Delegates of work packages 6, 7, and 8, the so-called IT work packages, met in the beginning of October in Athens with some representatives of demonstrators and their overall coordinator, Inge Lucassen. Takis chaired the meeting that addressed on the one hand potential requirements of the demonstrators, also having partners formulate the set-up of demonstrators, and on the other hand presenting initiatives and deliverables that could potentially be useful for the demonstrators. In this respect, there are different aspects to be considered.
First of all, a number of IT partners participate both in the IT work packages and in one or more demonstrators. Thus, they will get clear requirements of these demonstrators and produce deliverables for those demonstrators. Secondly, the IT work packages can take the results of these demonstrators and abstract from them to make them applicable on a broader scale. This would in fact be the objective of the IT work packages: to consolidate demonstrator developments and make them applicable for large scale implementation after the project.
This objective implies that the IT work packages will also have to formulate their roadmap in which these demonstrator deliverables have to fit, whereas the roadmap also has to be based on demonstrator requirements to avoid that demonstrator deliverables don't fit. This latter is exactly one of the issues: how to formulate a roadmap and develop potential deliverables in case demonstrator requirements are not yet formulated? We will come back to this question later on. Those demonstrators that do not require support of the IT work packages, can forward their deliverables to the IT work packages to have them steer the roadmap and fit them into the roadmap.
Thirdly, not all demonstrators are yet that far, that they are able to formulate their requirements precise enough for the IT work packages to support them. In this respect, the IT work packages have to formulate their service offering constituting a potential roadmap, in such a way that it does not give any conflicts with participants of a demonstrator. The challenge of the partners in the IT work packages is to formulate potential services based on their extensive experience. It will be up to a demonstrator to select the appropriate service of the IT work packages.
Examples of services are formulated in the Description of Work, like the ontology, a connectivity infrastructure, and end-user applications that can all be used in a demonstrator. As stated before, a demonstrator is not obliged to use a service of the IT work packages, but each of the IT services should at least be applied by one demonstrator (otherwise the service would not have to be formulated and developed).
Additional issues are those of planning and the collaboration of the IT work packages with the other work packages. Demonstrators and IT work packages have to align their planning of deliverables, which can be achieved by close collaboration on requirements. As the project continues, alignment of demonstrator requirements and IT services will improve. Work packages 2-5 might also utilize the support of the IT work packages. This latter aspect was not discussed during the meeting.
Finally, any questions of the IT Work packages to the demonstrators will be channeled via Inge to avoid that each partner of the IT work packages approaches each demonstrator with its specific questions.