EUCLID – Strengthening EU-India collaboration in networked monitoring and control systems technologies

EUCLID is a special support action co-funded by the FP7 Programme of the European Commission, addressing to the Theme 3 “Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)” in the field of Engineering of Networked Monitoring and Control systems.

India and the European Union face common timely challenges in the very important and potential field of networked monitoring and control system technologies, which create a favourable environment for strategic collaboration. In addition to serving as a source of challenging problems, India represents a huge economic opportunity for the European Union: the market sizes and opportunities for monitoring and control applications are in the billions of Euros, and European companies need to gain competitive advantage in pursuit of these opportunities.

Started on the first of June, 2010, the ambitious 2-years EUCLID project aimed at stimulating cooperation in the networked monitoring and control system technologies between Europe and India, in order to support Europe’s leading position in monitoring and control while ensuring mutual benefits for both Europe and India. Consequently, EUCLID aims to develop cooperation in monitoring and control methods and tools that are relevant to the research priorities identified in the FP7 ICT Work Programme 2009 and that ensured mutual benefits. These research priorities include the following:

• Foundation of Complex Systems Engineering: to develop novel scalable methods for sensing, control and decision-making, to achieve robust, predictable and self-adaptive behavior for large-scale networked systems;

• Wireless Sensor Networks and Cooperation Objects: to develop architectures, hardware/software integration platforms and engineering methods for distributed systems composed of heterogeneous networked smart objects;

• Control of Large-Scale Systems: to enable optimal operation of large-scale dynamic systems through proactive process automation systems applicable across several sectors, going far beyond what current SCADA and DCS/PLC can deliver today…

In order to stimulate the monitoring and control cooperation, EUCLID’s mission is threefold:

(i) map Indian organisations involved in research relevant to the EU’s priorities concerning monitoring and control methods and tools, assess the potential for monitoring and control collaboration between India and Europe, and propose recommendations with a roadmap and an action plan;

(ii) organise combined awareness-raising, networking & brokerage and training events in India and in Europe concerning relevant monitoring and control calls under FP7 ICT, and a delegation tour of European specialists to Indian organizations, and reinforce the attendance of Indian experts at key monitoring and control events in Europe;

(iii) provide ‘hands-on’ support to Indian monitoring and control organisations to strengthen Indian participation in the European research and training: joining European consortia preparing FP ICT proposals, facilitating secondment of Indian researchers to European monitoring and control organizations , and facilitation access to European Technology Platforms and networks.

The International Expert Group –10 top level highly motivated specialists– will provide their expertise to project implementation and assistance to the development of long term monitoring and control collaborations between Europe and India.