1st Open call for NebulOuS – Trailblazing Research Project

Selected teams will test components of the NebulOuS architecture, by providing additional use cases where an IoT to Edge to Cloud infrastructure is needed. NebulOuS, standing for A META OPERATING SYSTEM FOR BROKERING HYPERDISTRIBUTED APPLICATIONS ON CLOUD COMPUTING CONTINUUMS, is a European Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Project.

NebulOuS aims to advance state-of-the-art (SOTA) in cloud and fog brokerage, cross-cloud applications deployment, self-adaptive reconfiguration, SLAs, secure network overlay, and modeldriven quality assurance. The project aspires to integrate NebulOuS innovations into real-world settings, ensuring applicability in cloud and fog computing ecosystems. The ambition includes extending SOTA in optimization, serverless support, IoT/fog data management, semantic models, and efficient monitoring with AI-driven anomaly detection, achieving target Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) for each aspect. NebulOuS envisions surpassing existing solutions and contributing to the evolution of cloud and fog computing technologies.

Objectives

• Fog brokerage for facilitating cloud computing continuum
• Non-repudiable SLAs and security in the NebulOuS Meta-OS
• Intelligent management of applications, business processes, and data streams lifecycle
• Model-driven quality assurance in fog brokerage
• Efficient, fault-tolerant monitoring and AI-driven anomaly detection
• Test and validate the NebulOuS Meta-OS platform in complementary use cases

Project Use Cases

During NebulOuS project, will be implemented use cases as pilots to test the platform usability and applicability in cloud and fog computing ecosystems in different domains.

• Domain: environment
  • Use Case: crisis management
  • In the face of large-scale disasters like floods, earthquakes, and wildfires, coordinating response efforts becomes a monumental challenge. NebulOuS takes centre stage in crisis management, offering an adaptable fog computing platform designed to overcome communication disruptions and elevate the efficiency of response teams.
• Domain: transportation and logistics
  • Use case: supply of fresh food to a city and last mile delivery optimalization
  • Under this environment, the main challenge of Mercabarna is to improve the management of the fresh and frozen products, and in general freight exchange, from the point of view of the product value chain considering the logistics, especially focusing inside Mercabarna’s premises, but also considering information and decision-making indicators coming from outside.
  • The pilot has two goals, which are divided into two use cases:
    • Development of Mercabarna’s internal traffic Digital Twin to support Mercabarna’s intra-logistics operations management, and
    • Capture and management of the data on trucks’ destination (city areas) to improve the last-mile goods distribution in the city. Every objective will be addressed in a separate application.
• Domain: smart city
  • Use case: computer vision for city maintenance
  • Cities use the IoT to collect real-time data to better understand how demand patterns are changing and respond with faster and less expensive solutions. With a 5G connection, cities will be able to gain knowledge at every social iteration and protect their data lakes from external access. From sensors, street furniture, and user equipment, cities are constantly producing data which requires connecting the sources and storing their data. As more knowledge is gained and more data is collected, there is an increasing need to process and secure data analysis mechanisms and exchange between geographically distributed places.
• Domain: energy and utilities
  • Use case: windmill maintenance
  • The goal of the use case is to validate the NebulOuS framework in deploying wind turbine inspection software in an optimal way, making appropriate use of cloud and fog resources. Drones capture highresolution images of wind turbine blades, which are processed by AI-enabled algorithms to automatically detect turbine damages and discover other valuable information for turbine maintenance.
• Domain: agriculture
  • Use case: precision agriculture
  • Precision agriculture (PA), satellite farming or site-specific crop management (SSCM) is a farming management concept based on observing, measuring and responding to inter and intra-field variability in crops.

Financial Eligibility

The following financial conditions apply for proposals to be eligible:

• The total budget per project may not exceed €150.000.

Countries

• Entities legally established in any of the following countries are eligible to participate in the NebulOuS Open Call #1:
  • The Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), including their outermost regions.
  • Horizon Europe associated countries.

Applicant

• NebulOuS will fund third-party projects that may be from:
  • Single entity – Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) working on the IoT, Edge, Cloud or other related technologies.
  • Consortium of maximum of 2 entities – Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) working on the IoT, Edge, Cloud or other related technologies AND a research organisation provided that the SMEs is a leader of the consortium.
• These entities are eligible under the following conditions:
  • Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are considered eligible ONLY if complying with the Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC and the SME user guide.
• In summary, the criteria which define an SME are:
  • The headcount in the Annual Work Unit (AWU) is less than 250.
  • Annual turnover less or equal to €50 million OR annual balance sheet total less or equal to €43 million.
• Start-ups that do not have yet annual turnover or balance sheets are also considered eligible given that they fulfil the criteria (a) and (b) at submission time.
• Research organisation is considered as eligible when is a legal entity established as non-profit organisation carrying out research and/or technological development as its main objective. It might be a public or private research and technology organisation (RTOs), university, and other non-profit research organizations and research centres.

For more information, visit Eurocat.