The third project meeting of all ESUKOM partners was held in Hannover on April 12. The main topics on the agenda dealt with the status of the current prototype implementation and with the ongoing work on the next work package reports. Furthermore, the agenda for the workshop with Juniper Networks that was scheduled for the next day was discussed. The meeting was a great success, with lots of discussions and contributions from all partners – certainly a proof for the overall good project’s progress.
The ESUKOM project is in a great condition. Although the project is still pretty new (it started in October 2010), a lot of interesting results have already been accomplished. The first progress report was submitted to the German Aerospace Center (the entity that is responsible for carrying out the ESUKOM project on behalf of the German BMBF) in February 2011 and was accepted without any remarks. Furthermore, the ESUKOM consortium aims to present a first prototype on the next BMBF seminar in Bonn in October 2011.
The first milestone of ESUKOM was successfully accomplished in time on March 1. The second milestone is scheduled for January 2012. In order to ensure the constant progress of the three remaining work packages, the consortium decided to follow an agile development approach, with a sprint duration of 6 weeks.
IF-MAP in general is a topic that is gaining momentum. On the next TCG members meeting in June 2011 in Munich, the ESUKOM project will be presented during the research and development session. A paper that summarizes the current status of ESUKOM was submitted to the upcoming DACH Security conference that takes place in Oldenburg. Further publications are planned for LinuxTag 2011 in Berlin and ISSE 2011 in Prague. In addition to those publications, Fraunhofer SIT presented the ESUKOM project to the development department of Google in Zurich, Switzerland.
Currently, there are three work packages with respective deliverables that the ESUKOM project is working on. The main focus is on WP3 Software Development and WP4 Metadata Model. In parallel, a prototype system is under development. Based upon a matrix by the FH Hannover that maps IF-MAP operations between anticipated MAP clients and the set of defined ESUKOM key features, the next development tasks were coordinated. The goal of the first sprint is to have a working prototype where most of the anticipated MAP clients are able to publish standard metadata types to the MAP server. DECOIT presented their first working prototype for an IF-MAP Android client. It supports to publish simple metadata types from a mobile device. mikado soft introduced the first draft of an extended metadata model for the Location-based Services key feature. Based upon that model, a number of open questions were raised. Those questions were captured in order to be discussed with Juniper Networks on the workshop the next day.
The work on WP5 Correlation of Metadata will start when the consortium has agreed on a first draft for the extended metadata model. During the discussion on WP5 it became apparent that the development of efficient correlation algorithms is going to be one of the most challenging tasks within the ESUKOM project.
