The consortium consists of three leading research partners:

• Biccoca University, Milano, Department of Computer Science, Systems and Communication (DISCo);
• Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V., Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS, Berlin, Germany (FOKUS);
• UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, The Netherlands, Delft, (UNESCO-IHE), Department of Integrated Water Systems and Governance;

and the applicant organisation:

• University Politehnica from Bucharest, Department for Computers (UPB-CS).

The leading research partners complement each another.

Fraunhofer FOKUS addresses important challenges in the society and the smart cities of the future, including access to information, economic and sustainable use of resources, smart mobility and a modern governmental administration. In its projects, Fraunhofer FOKUS establishes useful ties between industry, governmental administration, users and the people. As a member of important standardization bodies, the institute contributes to the definition of new standards in information and communication technologies.

DISCo is a department that performs both education and research, and has top results in the field of ICT for water resource management. It brings the experience of involving in research activities not only experienced researchers and teaching staff, but also master and PhD students, thus ensuring the sustainability of the research, through trained people. It has also strong links to the applied research, through the Consorzio Milano Ricerche. DISCo has a fruitful cooperation with UNESCO-IHE, being a good example of excellence in interdisciplinary researches.

UNESCO-IHE brings the excellence in defining, modelling, and applying advanced technologies in the field of water management. More specific, the Integrated Water Systems & Governance (IWSG) department covers a broad range of subjects, from hydrological and hydraulic modelling sciences, engineering, information technology, mathematics, knowledge management, and innovation studies, to sociology, law, economics, public administration and political science. It is also a good example of combining research with education at the level of master and PhD.

The Distributed Systems team of UPB develops research projects in large-scale distributed systems middleware and applications, in cooperation with similar international centres. Its projects include MonALISA monitoring platform and MONARC 2 simulator with Caltech and CERN; DataCloud@work advanced, and autonomic storage mechanisms for cloud services with INRIA; interoperability in e-government services with Fraunhofer FOKUS; and provisioning of cloud services with VU Amsterdam. UPB team has experience in improving the distributed systems’ middleware and adapt it to the requirements and profile of distributed applications. More recent results are presented in section 1.3.