto standards, emphasis will be on channeling them through relevant international and professional forums.
Types of actions addressed:: Accompanying Measures (excluding Take-up) and Thematic Networks.
Links with WP2001:: Continuation of III.5.3 'KA3 Specific Support Measures', complementing those available under the Continuous Submission Scheme.

IST2002 - III.5.2 Preparing for Future Research Activities

Objectives:

To prepare for future RTD activities by developing research roadmaps and associated implementation models and by mobilising and bringing together all relevant actors. Work will address one or more of the following fields:

Knowledge technologies: New harmonised approaches addressing the knowledge lifecycle, including acquisition and modelling, discovery and extraction, and visualisation and sharing/reuse. The aim is to enable the building of content- and context-aware internet services and applications in a variety of knowledge-intensive areas.
Dynamic interactive content: Innovative forms and formats of digital content and associated development environments and processes, covering authorware, virtual and mixed realities, community formation, messaging, presentation and delivery, and integrating these into new services for an advanced European mediascape.
Multi-sensorial, multilingual interfaces and virtual environments: human-human communication and human-machine/object interaction, based on radically new concepts combining language, speech, handwriting and other senses including vision, haptics, touching, etc.
Advanced digital libraries, culture and arts, preservation and digital longevity, involving generic architectures for creating and accessing heterogeneous repositories. This includes applications in virtual cultural and scientific events, and intelligent and creative cultural spaces as well as issues relating to carrier, content, context preservation and conservation.
On-demand and personalised e-learning systems and services that are accessible at all times, anywhere and support individuals throughout their lives.

Focus:

The work will be implemented through thematic networks, working groups and networks of excellence, or accompanying measures (excluding take-up), and includes the following tasks, as per topical area:

Building and strengthening RTD communities by encouraging research, business and user organisations to develop together common visions and to analyse research requirements. This should help Identify common challenges and objectives, based on analyses of market and technology evolution, of the current research efforts carried out in Europe and world wide, and of the skills, technical infrastructures and other resources, available or needed.
Specifying the research tasks derived from the above, for both objective-driven and exploratory research. Work should also help identify activities required to improve the RTD impact including synergies with other research frameworks, contribution to international efforts, EU enlargement aspects, pre-normative standardisation, measurement and benchmarking, facilities such as pan-European data repositories as well as take-up, training, promotion and dissemination actions.
Investigating effective mechanisms for managing future activities, including distribution of work and resources, admission and withdrawal of participants, engagement of additional parties, scientific guidance and monitoring, etc.

This Action Line is expected to give rise to at least one measure for each of the target research areas (cf. a - e above), bringing together key players, from industry and academia. Work will involve meetings with actors in the field so as to stimulate interest and achieve broadly based consensus. Co-operative links between the activities to be supported in this Action Line will ensure knowledge and experience sharing. Work is expected to last up to 15 months. Background for the action line can be found on the Programme website.

Types of actions addressed:

Accompanying Measures (excluding Take-up) and Thematic Networks.

Links with WP2001:

New Action Line.

IST2002 - III.5.3 KA3 Pioneering Research

Objective:: To lay the foundations for the future provision, access and management of knowledge and to develop advanced systems to improve multi-media digital content.
Focus:: Key areas of research are the modelling of very-large, scaleable and interoperable knowledge spaces, including tools supporting contextualisation and visualisation, and intuitive personalised interfacing with the user. Validation of the technology is expected in challenging applications in various business and societal contexts, in particular e-commerce, e-media, e-learning and e-culture, with emphasis on anywhere, anytime services.
This Action Line is expected to yield a limited number of high-impact projects aiming to consolidate ongoing research efforts in emerging fields (especially advanced knowledge and interface technologies), to aggregate cross-disciplinary know-how and to develop exploitable software components. Application-driven work must strive to transform emerging technology breakthroughs into compelling showcases.
Types of actions addressed:: Research and Development, Demonstration and Combined Projects.
Links with WP2001:: Continuation of III.5.1 'x-content futures'

Preparing for Calls

Follow this link for general information and resources necessary to make a proposal under the IST Programme
For information on how to participate in a call, download the Guides for Proposers.
Follow this link for more information regarding contract preparation for proposals.

Glossary

If you are unfamiliar with any of the terms used on this page or elsewhere on this site, we recommend you visit our glossary of terms.