The FIRE - Future Internet Research and Experimentation - Initiative from the European Commission is addressing the need of early experimentation and testing in large scale environments for the construction of the Future Internet. A challenge for FIRE is to promote the concept of experimentally-driven research and to join the two ends of academic-driven visionary research and industry-driven testing and experimentation together.

As part of FIRE, the challenge for the project MyFIRE is to develop the use of experimental facilities in Europe in particular by increasing awareness of testing related best practices. The project will ensure a balance between the requirements for researcher's collaboration and the stakeholder's expectations. This means achieving the good experimental activities, developing the sustainable testing methodologies and paying a specific attention to the contribution to European standards development. The framework will be developed through the creation of open dialogue between the ICT networking research communities and experts from key areas of sociology, policy makers, economic models and standard.

In order to succeed in these challenges, MyFIRE's mission is organised around four activities:

• To identify the main issues and needs in the test beds approach:
  • Researchers  and users needs for experimental facility
  • Standardisation
  • Exploitation process of Future Internet research
  • Economics data for testbeds sustainability
• To define the  testing methodologies used by the projects in Europe and international testbeds, so that the best practices model can be analysed and documented leading to improved design, set up and use of the experimental facilities, and standards;
• To build common tools and roadmap to increase effectiveness in the testing approach to improve the use of the FIRE Facility;
• To disseminate the results and create a network: by a series of workshops in Europe and advanced emerging countries Brazil, Russia, India and China.

For more information on the project, click here.