Excel accidents

The economic and social risks of spreadsheet errors

Milon Gupta
Eurescom

Whenever executives think of business risks, they usually consider well-known factors like competitors, compliance, and cybercrime, at the moment also COVID-19. However, there is a less obvious, yet potent risk at their fingertips – their trusted spreadsheet programme, which in most cases is Microsoft Excel. It is not just the quirks of the software itself, but rather the way business people use it that leads to trouble.

When Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh in 1985 and two years later for Windows, nobody could have guessed how ubiquitous the use of this spreadsheet software would become. Already by the early 1990s, Excel had gained a dominating market position against its toughest competitor at the time, Lotus 1-2-3. It did not take long until the calculations and formulas in cells, rows, and columns led several users astray, causing a never-ending series of spreadsheet errors with sometimes spectacularly disastrous consequences.

History of errors

IT professor Raymond R. Panko from the University of Hawai’i has investigated spreadsheet errors for the last three decades and has come to devastating conclusions: almost 90 percent of all spreadsheets have errors. And even the most carefully edited spreadsheets have errors in one percent of all formula cells. This means that in larger spreadsheets with thousands of formulas there are dozens of errors.

While this in itself may not yet sound shocking, the implications of spreadsheet errors definitely are scary. Nearly one out of five large companies has suffered financial losses due to spreadsheet errors. Typically these errors are caused by a combination of human mistakes and the complexity of large spreadsheets, which provide plenty of opportunity to go wrong. Most of these mistakes do not have an economic impact, but some do. And sometimes, the damage is huge, as the following examples show.

US photographic product company Eastman Kodak had to restate financial results for two quarters by combined 15 million dollars because of an erroneous spreadsheet. It had miscalculated the severance and pension-related termination benefits accrued by one employee.

JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, made a wrong credit portfolio assessment based on several faulty equations in a spreadsheet, which cost them approximately 6.5 billion dollars in losses and fines. US mortgage-loan company Fannie Mae had to restate its 2003 third-quarter financials due to a 1.1 billion dollar spreadsheet error, which was due to the flawed implementation of a new accounting standard.

Lost COVID-19 test results in England

While the economic damage by erroneous spreadsheets of businesses large and small is already huge, there is also a high social price to be paid for spreadsheet errors in the public sector. One of the most recent cases involved the loss of COVID-19 test results in England. As BBC News reported in early October 2020, the stunning number of 16,000 coronavirus cases went unreported in England, due to a flawed Excel template by Public Health England (PHE), an executive agency of the UK Department of Health and Social Care. The problem was caused by the way PHE assembled logs produced by commercial firms paid to analyse swab tests of the public, to discover who has the virus.

The firms recorded their results correctly in CSV files, text-based lists that can be processed by Excel. PHE had set up an automatic process to pull these data together into Excel templates for upload to a central system. The problem was that the developers at PHE had chosen an old file format for the templates, the XLS format, instead of the current XLSX format. As a consequence, each XLS-based template could handle only about 65,000 rows of data instead of the one million-plus rows that the XLSX format is capable of. And as each test result created several rows of data, this meant that each template was limited to about 1,400 cases. When that total was reached, further cases were cut off.

How to contain spreadsheet errors

Efforts to understand and fight the problem of spreadsheet errors go back more than two decades. Already in 1999, a group of British spreadsheet researchers from the University of Greenwich, the University of Wales Institute Cardiff and Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise joined forces to create the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group (EuSpRIG), which is dedicated to the art of spreadsheet risk management. EuSpRIG claims to be the largest source of information on implementable methods for processes and methods to inventory, test, fix, document, backup, archive, compare and control the legions of spreadsheets that support critical corporate infrastructures. EuSpRIG runs an annual conference which provides a forum for researchers, practitioners, trainers, vendors, consultants, regulators and auditors to discuss the latest developments in spreadsheet risk management.

Despite the efforts of EuSpRIG and others to reduce the occurrence and damage of spreadsheet errors, the problem seems to persist. In some cases, like the handling of COVID-19 test results in England, the solution may not be to improve the spreadsheet or to better educate users in the proper use of Excel. Instead, it might be better in such cases to rather get rid of spreadsheets altogether and handle large amounts of data in databases that ensure the consistency and integrity of the processed data.


© AdobeStock

Critical thinking in the age of fake news

David Kennedy
Eurescom


© AdobeStock

It is concerning me when I see people that I considered sensible sharing unfounded and even false information through social media. The truth has become a flexible commodity today, and seemingly sensible people are proposing “alternative facts” as the truth, mainly because they are too lazy to find the truth.

Intelligent people like Carl Sagan saw this coming. In May 1996 he said: “We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces.”

The scope of the problem

In his 1985 novel “Contact” Sagan posed the thought that: “In the long run, the aggressive civilizations destroy themselves, almost always.“ This is raising the question, if our trend for egocentric, nationalistic and xenophobic politics is setting our civilisation on the way to destruction or not.

When we consider that we, as technologists, have opened Pandora’s Box, which allowed deep data analysis tools to capture our data, identify our susceptibilities and fears, and then let unscrupulous politicians manipulate us through subliminal and false messages, we have to consider how we can regain control.

Today I don’t need to even consider your fact-based arguments, if I simply brand them as fake news. The ability of large groups of people to be happy in the knowledge that the Earth is flat is maintained through an amazing ability to deny all physical proof to the contrary. This is done by designating it as proof that the establishment is behind a conspiracy to keep the truth hidden.

Similarly, when the Brexit team declared that “the people in this country have had enough of experts”, they were indicating a key part of today’s problem – the desire to replace knowledge with opinion based on hearsay, fears and in some cases paranoia. The same logic asserts that my ignorance is as valid an opinion as your educated position. This has been combined with a hyper-sensitive sense of political correctness – where media is expected to give fair representation to all viewpoints – to actually distort the meaningful debate and collective decisions that democracy depends on. If you ask a scientist to be on a TV programme debating cosmic science with a Flat-Earth believer, you are actually demeaning science by asking it to prove itself against fiction. This approach gives the uneducated views an undeserved status.

How to fix our new world

We really need to go back to basics. The most basic thing is education. We have had global campaigns since World War II to increase the education standards across the globe. We may need to expand our concept of education beyond simply teaching people to read and write, which is only giving them the tools. We rather need to make sure people stay long enough in education to learn how to be critical in their thinking. The link between education and involvement in the civic society has been well identified – why this is linked is not so obvious. Some say the teaching ingrains the benefits of political participation while others propose that schools and collages teach us to work, play and communicate together for common gain.

Student communities have long been seen as the political vanguard and not willing to accept suppression. Even Lenin complained in his time that students were unwilling to subject themselves to the leadership of the revolutionary – and not so democratic – elites.

But even here we run into a modern interpretation of critical thinking, which basically says: don’t trust anything the government tells you, as they are lying to promote their own agendas. Science asks you to be critical and work through any hypothesis until you have evidence to prove or disprove it. We should renew our global commitment to education to the point where the average person has the capabilities to deal with modern challenges.

When we can stop asking people, if they believe in climate change and instead debate with them, if they understand the implications of climate change, we may be making progress.

What to do now

I would like us all to think about our roles in the chain: are we helping society or are we part of the problem? Your behaviour on social media has a lot to do with this. If you simply share emotive news that you like the sound of and because it re-enforces your biases, then you are the problem. I challenge you to change you behaviour with three steps: 1. Consider the message; 2. Consider the source; and 3. Pause before sharing.

I may be naïve, as we have worked hard to make our social communications powerful and far-reaching – and somehow almost anonymous. But the click-without-consequences world we live in is actually not without consequences. We need to put the values back into our increasing communications, in order to avoid that we sow so much suspicion and mistrust that our civilisation, as we know it, is doomed.

How Eureka Clusters keep reinventing ­themselves

Valérie Blavette
Orange

In order to effectively foster innovation, the Eureka Clusters, including CELTIC-NEXT, are constantly innovating themselves. This is why we are currently setting up a new Eureka Clusters Programme that increases synergies between Clusters. This new programme was designed during the former Dutch Eureka Chairmanship and is being implemented during the current Austrian Chairmanship, whose motto is ‘‘Towards a New Eureka’’. It is impressive to see how an Intergovernmental organisation that was created in 1985 is so dynamic, flexible and future-looking to enhance collaboration at a global scale.

It was decided to set up a new governance structure for the Eureka Clusters Programme, which is based on new bodies for representing both the Public Authorities and the Cluster communities, as well as to facilitate dialogue between the industry and the national funding bodies.

New governance for better public-­private dialogue

For enhancing the public-private dialogue, the Public Authorities Committee (PAC) has been set up at director’s level with representatives of over 20 countries at the time of writing. In addition, the Clusters Committee (CC) has been formed, with three industry representatives of each Cluster.

The kick-off meeting of the ECP programme took place on 15th October. In the meeting, the PAC and CC members discussed the importance of the Eureka Clusters for their respective company, industry and community as well as some strategic and topical priorities.

CELTIC-NEXT is represented by Vincent Marcatte, Orange Vice President, Julie Byrne, Nokia Head of Partnerships and David ­Kennedy, Director of Eurescom.

At the time of writing, the new Public ­Authority Committee (PAC) had already gathered 19 participating countries, chaired by the UK.

Agreeing on strategic priorities

When industry and the Public Authorities will agree on some strategic topic, it will be reflected in the Multi-Annual Plan (MAP) of the ECP. When the MAP will be finally approved in June 2021 thematic calls among a set of clusters or at individual level will be decided for the next four years, starting with the most urgent ones. Among the topics and challenges high on the agenda of both the Public Authorities and the PAs are AI, Green Deal, Cyber­security and Beyond 5G/6G.

Denmark and South Korea have proposed a new joint Cluster call on “Technology driven Green Transition” that could take place already in the transition period with projects funded already in 2021, if enough countries can join.

The Central Coordinating Function and the CC Support Group

The new ECP will be supported by the Central Coordination Function (CCF) that will be half funded by the PAs and half by the clusters. Nadja Rohrbach, who has been working at the Eureka Secretariat in charge of Clusters since more than two years, seconded by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), has been in charge of the CCF from the PA side since last summer.

The Cluster Committee will be assisted by a Support Group, where CELTIC will be represented by Jari Lehmusvuori from Nokia, ­Antonio Cuadra Sanchez from Indra Minsait, Peter Herrmann, Celtic Office director, and the CELTIC-NEXT Chair.

CELTIC-NEXT and the Eureka Clusters AI call

CELTIC-NEXT paved the way for the new ­governance during its Inter-Cluster Spokespersonship. We started seizing the opportunity of AI being high on the agenda of both industry and a number of Public Authorities by setting-up the first AI call jointly organised by CELTIC-NEXT, Eurogia, ITEA, PENTA and Euripides. It was both a collective challenge and an educating experience. A new cluster tool and portal had been developed by Eurescom specifically for this first joint call.

The clusters attracted 16 countries who gave their financial support to that call including Singapore, which is new in Eureka. By mid-June, when the call ended, we received 41 valid project proposals.

For this first joint call it was decided to synchronise label and funding decisions wherever possible. The supporting Public Authorities agreed to participate to a pre-consensus and a consensus meeting where the decision to label / fund projects from all clusters was examined, taking into account the evaluations both from the cluster tech­nical experts and from the PAs.

Finally 16 projects were labelled and a quick path for funding of those projects has been explored by the countries.

Open to the verticals and to challenges

The Eureka Clusters keep innovating, and CELTIC-NEXT is open for more joint initiatives and challenges that advance European and global innovation in the smart connected world domain. For our autumn call we organised once again a joint call with Eurogia, the Cluster on low carbon energy. In mid-September we had an exciting joint proposers day with over 200 registered participants, and a new brokerage tool. This is just one example for a converged industry effort including
the verticals, which shows how CELTIC-NEXT contributes to the new Eureka Clusters Programme.

Conclusion

After two years of dense activity as CELTIC-NEXT Chair, I am now required for a new position inside Orange.

Through my roles as CELTIC Chair and Inter-Cluster Spokesperson, I have been happy to contribute to increasing the interest of the Public Authorities towards CELTIC-NEXT and Eureka Clusters in general.

As for me, I will still participate as CELTIC-NEXT Core-Group member from Orange.

Last but not least, I wish all the best to my successor and to CELTIC-NEXT!

5G PPP White Paper on 5G for verticals

The 5G PPP Technology Board and the 5G IA Verticals Task Force have published a White Paper on “Empowering Vertical Industries through 5G Networks – Current Status and Future Trends” (20 August 2020). This white paper summarises the progress and results produced by the projects of the 5G PPP programme in regard to the development of innovative 5G network services for vertical industries. It analyses 5G requirements and the business case for the use of 5G by verticals. Furthermore, the report presents exemplary use cases from eleven vertical sectors and identifies key 5G features that have been used to meet the specified requirements.


©Adobe Stock

The White Paper is relevant for defining future research and innovation activities beyond 5G. The outcomes of the 5G PPP will serve as the basis for the Smart Networks and Services (SNS) programme, which aims to organise the European research and innovation activities for the evolution of communication networks in the timeframe until 2028. One of the main objectives of the SNS programme is the full digitisation of vertical industries.

Further information

White Paper on 5G for verticals – https://zenodo.org/record/3698113

5G and Beyond

5G World Forum explored future networks

Milon Gupta
Eurescom

The 2020 edition of the IEEE 5G World Forum was originally scheduled to take place in Bangalore, India in September. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the organisers had to turn the event into an online conference. The focus of the third 5G World Forum was on ‘5G and Beyond: A Comprehensive Look at Future Networks’. It particularly aimed to explore how to nurture and cultivate 5G technologies and applications for the benefit of society.

A plethora of sessions and presentations

The pre-recorded sessions and presentations of the three-day programme were accessible to participants from 10th September to 2nd November. The programme offered participants a rich choice: There were 16 plenary keynotes by speakers from major companies, institutions and universities like the US Federal Communications Commission, China Mobile, Qualcomm, Airbus, ETSI and more. The keynote speakers covered a wide range of topics, from 5G deployment and application to concepts for 6G.

In addition to the keynotes, there were technical paper tracks, workshops, forums and panels, 5G topical/vertical tracks, tutorials, demonstrations, and patron exhibits. Unlike an in-person event, this online conference offered participants the opportunity to attend all the sessions they were interested in.

It is almost impossible to provide a representative account of the numerous sessions and presentations. Thus, the selection of two exemplary sessions below is highly subjective – it is based on Eurescom’s involvement in two projects that contributed to the selected sessions, 5G-DRIVE and 5G EVE.

Worldwide 5G industry fora session

5G-DRIVE is a Horizon 2020 project dedicated to EU-China collaboration in the area of 5G testing and validation. The project coordinator from Eurescom was invited to participate in a high-level panel on worldwide 5G industry fora. The topic of the panel session was “5G Trends and Collaborations: Regional Visions, Verticals and Inter-Regional Cooperation Activities”. The first panel session focused on Asia and Europe. It was moderated by IREST chairman Jean-Pierre Bienaimé and brought together eight panelists from Europe and Asia representing industry, research, and standardisation.


Panel moderator Jean-Pierre Bienaimé and some of the panelists

Among the panelists was 5G-DRIVE coordinator Uwe Herzog from Eurescom. In his statement, he provided some background information on the European-Chinese 5G research collaboration between 5G-DRIVE and its Chinese twin project. In answering the moderator’s question on the effectiveness of the European-Chinese collaboration, he emphasized that despite the organizational challenges of coordinating 5G trial activities between two projects on different continents and in different commercial contexts, the joint trial activities have progressed well and yielded a fruitful exchange and interesting results.


Winnie Nakimuli from UC3M presenting the 5G EVE paper

In a separate presentation, Uwe Herzog provided a more detailed overview on the joint EU-China trial activities of 5G-DRIVE and the Chinese twin project in the areas of enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and Vehicular to everything (V2X).

Overall, the first industry fora panel presented an excellent overview on the manifold activities towards 5G development, testing and deployment in Europe and Asia.


5G-DRIVE coordinator Uwe Herzog from Eurescom talking about the 5G-DRIVE project in the Industry Fora Panel

Validation trials workshop

5G EVE contributed a paper to the workshop on “5G Validation Trials across Multiple Vertical Industries” (WS2). The online workshop aimed at providing a forum for industry and academia to disseminate new results on 5G trials in vertical industries as well as share knowledge on related new 5G business developments. It brought together six researchers from industry and academia, who presented their papers.

Among them was Winnie Nakimuli from the University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M), who presented the 5G EVE paper on “Automatic deployment, execution and analysis of 5G experiments using the 5G EVE platform” (Paper No. 1570654444).

The rationale underlying the workshop was the essential role of validation trials for commercial 5G rollout, to test 5G features of novel services and applications in complex deployed environments. Such validation trials, like the ones performed via the 5G EVE platform, allow identifying and addressing issues related to coverage, interoperability, compatibility, and service provisioning. This is crucial for ensuring that 5G meets the requirements of various vertical sectors.

Further information

ICT for smart sustainable cities in Europe – An overview

Today, 75% of European citizens live in cities. This percentage is expected to grow to 80% by 2050. Cities consume about two thirds of the world’s energy and are responsible for more than 70% of global man-made CO2 emissions. Thus, cities play a crucial role for reaching the European Union’s CO2 reduction goals and the UN sustainability goals. Information and communication technologies are of key importance for enabling cities to become sustainable. The concept for ICT-enabled sustainability on municipal level is called “smart sustainable cities”.

Continue reading

Editorial

Dear readers,

For most of 2020, the world has been struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic. Short-term crisis management has dominated the agenda worldwide and in the EU member states. At the same time the European Union has been pursuing its longer-term vision of becoming the first climate-neutral continent. With the European Green Deal plan, the EU aims to make its economy sustainable by reducing net emissions of greenhouse gases to zero by 2050. The goal is to achieve this by decoupling economic growth from resource use, and by making the transition just and inclusive.

Cities play a key role in the transition to a sustainable economy and society. Most Europeans live in cities, and cities are responsible for the largest share of greenhouse gases. Many initiatives and projects are under way to make cities sustainable. And information and communication technologies are of key importance for enabling cities to become sustainable. The concept for doing this is called “smart sustainable cities”.

In this issue of Eurescom message, we explore what is done in Europe to make cities smart and sustainable. We present selected research and innovation projects that have contributed to implementing the vision of smart sustainable cities.

In the first article of the cover theme, Eurescom message editors Milon Gupta and Anastasius Gavras give an overview on ICT for smart sustainable cities. The next article presents the European smart cities project STARDUST, which has developed solutions for urban sustainability. In the following contribution, a team of Norwegian researchers from Telenor and NTNU explains the approach of the 5G SOLUTIONS project for co-creation of smart sustainable cities.

In an exclusive interview for Eurescom message, Covenant of Mayors board member Eckart Würzner talks about the sustainable development of European cities and the challenges ahead.

In the final article of the cover theme, the two authors from Orange Romania present a specific solution for 5G powered smart lighting in smart cities, which was developed in the smart city pilot of 5G PPP project SliceNet.

This edition of Eurescom message also includes a variety of further articles on different, ICT-related topics. See, for example, the new opinion article by Eurescom director David Kennedy on the importance of critical thinking in the age of fake news in his column “The Kennedy Perspective”. Under “Events”, we report about two important virtual events – the 5G World Forum and the European Research and Innovation Days. See also our “News in brief” section, which features the 5G PPP White Paper on 5G for verticals as well as the latest sales trends for service robots. Finally, in the latest “A bit beyond” article you can learn about the economic and social risks of spreadsheet errors.

My editorial colleagues and I hope you will find value in this edition of Eurescom message, and we would appreciate your comments on the current issue as well as suggestions for future issues. Enjoy reading our magazine!

At the end of this remarkable year, we wish you happy winter holidays and all the best for 2021, especially good health.

Milon Gupta
Editor-in-chief

Next generation communications meets clean energy

Virtual Proposers Day of CELTIC-NEXT and EUROGIA2020

Milon Gupta
CELTIC Office

The second Proposers Day held by CELTIC-NEXT and EUROGIA2020 on 15–16 September 2020 was quite different from the first edition, which took place on 29th January in Madrid at the Nokia premises. This time, the COVID-19 restrictions made an in-person event impossible. Thus, the Proposers Day was held as a virtual event. The positive aspect was that the number of registered participants doubled to over 200. Also the number of proposal ideas for the joint CELTIC Eurogia Call in autumn increased, from 12 to 15. And no less than 11 Public Authorities presented funding opportunities in their countries.

Due to the successful first joint proposers day, CELTIC-NEXT and EUROGIA2020 had decided to bring together both Eureka Cluster communities again for the autumn call that was open until 19th October. Responding to the growing need for cross-cutting approaches and synergies between Eureka Clusters, the goal of the joint call was to expand knowledge, boost visibility and promote cooperative efforts for innovative results. The second joint Proposers Day offered a discussion forum for organisations interested to participate in a collaborative research project via CELTIC-NEXT in the area of next generation communications or via EUROGIA2020 in the area of low-carbon energy technologies.

Welcome and keynote

The first day of the event started with welcome speeches by Valérie Blavette, Inter-Cluster Spokesperson and CELTIC Chairperson from Orange, and Sinem Altuncu, EUROGIA2020 General Manager from Paycore. This was followed by a keynote on cybersecurity challenges, given by Dr. Heiko Lehmann from Deutsche Telekom’s T-Labs. According to Dr. Lehmann, the rapid evolution of cybersecurity threats creates growing market opportunities.


Keynote speaker Dr. Heiko Lehmann from Deutsche Telekom’s T-Labs

Session on proposal submission

After the inspiring beginning, it was time to get to the nuts and bolts of proposal submission. Pierre Besse, Vice-President of EUROGIA and Dr. Peter Herrmann, CELTIC Office Director presented how easy it is to submit a project to the Joint Call. Both presented the eligible subjects of their respective Cluster and explained the requirements for a successful project proposal and how the online submission tool can be accessed. In addition, they explained the timeline and the evaluation process for proposals by technical experts and Public Authorities.

Business Impact from CELTIC and ­EUROGIA projects

If some participants were wondering about the benefits of getting involved in Eureka Cluster projects, they got convincing answers in the session on business impacts from CELTIC and EUROGIA projects, which was moderated by Pierre Besse from EUROGIA2020. In the first presentation, Dr. Antonio Cuadra-Sanchez presented the business benefits which his company Minsait (part of Indra Sistemas S.A., Spain) gained from its multiple participations in CELTIC projects, in particular the award-winning NOTTS project on next generation over-the-top multimedia services.

The business example for EUROGIA was equally convincing. Sahin Calglayan from Turkish Energy IoT Platform provider Reengen presented the benefits and impacts of EUROGIA project SolarPact.

Funding and focus in different countries

On the second day, representatives from 11 Public Authorities presented in a session moderated by CELTIC Programme Coordinator Christiane Reinsch the funding situation and research focus areas in their respective country. The countries and representatives included: Austria – Michael Walch, FFG; South Africa – Toto Matshediso and Vinny Pillay, DST; Canada – Narayanan Kasturi, NRC-CNRC; Israel – Neta Gruber, IIA; Turkey – Umut Ege, TUBITAK; Finland – Hannu Nurmi, Business Finland; Germany – Sabine Hemmerling, DLR; Spain – Juana Sanchez, CDTI; Switzerland – Colette John-Grant, InnoSuisse; South Korea – Hyewook Joung, KIAT; and Singapore – Navjeev Singh, Enterprise Singapore.


Presentation by Navjeev Singh from Enterprise Singapore

Singapore and South Africa were for the first time represented at a Proposers Day, which shows the growing international reach of CELTIC-NEXT and EUROGIA2020.

Successful SMEs

The session on successful SMEs, moderated by CELTIC Office Director Dr. Peter Herrmann, featured two success stories of SMEs which had benefitted significantly from their involvement in the respective Cluster project.


Piotr Pawalowski, Vice-President and CTO of medVC

Piotr Pawalowski, Vice-President and CTO of medVC, a Polish medical collaboration tool provider, explained how medVC developed major elements of its services through participation in CELTIC projects. The SME from Poznań had participated in the award-winning CELTIC project “HIPERMED – High Performance Telemedicine Platform” and the also award-winning successor project “E3 – E-health services Everywhere and for Everybody”. Today, medVC has a growing business, meeting the increasing telemedicine service demands by hospitals and patients.

Utku Korkmaz, CEO of Solarcati, presented how his company, a Turkish solar panel service provider in Turkey, is benefitting from its participation in EUROGIA2020.


Utku Korkmaz, CEO of Solarcati

Project idea pitches

Another core element of the Proposers Day was the pitching of project ideas. 15 proposers presented their ideas on a wide range of ICT and energy topics. The presentations led to productive discussions, which were moderated by Christiane Reinsch from the CELTIC Office. CELTIC Consortium Building Sessions had been organized and announced to support the participants to find partners and build a successful proposal.

› Further information

› Proposers Day page on the CELTIC-NEXT website – https://www.celticnext.eu/celtic-eurogia-online-proposers-day-15-16-september-2020/

 


Joint CELTIC-NEXT and EUROGIA2020 call timeline

Sales record for service robots

Between 2018 and 2019, the global sales value of professional service robots increased by 32% to 11.2 billion US dollars. These figures have been presented by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) in its “World Robotics – Service Robots 2020” report.

Medical robots accounted for 47% of the total professional service robot turnover in 2019. This was mainly driven by robotic surgery systems, which are the most expensive type of medical robotics. By 2022, medical robot sales have the potential to more than double by reaching 11.3 billion US dollars. About 90% of medical robots are from American and European suppliers. The market value of logistics robots sold or leased rose by 110% to 1.9 billion US dollars. Almost all of the logistics turnover was generated with robots for indoor use. Autonomous mobile robots have initially been used in warehouses. Due to the digitisation of production, they are now also part of smart factories. Thus, the IFR considers a continued strong annual turnover growth of 40% or more for logistics robots possible.

The trending Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) business models lower the hurdle for customers to automate with robots, according to the report. The benefit of using RaaS instead of buying robots is that companies have no fixed capital, no fixed costs, and no need for robot operators. The use of logistics systems in non-manufacturing industries has been strongly driven by warehouse solutions for major e-commerce companies. A strong potential can also be found in hospitals running their logistics with the help of professional service robots. In the segment of professional service robotics, about 90% of the sampled logistics robots were produced in Europe and North America, and about 10% in Asia.


© Thomas Plettenberg for Messe München / Source: International Federation of Robotics

The segment of field robotics consists of robots for agriculture, dairy, livestock farming and other field applications. Sales value increased by 3% to 1.3 billion US dollars. According to the IFR experts, the COVID-19 pandemic might increase demand for field robots. Travel restrictions for workers from Eastern Europe, for instance, who usually travel to Western Europe in harvest season, caused a shortage of labour supply. Farmers might compensate this with the use of field robots. Sales value growth rates of more than 30% for agricultural robots seem possible.

Service robots for personal and domestic use are mainly produced for a mass market in the area of household robots. This includes vacuuming and floor cleaning robots, lawn-mowing robots or entertainment robots. The total number of service robots for personal and domestic use increased by 34% to more than 23.2 million units sold in 2019. The value grew by 20% to 5.7 billion US dollars. Unit prices for the two major segments, robot vacuums and toy robots, have been declining in recent years. Today, basic robot vacuums are already available for less than 100 US dollars. 75% of the sampled domestic service robots – vacuum and floor cleaners, lawn mowers and other domestic robots – were produced by American companies in 2019. Asian companies had a share of 19%, European companies of 6%.

A growing market is the use of assistance robots for elderly or handicapped persons. The estimated sales value increased by 17% to 91 million US dollars.

In addition, the IFR experts expect that the COVID-19 pandemic will further boost the market for service robots. They envisage high demand in areas like robotics disinfection solutions, robotic logistics solutions in factories and warehouses as well as robots for home delivery.

Further information

IFR press release – https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/service-robots-record-sales-worldwide-up-32

Just transition to a sustainable Europe

European Research and Innovation Days

Milon Gupta
Eurescom

The European Research and Innovation Days are the European Commission’s annual flagship event for research and innovation. This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was held as an interactive online event from 22nd to 24th September 2020. The dominating topic was the European Green Deal.

 
Panel session with Commissioner Mariya Gabriel (right)

The three-day Commission event combined high-level speeches and panels with topic-specific information aimed at potential project proposers. The large choice of sessions included in addition to the high-level plenary 10 information and interaction tracks called ‘Hubs’ on the following central areas in EU research and innovation: Policy, Green Deal, Digital, Horizon Europe, Missions, Smart Implementation & Synergies, International Cooperation, European Innovation Council, European Institute of Innovation & Technology, and European Research Council.

Green Deal plenary

In the day-one plenary on “European Green Deal & Just Transition”, Frans Timmermans, Executive Vice President of the European Commission, presented the EU vision of a sustainable Europe, which decarbonises its economy and reaches zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Mr Timmermans stressed that this transition has to happen in a socially inclusive way, where no one is left behind.


Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans presenting the EC vision of a sustainable Europe and a just transition

New European Research Area

In the next plenary, a high-level panel of speakers, including Commissioner Mariya Gabriel, discussed the steps towards a new European Research Area (ERA). The panellists talked about the main novelties of the ERA communication including its contribution to build an excellent European R&I system for the benefit of all, and its new approach towards a wide outreach engaging all levels, including Member States, regions and citizens in this endeavour.

Green Deal Call Info Day

On the second day of the event, several information days on open Horizon 2020 calls took place, among them the information day for the Green Deal call. John Bell, Director Healthy Planet at the EC’s DG Research & Innovation, explained the goals and expected outcomes of the Green Deal call. It has a volume of around a billion euro spread across 8 Green Deal work streams. The EC expects from Green Deal projects a short-term and medium-term impact towards the achievement of the EC’s CO2 emission reduction goals.

Mr Bell pointed out that all solutions developed in Green Deal projects need to be scalable and socially acceptable. In view of the coming Horizon Europe programme, he said that 35{b28ae05319d94bff0b4d65c5a9f4524dd588360f05c61ef440e1608e0a1c4144} of Horizon Europe is envisaged to be for Green Deal related projects.


John Bell, Director Healthy Planet at the EC’s DG Research & Innovation

Conclusion

The event featured many more facets of the EU’s vibrant research and innovation ecosystem, including the contribution of women in technology as well as the way research and innovation will help in shaping the post-COVID-19 world.

Beyond sharing information, the event also enabled the interaction with and between participants via proposal pitches at online brokerage events and meetings in virtual chat rooms. Although the virtual format could not replace in-person meetings, it managed to facilitate interaction. Even in a post-COVID-19 world, when large-scale meetings are possible again, it might be the more sustainable option to keep the virtual format for the European Research and Innovation Days.

Further information

European Research and Innovation Days website – https://research-innovation-days.ec.europa.eu/