4th EU-Japan Symposium
Closer collaboration between European and Japanese organisations agreed
Anastasius Gavras
Eurescom
gavras(at)eurescom.eu
The 4th EU-Japan Symposium on New Generation Networks and Future Internet took place in Tokyo, Japan, on 19 January 2012. The symposium focused on several topics of mutual interest to Japanese and European researchers which require joint research efforts in order to be addressed more efficiently.
Background
In 2008, the European Commission and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) jointly held the 1st EU-Japan Symposium on Future Internet (FI) and New Generation Networks (NWGN) in an effort to step up the collaborations in the NWGN and FI research activities between the EU and Japan. The 2nd and 3rd symposia were held in 2009 and 2010.
Opening
The symposium was opened with a welcome speech by the president of NICT, Hideo Miyahara. The participation of Mr Miyahara highlighted the importance of the event. The European delegation was led by Zoran Stančič, Deputy Director General at the EC’s Information Society and Media DG. Mr Stančič explained the EU digital policy and the role of international collaboration in the context of Future Internet. In response, Shigeyuki Kubota, Director-General of International and Technology Policy at the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications as well as Tomonori Aoyama from NICT and Keio University presented the Japanese policy and activities in the context of the New Generation Networks. Finally, Megan Richards, Director for Converged Networks & Services at the EC, presented the European Future Internet research perspective.
Participants of the 4th EU-Japan Symposium in Tokyo
The future activities in Japan are clearly influenced by the devastating earthquake and tsunami as well as the ensuing nuclear accident which happened in 2011. The emphasis of research is, thus, being reinforced on areas such as disaster recovery, security, handling of large amounts of data, and the eco society.
Technical sessions
Following the opening, the experts had extensive discussions on practical research approaches on six topics of mutual interest. The symposium was organised in six focused break-out sessions that included the following topics of interest:
Low energy content distribution with content centric networking. In this session the researchers discussed several approaches to optimisation of content delivery in the broader sense with the main focus to reduce the necessary energy consumption for this purpose.
Future Internet of things over Clouds. In this session the researchers discussed how the strengths of the Internet of Things can be combined with Cloud Computing concepts in order to provide a significant value add for the public but also for the businesses.
Experimental R&D over federated Japan and EU testbeds. In this session the researchers presented the currently available deployments of testbed infrastructures and discussed the potential federation of these. Resource Virtualisation at all layers and levels was the dominating topic of the session.
Wireless networking. The presentations and discussions in this session were dominated by the issues the mobile and wireless world is facing with respect to 4G systems and beyond. The experts discussed potential solutions and spectrum options that need to be available in 2020 and beyond.
Optical communication. Similarly in this session the researchers discussed the research challenges in optical ultra-high-speed networking, in particular in conjunction with the required flexibility and programmability of future networks.
Security. Finally this session was dedicated to an exchange between the experts on several aspects of security. The aspects discussed included defence against attacks on networks and services, survivability of the network in emergency situations, future security needs in ubiquitous, smart and mobile environments, privacy issues and last but not least the usability of secure systems.
The first three areas were discusses from a very practical point of view to identify immediate collaboration opportunities, whereas the last three areas were discussed more from a fundamental research point of view.
Outlook
An important outcome of the fourth EU-Japan Symposium has been the intention to issue a coordinated call between the EU and Japan for joint projects in the above-mentioned areas.
You can find more information on the Symposium at http://www.prime-pco.com/4thJEUsymposium/program_e.html