As the COVID-19 pandemic is still ongoing and has led to an unprecedented shutdown of public and economic life throughout European countries, the virus also is a serious challenge for the still young DIH4CPS project. Most project staff are forced to stay at home and a number of physical meetings need to be postponed until further notice. Even though the crisis brings many challenges for the daily work within the consortium, there are some advantages in having 12 Digital Innovation Hubs cooperating at a European level in our project. The huge competencies in digital technologies combined with years of experiences in successful collaboration over long distances makes it easier for DIH4CPS to adapt to digital working procedures and distributed collaboration. Most staff are working from their desks at home and is anxious to deliver what DIH4CPS has been chosen for: Support to European enterprises.
DIH4CPS was designed for this task. Addressing especially Start-Ups, SMEs and Mid-Caps we are focusing on organizations that will be most affected by the governmental pandemic countermeasures. To improve our ability to support in this crisis, DIH4CPS decided to join the efforts of the European Commission and streamline its efforts with a number of like-minded projects. As a result, DIH4CPS will concentre its program for Third Party funding on experiments contributing to COVID-19 crisis recovery.
The 1st Open Call addressing these changes will provide a total funding of 1,800,000 € opening for proposals in May 2020. The scope of this Open Call aims to attract Application Experiments that apply Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Embedded Systems (ES) providing a demonstrable positive economic impact on SMEs in their geographical region or industrial sector. This includes replicable experiments that would, for example, lower production costs, influence product development, increase revenues or improve manufacturing management in similar SMEs. As a first result of DIH4CPS’s COVID-19 efforts, proposals that address industrial sectors and geographical regions with proven impact from COVID-19 are given special consideration. Furthermore, applications should also deliver a roadmap that convincingly demonstrates the Application Experiment´s contribution to the economic recovery of SMEs from the COVID-19 crisis.
We channel our funding to COVID-19 related matters, thus contributing to overcoming the crisis that we face today and support SMEs in this difficult time.
For further information on our 1st Open Call or other opportunities within DIH4CPS, visit:
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