The Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (CERTH) is the only research centre in Northern Greece and one of the largest in the country being founded in 2000. It is a legal entity governed by private law with non-profit status, supervised by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) of the Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. CERTH has important scientific and technological achievements in many areas including: Energy, Environment, Industry, Mechatronics, Information & Communication, Transportation & Sustainable Mobility, Health, Agro-biotechnology, Smart farming, Safety & Security, as well as several cross-disciplinary scientific areas. From CERTH, Information Technologies Institute (ITI) and Chemical Process and Energy Resources Institute (CPERI) will participate in order to fulfil the objectives of INSULAE. These are outlined in details in the next paragraphs.

Centre for Research and Technology Hellas / Chemical Process Engineering Research Institute

On March 30, 2012 Chemical Process Engineering Research Institute (CPERI) merged with Institute for Solid Fuels Technology and Applications (ISFTA) to establish the Chemical Process & Energy Resources Institute (CPERI). The new established Research Institute is a member of the Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (CERTH). CPERI contributes to the increased competitiveness of the Greek and European industry by providing unique and innovative solutions to research problems of technological and/or commercial interest. CPERI is classified among the Institutes of Excellence in Greece and employs a scientific staff of about 250 people, while its inflows is around to EUR 10 million €/year. In this light, the total budget of bioenergy and energy recovery projects by the utilisation of clean fuels is until now over 14 million €. Moreover, it holds the 16th position among the European Research Institutes (top 50 REC organisations) having signed grant agreements in FP7 in terms of counts of participations for the period 2007-2013.

CPERI has a wide background on the study and construction of process systems and integrated systems used for energy production, management and storage and has unique knowledge in system design, engineering and industrial automation. CPERI’s expertise and competences include: 

• Design of fully automated process and energy harvesting systems;
• Modelling and design optimization of complex systems (power systems, renewable energy systems);
• Energy management of autonomous power systems;
• Design and implement Smart-grid topology to optimize energy resources;

CPERI employs several prefeasibility studies for public buildings and facilities in order to assess their current energy status and proposes solutions, which reduce the energy consumption by increasing their energy efficiency (Greece-Albania projects 2014, CBIP and GALET). 

CPERI is already involved in several National based actions related to Energy Saving, with use of RES, green transportation, environmental upgrading, optimum waste management and sustainable management of water resources. A current program called ‘Green Communities’ is taking place in Elati, a village near Servia-Velvento in Greece. The municipality has a need for the integration of green energy technologies to achieve energy sustainability and CPERI’s staff had the scientific supervision of this action. Additionally, CPERI supervises the technical specifications and the official tender arrangement for the integration of RES solutions for the case of six different retrofitted public buildings in the region of Grevena in Greece, in the framework of the EEA-Grants (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway) funded by 85% from EU and by 15% from corresponding Public Investment Programme of the Greek Republic The total budget of the demo activities is 1.5 mE and the project finishes by Dec 2017.In the framework of this project the following actions, which are in line with the INSULAE objectives, are foreseen:

Α: Public building of Region (Autonomous PV  60 kW, LED lightning,Compensation capacitors, Heat pump of 65kW, Charging station of electric vehicles through solar energy)

Β: General hospital of Grevena (Autonomous PV  40 kW, Solar thermal system, LED lightning, Compensation capacitors)

C: Public swimming pool (Solar thermal system, pipe insulation)

D: Public gym (Solar thermal system)

Ε: Residence for students (Autonomous PV  20 kW, Solar thermal system)

F: School for professional training (Autonomous PV  40 kW, Geothermal heat pump, LED lightning)

CPERI offers expertise in sustainable development in terms of energy and energy efficiency with a focus on environmental protection, such as:

• Identifying the consumption of energy
• Undertake the technical assessment for the available technologies that could increase the flexibility of the blocks of buildings: a) RES, b) available energy storage solutions; 
• Monitoring, control of implementation of the proposed actions and reporting their results
• Examine the replication potential, e.g. for additional Greek cities and islands.

Centre for Research and Technology Hellas / Information Technologies Institute

The Information Technologies Institute (ITI) was founded in 1998 as a non-profit organisation under the auspices of the General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Greek Ministry of Development, with its head office located in Thessaloniki, Greece. Since 10/03/2000 it is a founding member of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) also supervised by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT).

CERTH/ITI is one of the leading Institutions of Greece in the fields of Informatics, Telematics and Telecommunications, with long experience in numerous European and national R&D projects. It is active in a large number of research domains such as Energy Efficiency in Buildings, Security and Surveillance, Image and Signal Processing, Computer & Cognitive Vision, Human Computer Interaction, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Multimedia, Database and Information Systems and Social Media Analysis.

CERTH/ITI has participated in more than 175 research projects funded by the European Commission (FP5-FP6-FP7 & H2020) and more than 100 research projects funded by Greek National Research Programmes and Consulting Subcontracts with the Private Sector (Industry). The last three years, the Information Technologies Institute has attracted an income of more than 25.5 M€ from National and European competitive R&D projects. For the last 10 years, the publication record of ITI includes more than 270 scientific publications in international journals, more than 600 publications in conferences and 100 books and book chapters. These works have been cited in more than 6.500 times.

With respect to this project, the Information Technology Institute exhibits substantial research activity as well as technology transfer actions, and employs a high quality scientific group in the area of multi-sensorial and energy related systems, the development of simulation platforms and visual analytics for highly complex systems. It participates in research networks with assorted institutes and industrial partners in Greece and Europe and is in the process of establishing a spin-off company, to commercially exploit the research results (already available as prototypes) of the Laboratory. The Information Technologies Institute exhibits also substantial research activity in the area of virtual, augmented and mixed realities where included modeling and simulation of complex virtual environments, haptic force feedback applied research, 3D modelling and compression, deformable objects and cloth modelling, collaborative virtual environments, new sensor development for head/hands/body tracking, multimedia analysis/synthesis, gesture recognition, head motion modelling and tracking, advanced applications of virtual/augmented/mixed reality in education and training, e-health, assistive technologies, culture, industry and e-business.

Concluding, CERTH/ITI has high experience in the topics and objectives of this project. CERTH/ITI (Dr. Dimitrios Tzovaras) was the coordinator of the FP7-ICT (CP) Adapt4EE “Occupant Aware, Intelligent and Adaptive Enterprises” and FP7-ICT (CP) INERTIA “Integrating Active, Flexible and Responsive Tertiary Prosumers into a Smart Distribution Grid”, in which it was leading the human presence and movement analysis activities in controlled enviroments (e.g. buildings, factory shopfloors etc.) as well as the development of Demand Side Management strategies, potential role and applications for the aggregator, energy monitoring of tertiary buildings through distributed multi-sensor installations and visual analytics and data mining technics.

Moreover, it is participating in H2020-ICT (IA) VICINITY “Open virtual neighbourhood network to connect intelligent buildings and smart objects”, H2020-EE (IA) enCOMPASS “Collaborative Recommendations and Adaptive Control for Personalised Energy Saving”, H2020-LCE (IA) inteGRIDy “integrated Smart GRID Cross-Functional Solutions fot Optimized Synergetic Energy Distribution, Utilization & Storage Technologies” and H2020-EE (RIA) GreenSoul “Eco-aware Persuasive Networked Data Devices for User Engagement in Energy Efficiency”, extending and applying expertise on energy consumption modelling privacy-aware microlocation tracking within buildings, forecasting, DR prediction, flexibility analysis, developing data and visual analytics engines.

In addition, through the participation in the FP7-ICT (CSA) Ready4SmartCities “ICT Roadmap and Data Interoperability for Energy Systems in Smart Cities” and H2020-EeB (CSA) SWIMing “Semantic Web for Information Management in Energy Efficient Buildings” projects, CERTH/ITI has gained substantial experience in energy data interoperability, semantics, ontologies and linked data in the wider smart-cities concept.

Finally, both Institutes act as Innovation manager in the recently EU funded project of Smart Cities and Communities named as IRIS “Integrated and Replicable Solutions for Co-Creation in Sustainable Cities”, supporting the investigation and replication of innovative technologies promoting the application of smart RES solutions in different districts of the 3 lighthouse cities of Utrecht (NL, Project Coordinator), Gothenburg (SE) and Nice Côte d’Azur (FR) and the 4 Follower Cities of Vaasa (FI), Alexandroupolis (GR), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (ES), and Focsani (RO). IRIS ambition is to unlock the intelligence of communities by co-creating elegant action in a sustainable Europe.  IRIS is organized around 5 key challenges, referred as Transition Tracks, focusing on (i) Energy Positive Districts, (ii) Smart Energy Management, (iii) Smart e-Mobility, (iv) a digital integrated City Innovation Platform and (v) Citizen Engagement and Co-creation.