The EC co-funded Horizon 2020 project ICARUS kicked-off its activities on January 16th-17th, 2018 in Athens, Greece, hosted by UBITECH. The ICARUS consortium, including twelve highly innovative organizations on Big Data and Aviation from 6 countries, came together in a 2-day interactive meeting to discuss their activities, expectations and plan towards accelerating data-driven collaboration in sectors related to Aviation (i.e. Aerospace, Tourism, Health, Security, Retail).

In the first day of the meeting, the agenda featured brief introductions of the expertise of each partner and the role undertaken within ICARUS. The Project Coordinator, Dr. Dimitris Alexandrou (UBITECH), and the Technical Coordinator, Dr. Fenareti Lampathaki (Suite5), provided a thorough presentation of : (a) the context and challenges of the European aviation industry in leveraging the surge of multi-source data assets, (b) the ICARUS vision and objectives along with the corresponding key outputs, quantified targets and means of validation, (c) the ICARUS approach, methodology and architecture highlighting the different tiers of the ICARUS data value chain, (d) the ICARUS demonstrators representing different stakeholders in the Aviation data value chain, (e) the ICARUS work plan and milestones, with a focus on the expected outcomes within the first 6 months. The initial activities with regard to the creation of the Aviation data value chain were then introduced by the ICARUS Scientific Coordinator, Prof. George Pallis (UCY) and were followed by interactive presentations from the ICARUS demonstrators, represented by AIA, PACE & TXT, ISI and CELLOCK, in terms of scope, challenges, and expected benefits from ICARUS.

The first day concluded with a brainstorming workshop to exchange ideas, and resulted into concrete and really valuable outcomes on the ICARUS positioning and differentiating points, the initial demonstrators’ requirements and the data availability and needs.

The second day of the ICARUS kick-off meeting started with a technical discussion on the draft architecture and the reusable software components that the ICARUS partners bring and wish to potentially extend during the project implementation. Each Work Package was then presented by its respective leader, introducing its objectives, tasks, and partners’ involvement, as well as the initial considerations and challenges. Prior to the conclusion of the meeting, the project management aspects and quality assurance procedures were discussed. The internal communication tools and repository, the infrastructures were presented while the next meetings and regular management telcos were scheduled.

The kick-off meeting ended with a wrap up presentation summarizing the outcomes of the brainstorming sessions, the key activities for the next months and the action plan.

ICARUS started flying so… stay tuned for our updates!