The European Commission on 13 October launched a public-private partnership (PPP) with European data industry due to start on 1 January 2015.
The earmarked €500 million of investment over 5 years (2016-2020) from Horizon 2020 will secure around €2 billion from the industry. In total, the European Commission and industry will invest more than €2.5 billion over the next six years to master big data.
The Memorandum of Understanding to set up the PPP was signed by the Commission Vice President, Ms. Neelie Kroes, and the President of the Big Data Value Association, Mr. Jan Sundelin. Big Data Value Association is a non-profit, industry-led organisation whose members include research bodies such as Fraunhofer and the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence University of Bologna (CINI), Polytechnical University of Madrid, University of Duisburg Essen, the Technical University of Berlin, and companies such as Siemens. The association is open for additional companies and research organisations to join.
The Commission press release explicitly mentions that “The PPP will help focus public, private and academic research efforts to support research and innovation in game-changing big data ideas in fields such as health to deliver services like personalised medicine and predictive analytics”. The PPP is also intended to support “Innovation Spaces” that will offer secure environments for experimenting with both private and open data.
More information can be found here.
