FRAUNHOFER INSTITUTE FOR OPEN COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

The Executive Board of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft has decided to appoint Dr. Tom Ritter as Deputy Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS. The computer scientist took over his position in November 2019 and will support the managing director of the institute, Prof. Dr. Manfred Hauswirth, in his various tasks. 

In the context of the interdisciplinary research network “Berlin University Alliance”, a total of 24 research projects began their work on November 1, 2019. The cooperation project “Open Science by Design - new and innovative methods for (semi-)automated research data management” is led by Prof. Sir Nigel Shadbolt (University of Oxford), Prof. Manfred Hauswirth (TU Berlin, Fraunhofer FOKUS & Weizenbaum Institute) and Dr. Sonja Schimmler (Fraunhofer FOKUS & Weizenbaum Institute).

“Self-data protection” is about exercising the rights to one's own data and making conscious and self-determined decisions about their disclosure. This is becoming increasingly important in the context of progressively data-intensive technologies.

The implementation of Open Data in public administration is motivated differently. Transparency and participation in political decision-making processes can be political objectives to the same extent as the creation of economic and social added value.

At the end of October, the Bundesnetzagentur published the fees for frequencies in the range from 3.7 GHz to 3.8 GHz for local applications, thus laying the foundation for campus networks, i.e. a company's own network on factory premises. Fraunhofer FOKUS discussed the technical implementation of such private networks with partners from industry and science at the Industrial IoT (IIoT) Forum and the FOKUS FUSECO Forum (FFF) from November 6-8, 2019, and presented various 5G demonstrations for the factory of the future. 

At the 10th FOKUS Fuseco Forum (FFF), the FOKUS researchers will present a field trial with a portable 5G network, which they carried out with partners at the Berlin Festival of Lights. The FFF will take place on November 7th and 8th in Berlin. During these two days, international telecommunications experts from science, business and politics will discuss trends and challenges in the use of 5G. 

A national research data infrastructure for research data management creates added value in the overall system. Its aim is to support self-determined scientific work in order to facilitate access and handling of data and to advance cognitive processes.

Whether Open Data really creates benefits for the economy, population and administration depends strongly on the quality of the data. Only high-quality data that is easy to locate and process can be used efficiently. In order to simplify this task for data publishing organizations, Fraunhofer FOKUS created a guideline for the provision of data and metadata.