Editorial

Dear ITEA Innovation Community,

We are at the start of ITEA 4 and it is a good time to consider one of the main trends that will shape this programme: the green transition. This will certainly influence the scope of ITEA 4, and the need to move towards sustainable activities means a lot of transformations.

The development of renewable energy sources will significantly impact the energy sector, but we expect that every sector will have to undergo transformation. In all production activities (tangible as well as intangible), new approaches will be put in place to minimise the use of resources and energy and to favour recycling and the circular economy. The ICT systems will have a central role to play, not only in better management of resources and energy but also in improving their own energy efficiency and increasing the value delivered per resource used. ITEA 4 is already active in this domain. We have added the Smart energy challenge to the previous 7 ITEA challenges and held a very interesting customer workshop on this topic in June 2021. The Eureka Clusters Programme (ECP) is currently discussing the launch of a new Joint Call focused on sustainability, the first one being opened at the beginning of 2022. Sustainability is illustrated in this magazine with the views of Atos, one of the ITEA Board members, and complemented with some highlights of ITEA projects. This article should be of interest to you to understand how sustainability becomes central to any company strategy and to prepare new ideas for research projects tackling this challenge.

Besides this important trend, I would like to emphasise that for all the current software innovation challenges, international cooperation will play a key role in progress and in helping to boost the usefulness of software systems. To reduce the complexity of the systems, we need to automate and reach a consensus on the data semantics calls for collaborative research projects to address these challenges. In this ITEA Magazine we are very happy to focus on cooperation with Korea, which opens the door for common approaches in Europe and Asia.

To conclude, I would like to thank all of you who took an active role in the last PO Days. Even though the present COVID-19 restrictions meant that the event was organised online again, we witnessed a very active Community. The Public Authorities were very well represented in their exchange with the ITEA industrial members, and we saw very interesting ideas emerging from the different webinars and brainstorming sessions. This Magazine contains a short account of these Online PO Days.

We are happy to start ITEA 4 with such an active Community motivated to work on crucial topics for a sustainable future. Enjoy reading this rich ITEA Magazine.

Jean-François Lavignon