Open Calls FAQ

Vicinity Open Calls Frequently Asked Questions :

What is the difference between (i) and (iv) in the mandatory deliverables list?

" The deliverables should content at least the following information: i. Intermediate and final technical and management reports(1) ii. Test plan and test implementation iii. Data management plan iv. Final technical and management information v. Evaluation Plan vi. Exploitation and business model (1)Intermediate and final technical report shall include architectural design of the solution including security & privacy decisions and non-functional design (such as: performance, maintenance and installability), as well as, information about the dissemination and exploitation activities planned and undertaken" First of all, this is not the mandatory deliverable list, it is the MANDATORY Content. To clarify the question there will be at least two deliverables reports (Intermediate and final report) and they should contentet the information mentioned in (1). The rest of content should be distributed as you wish , but you should include the information. (e.g. you could include the exploitation and business models in a specific deliverable devoted to it or you could include the mentioned information in the Intermediate deliverable and in the Final Deliverable)

 

Are there any licence requirements for the offered service?

It is ,at least, required that license of the offered service should allow free of cost usage of the service by VICINITY Consortium and associated parties for presentation and validation purposes.

 

Are the slides going to be available on vicinity website?

Yes, slides and the video presentation will be available on the VICINITY website. See the following https://vicinity2020.eu/vicinity/content/open-calls/2nd-OC/open-call-material

 

What website or form should be used to submit the proposal?

Proposals should be submitted through the F6S web site, there is a form prepared to receive your proposal. https://www.f6s.com/opencall2vicinity . For further guidelines please check the document https://vicinity2020.eu/vicinity/content/vicinity-oc2-f6s-walkthroughhttps://vicinity2020.eu/vicinity/content/vicinity-oc2-f6s-walkthrough

 

In the template there is only the implementation part but it seems that other sections are needed (e.g. business models etc). Is there a template that includes other information?

The VICINITY Team has only provided the wps and list of deliverables template https://vicinity2020.eu/vicinity/content/vicinity-wps-and-list-deviverable-template-pdf, the rest of required documents are free , but remind , do not overpass the page limit (if any) and use pdf format.

 

Can custom ontologies be used to describe a service's metadata (e.g. service type, units of measurement, ...) or only the VICINITY ontology?

The VICINITY Ontology is mandatory to be used to describe a service's metadata, however in cases that new concepts are required, the ontology can be extended through the ontology requirements.

 

Can we have a list of current data available from IoT devices and other VAS that we could have access to in Vicinity?

You can find the information in the following deliverables • D5.1 Value Added Services definition requirements and architectural design.(https://vicinity2020.eu/vicinity/content/d51-value-added-services-definition-requirements-and-architectural-design) • D5.2 VICINITY Value -Added Services implementation framework(https://vicinity2020.eu/vicinity/content/d52-vicinity-value-added-servic...) • D9.3 Data Management Plan chapters 4-9 .(https://vicinity2020.eu/vicinity/content/d93-data-management-plan-second-version)

 

Is the neighbourhood manager API needed for registering the VAS?

No, VICINITY Neighbourhood Manager API is not necessary to be used for the registration of the services. Services are registred directly through VICINITY Gateway API or VICINITY Agent.

 

Do you rely on standards to provide IoT interoperability?

Yes, the IoT semantic interoperability is based on the W3C Web of Things (WoT) standard, which focuses on interoperability across IoT platforms. VICINITY uses and further extends this standard in order to formally describe the interfaces (APIs) and metadata of devices and services.

 

Do Microservices reside on the vicinity IoT gateway?

No, microservices are executed outside the VICINITY IoT Gateway and VICINITY P2P network, however they communicate with services and devices through VICINITY Gateway API.

 

What is the difference between Micro-Service and Value-Added-Service?

Value-Added Services rather address complete use cases and are a complete Service with Independent Business Model (e.g. Demand-Response Management, Traffic Management). Micro-Services contribute in particular Features to Value-Added Services. They do not necessarily address end users unless combined with another Value-Added Service (e.g. data analytics, encrypting, micro-payment, etc.)

 

Do you have any test sites for Public Transportation use cases?

No, but you could take a look at the Tromso use case which demonstartes a smart parking solution.

 

Cocreation is mentioned with external communities for which support letters should be provided. Is that obligatory? since only one partner can be in a proposal

Only one partner can participate in the proposal, through the letters of support, the VICINITY team wants to know if your service is receiving attention from other stakeholders

 

From the guide template "Your proposal should be based on one of more services from the list." you mentioned that these are indicative. Can you clarify please.

In the F6S form, firstly applicants should answer question 2. Please, indicate in which topic you are going to parcipate and select an option between (Topic A: Value Added Services for the VICINITY Pilots or Topic B Micro-Services for the VICINITY Platform). Secondly, in question 10. Please, Indicate what is the main requirement covered by your proposal applicants should select one requirement from A1 to A13 if Topic A was selected in question 2 or one requirement from B1 to B4 if topic B was selected in question 2. Please, notice that the system does not check if you select a requirement acordingly with the topic selected in question 2, that is your responsibility.

 

On use case 1. Are you currently doing fall detection of the elderly carrying the panic button?

Yes, the panic button that is used can also detect fall events. This automatically triggers a call to the 24-hour call center that is responsible for checking on the elders.

 

How far do you go with the word „FREE platform?“, does that mean that I as provider of Added value service will not pay a fee for my service connected?

FREE means Open Source, Platform is available for the VICINITY Open Call winners for free of charge during the project life time.

 

Interoperability on semantic level means that it is not on IoT devices level, when we can take one device and replace it with the same type of device but diferent vendor

Interoperability is realized on the level of VICINITY Gateway API which allows us to be vendor and technology agnostic on the level of the value-added services and devices.

 

What is the difference between test plan and evaluation plan?

The test plan should show that the software has met the objetives, the evaluation plan is wider and has to demonstrate that the whole project met their objectives(impact, economic, social, etc.)

 

"While looking at the get started guide available at https://vicinity-get-started.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getstarted.html it seems that some credentials are requested to run the examples. However, the login/registration website at https://vicinity.bavenir.eu/#/login seems not to be working (any registration attempt fails). Is it possible to run the getting started guide from “outside” of the project, as said in the webinar last week?

Yes, it is possible to connect to VICINITY from outside of the project, however we already experience that due some port restriction in some location (such as enterprise networks) it is not possible to log in. We know about this issue and we are working on resolving this issue. However, from not constraint network (such as households, mobile network) this should not be an issue. In case you still experience the problem, do not be afraid to file an issue in https://github.com/vicinityh2020/vicinity-neighbourhood-manager/issues. For planned constrained unavailability of the platform, please subscribe to our VICINITY Tweeter

 

Regarding the Tromso (NO) and Martim Longo (PT) sites, what kind of machine learning/data analysis based services do you already have or are you implementing on your own?

At the Tromsø pilot site we have developed a solution that delivers pretty advanced business logic through an API. We do currently not support machine learning, but keep logs with usage statistics. There is however limited how much data we can provide since we are limited by the conditions outlined in GDPR. The statistics are therefore limited to usage history of parking space - which includes generated income, time used as vacant/occupied and overspending (if you park for longer than you book). You will also be able extract other kind of info from the context and combined with open data like weather condtions, traffic etc

 

Regarding the Tromso (NO) site, on what is based the quoted "user profile" - e.g. behavioral modeling or anagraphical data collection ? About the "parking AirBNB" service: could our service interact/integrate with it - e.g. via API ? About the charging poles: what could we have access to ?

The user profile that is being referred to has to do with the user role, vehicle type, favourite locations (which may be the addresses of the different patients a healthcare work shall visit etc.). I believe you are alredy familiar with these screenshots from the mobile app: Well - the webbased admin interface offer even more functionality. The user profile tells us a lot about what needs and functions the user shall serve - in addition to help allocation suitable parking space based on vehicle dimensions, energy consumption etc. etc. We would however like to have charging points for EV that can be assigned to owners of apartments/parking space and thus expand on the services that can be offered the residents and the municipality at the pilot site.

 

Is all this functionality from the WoT ThingDescription (TD) still supported/allowed in VICINITY or do you only allow the usage of the VICINITY ontology?

Thing descriptions of each device or service needs to follow the VICINITY Ontology, thus mapping/ translation described in question can technically bring interesting added value for VICINITY interoperability as microservice for peers.