Abstract
FET Flagship—The FuturICT project
Future and Emerging Technology (FET) Flagships are ambitious, large-scale, science-driven research initiatives (
To prepare the launch of the FET Flagships, six Pilot Actions were funded over a period of 12 months starting in May 2011, whose contents will be discussed in this and in the next issues.
FuturICT—The FuturICT knowledge accelerator and crisis-relief system: Unleashing the power of information for a sustainable future
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Prof. Steven Bishop
University College London, UK
What if global scale computing facilities were available that could analyze most of the data available in the world? What insights could scientists gain about the way society functions? What new laws of nature would be revealed? Could society discover a more sustainable way of living? Developing planetary scale computing facilities that could deliver answers to such questions is the long-term goal of FuturICT. This initiative is seeking to develop Information and Communications Technologies that will provide scientists, governmental officials, and citizens with a planetary scale computer known as a Living Earth Platform. The Living Earth Platform will provide the means of analyzing data and managing complex events. It could, for example, provide a basis for predicting natural disasters or managing and responding to manmade disasters that cross national borders or even continents. The platform will model societies, and could be used by policy makers and citizens, for example, to detect and mitigate crises and identify areas for targeted technological development.
FuturICT intends to turn the massive quantity of social data into knowledge and technological progress. It will collect and analyze a mass of information from dynamic data sources, ranging from crowdsourced sensor information through digital media, social networks, and blogs, to public infrastructure. These data could be used to assess shifts in collective opinions and social attitudes, changes in consumer behavior, the emergence of tensions in communities, demographics, migration, mobility patterns, or health trends.
The intention is to undertake interdisciplinary research, involving domains such as complexity, computer and the social sciences, to address the scientific challenges associated with the realization of this goal and the needed advances in Information and Communication Technologies.
What can Europe expect to gain?
The FuturICT project would be the first large-scale research project worldwide to foster the scientific and ICT breakthroughs needed to address the challenges of humanity in the 21st century, from financial, economic, and social instability to crime and conflict. By creating realistic global-scale simulations and techno-socio-economic models, the flagship would provide an important platform to drive fundamental breakthroughs in the social sciences and economics. For industry, FuturICT would increase the resilience and usability of large-scale ICT systems through socially inspired system engineering and a better understanding of the social context for technological developments.