The Integrated Systems Laboratory (ISL) of the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications (IIT), reached many milestones and new achievements throughout 2017. The year began by kicking off two newly funded European Commission projects: “SAINT”, which analyzes and identifies incentives to improve levels of collaboration between cooperative and regulatory approaches to information sharing, and “MARINE-EO”, the first pre-commercial procurement for Earth Observation. The highly successful Proof-of-Concept implementation of the FLYsec risk-based security system at the Schonhagen airport, paved the way for the final pilot at the Luxembourg airport scheduled for early 2018. “SYNTELESIS”, a 36 month research project funded by the Greek Secretariat of Research (GSRT) was kick started in September 2017. The project involves know-how and infrastructure from all the labs of the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications and aims to develop innovative technologies and applications in the fields of Information Technology and Communications, Health, Culture and Tourism. The successful completion and review of the FP7 AF3 project provided the groundwork for future collaborations in the area of advanced forest fire fighting. Ongoing projects such as EU Travel, Focus Locus and CY-CISE continued their development and have received positive feedback from reviewers throughout the year.
The 3D digital guide application iGuide Knossos achieved significant milestones by receiving the Greenlight from the STEAM community for distribution through this ultimate online gaming platform. Additionally, our Laboratory completed the first pilot project of iGuide Knossos to integrate this digital application into the educational process, in conjunction with the Greek-German Educational Schools in Pallini, Attica. Education continues to be a top priority for ISL, where SMART Camp workshops in Robotics and Digital Arts for students aged 12-18 continued for the fourth consecutive year and a new MSc program in Data Science was launched. Furthermore, ISL received significant research funding for the purchase of the necessary equipment for the creation of a research laboratory on Virtual Reality and Projection Mapping technologies.
In 2017, the ISL research associates published 3 SPIE journal papers entitled “Mitigating randomness of consumer preferences under certain conditional choices”, “Sensor data monitoring and decision level fusion scheme for early fire detection” and “Fire detection and incidents localization based on public information channels and social media” which were presented at the SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing 2017 conference in Anaheim, California USA. The year closed with a positive outlook for 2018 with ISL securing funding for 4 new projects from the General Secretariat of Research & Technology (GSRT) that relate to applications of ICT in culture, tourism and creative industries funded by the Program Research-Innovation- Entrepreneurship; and 2 new projects from EU Horizon2020 Security Program that relate to integrated border security and the development of innovative solutions to support mission operations of EU to third countries. In 5 out of these new 6 projects, ISL is the Coordinator whereas in the 6th ISL is the Scientific Coordinator.