This Application Area relates to the confirmed international trends linking climate change to green-house gas (GHG) emissions and a more efficient energy resources usage. In this context, CREATE-NET plans to leverage on the points of strength of the research groups to promote the use of ICT technologies for reducing the environmental impact associated with our behavior in daily activities, including the usage of ICT technologies themselves. The relevance of this Application Area within CREATE-NET’s strategy is supported by the involvement in projects focused on the delivery of concrete results in the area of ‘green’ technologies.

The key applications related to the Green Tech Area include:

• Green ICT (e.g. energy-efficient data centers)
• Green wireless network protocols
• Smart Grids
• Energy Efficient Buildings
• ICT for Energy Efficiency (e.g. tunnels monitoring)
• Sustainable and multi-modal mobility

The rapid evolution of ICTs during the recent year translates into a huge opportunity to apply such technologies to achieve a positive impact on people’s well being across the different dimensions of their everyday life. In CREATE-NET such opportunity is being exploited to apply the various ICT competences of the Research Areas to the development of services and solutions able to improve quality of life and people’s well being through ICT. The focus of this Application Area is on the development and application of ubiquitous computing technologies for managing and monitoring personal health, providing assistance in daily activities and, more in general, supporting through continuous monitoring and care the personal wellness of people.

The key applications related to the Well Being Area include:

• Personal Health Systems for remote management of diseases
• Non-invasive monitoring of Alzheimer patients in day-care centers
• Multi-parametric monitoring of patients affected by bipolar disorders
• Use of virtual reality techniques for developing appropriate therapies for people affected by stress disorders
• ICT for smart and personalized inclusion
• Intelligent and social computing for social interaction (e.g. social networks)
• Persuasive interfaces for virtuous behavior change

Social Media is emerging as the new medium of mass communication; today Web 2.0 technologies allow users to communicate and share experiences in an interactive, participatory fashion. A set of factors are currently concurring to widen social interaction to new multimedia channels and patterns: the digital TV transition and  the convergence of broadcast and broadband channels offer the opportunity to transform the TV as a new media of interaction, allowing to access content and services in a more flexible and personalized way, directly from our living rooms; the extensive spread of mobile phones, the immediacy and instinctive nature of interactions they  allows entirely new applicative scenarios to be developed, where individuals can capture specific moments of their life and share them instantly with others, and make their content available to the other members of the community. This Application Area has been established with the intent to foster the development of innovative solutions in this domain, in particular with focus on these key applications:

• Digital Terrestrial Television
• IPTV (Internet Protocol Television)
• Web 2.0 technologies and services (e.g. social networking)
• E-Learning
• Platforms for events management
• Mobile advertising