Since its early beginning, the ICARUS project has adopted an industry-focused mentality in order to deliver a unique data and intelligence platform for the aviation industry, taking into account the concrete stakeholders’ needs and requirements. Overall, the focus of the project activities has been on the conceptualization, design and development activities in order to deliver the beta release of the ICARUS platform. The main achievements of the ICARUS project so far can be summarized as follows:

  • The ICARUS 6-Phased Methodology and the final MVP consolidated upon internal and external validation activities (as documented in Deliverables D1.2, D1.3). Taking into consideration the stakeholders’ needs as elicited from related industry reports, 2 ICARUS-focused questionnaires and 6 interviews (with external stakeholders along the 3 tiers of the aviation data value chain that are not currently represented in the ICARUS consortium), different high-level usage scenarios have been also constructed to illustrate the envisaged use of the ICARUS platform.
  • The ICARUS Data Management and Value Creation Methods that span over 9 different dimensions, namely data collection, data curation (further detailed into cleansing, provenance, mapping and linking), data safeguarding (further detailed into access control, encryption and anonymisation), data analytics and data sharing, and were constantly updated to be attuned to address the internal and external stakeholders’ feedback (as documented in Deliverables D2.1, D2.2, D2.3). Based on the data collection activities and the study of different aviation ontologies and data models, the ICARUS ontology and common aviation data model have been constructed to play an instrumental role in the ICARUS platform, according to the ICARUS data management methods.
  • The ICARUS Architecture (documented in Deliverables D3.1, D3.2, D3.3, D3.4, D3.5), that is built on 3 layers: the ICARUS Core Platform, the ICARUS On-Premise Environment and the ICARUS Secure and Private Spaces, consisting of 23 key components in total. The design specifications of 15 Core Data service bundles and the 3 Added Value service bundles were iteratively produced based on the internal and external user and technical requirements that were gradually elicited, and embedding the constant feedback gained in intermediate releases. Specific workflows that illustrate the functionalities of the integrated ICARUS platform and interfaces to allow the seamless integration of the different components were also specified and agreed.
  • The ICARUS Beta Platform (features, new release updates 1, new release updates 2), as documented in Deliverables D4.2, D4.3, D4.4, D4.5 incorporating a set of core functionalities that are logically organised into 3 core workflows: a) the data asset check-in workflow, b) the data asset search and acquisition workflow, and c) the data analytics and visualisation workflow. They are complemented by the user management workflow, and the administrator view workflow. The ICARUS platform integration process that has been followed during the entire development phase of the ICARUS platform to ensure the smooth integration of the ICARUS components has been also put in place while extensive testing activities (through unit testing and integration testing) have occurred. The ICARUS Platform has been documented in detail: (a) online in the platform’s Help menu from a user-oriented perspective; and (b) through the APIs it exposes from a developer-oriented perspective.
  • The 4 ICARUS Demonstrators, that are representative of the three tiers of the aviation data value chain defined in ICARUS and include: [Demonstrator I] Airport capacity planning and improvement by AIA; [Demonstrator II] Enhanced routes analysis of aircraft for improved fuel consumption optimisation and pollution awareness by PACE/TXT; [Demonstrator III] Improved modelling of infectious disease spreading based on aviation’s passenger data by ISI; and [Demonstrator IV] Enhancing inflight experience by CELLOCK. The planned demonstrators’ preparation activities have properly progressed (as documented in Deliverable D5.2) in order to test, evaluate and validate the different releases of the ICARUS platform. An overview of the demonstrators’ activities and experiences from ICARUS  along with the lessons learnt and the adoption guidelines for the ICARUS Platform have been documented in Deliverable D5.6.

In parallel, significant progress has been made on: (a) the continuous data collection activities for the aviation-related data assets that are owned by the ICARUS consortium or are available in open data repositories in order to ensure that the demonstrators will be able to be seamlessly executed and that the ICARUS platform is populated with a critical mass of data assets by the end of the project (as documented in D1.1 and D1.3), (b) laying the baseline and steering the forthcoming testing and assessment activities for the ICARUS offerings both from a technical excellence and a business impact perspective through the holistic ICARUS evaluation framework (described in D5.1), (c) planning the exploitation activities and performing a number of preliminary actions performed towards a joint business strategy (e.g. the business model canvas, the value proposition canvas, the competition matrix, the key business models, and the demonstrators business cases) as documented in the confidential deliverables D7.1 and D7.2, and (d) contacting and engaging almost 100 aviation stakeholders (interested to join the ICARUS platform as beta users) and demonstrating the ICARUS results in over 20 events.