10-12-2019

November saw the 2nd Plenary Meeting of the European innovation project "SCENE - Smart City on the Edge Network Enhancements" (Call H2020-EIC-FTI-2018-2020, FTI - FAST TRACK TO INNOVATION FTI) partnered by AlmavivA. The meeting took place at the headquarters of the CEA - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - in the Palaiseau area of Paris.

The ambitious objective of the project is to create an innovative IOT platform for Mobile Edge Computing, in which Intelligent Gateway devices are positioned in vehicles traversing the city and, as they travel, interact with different sensors distributed all around, both to collect data for sending to the service center, the SCENE Service Platform, and to remotely configure those same sensors. Another important objective is to create SCENE as an open platform, in which third parties (typically Smart City Service providers) can install their own applications on the Gateway, so as to bring data processing directly to the suburbs, close to the sensors in line with an Edge computing approach. Enabling the use of low-cost sensors is another important aim of the project which, it is believed, may be a factor that makes it possible to create an ecosystem encompassing new services and startups.

The project came on the back of the first year's activity and during the meeting the status of the development and integration activities was presented, in light of the next significant event, the start of the first stage of the pilot test campaign for the first release of the SCENE platform. The meeting also involved conducting various integration tests for the different modules created by the partnership, which involves European businesses and research centers.

AlmavivA makes an important contribution to the project: the design and creation of the Service Platform, namely the control center that controls the entire platform. Some of the most innovative aspects include the use of the GIoTTO® platform as a “Backend as Service” for SCENE, the creation of an analytics system and a control dashboard, besides the definition of the communication protocol with all components of the SCENE platform. AlmavivA has also designed and created a low-cost wireless sensor prototype to demonstrate the flexibility of the platform.

The next event will reunite the project partners in Catania, Italy, where field tests for the platform will begin. These are due to take place in December, with the support of AMT (Azienda Municipalizzata Trasporti; Public Transportation Company) Catania.

Subsequent Pilot Test campaigns are due to take place over the next few weeks in Lisbon and Rennes, with different Pilots and Use Cases.