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European Commission, standards are crucial for European Climate Adaptation policy
On 24 February 2021 the European Commission adopted the new EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change, which is setting the pathway to prepare for the unavoidable impacts of climate change in Europe. The Commission clearly states in the strategy that they intend to “increase cooperation with standardization organisations to make sure that existing standards are climate-proof and to develop new ones for climate adaptation solutions”.
CEN and CENELEC support the European effort to mitigate climate change, an also the preparation for its unavoidable consequences. Since the publication of the first EU adaptation strategy in 2013, CEN and CENELEC have been working closely with the European Commission on climate proofing the key infrastructures by revising the relevant priority standards. The first set of standards that include adaptation solutions from various sectors are being now finalised.
In addition to the extension of the activities of the CEN-CENELEC Adaptation to Climate Change Coordination Group, at the end of 2020 the new CEN/TC 467 ‘Climate Change’ was also established with the objective to develop European standards in support of the EU policy objectives. This clearly indicates the importance of climate change in the European standardization. An overview of CEN and CENELEC’s activities to support the efforts to mitigate climate change can be found on the policy paper “Standards in support of the European Green Deal Commitments”
ETSI Report Paves the Way for First World Standards in Securing Artificial Intelligence
The ETSI Securing Artificial Intelligence Industry Specification Group (SAI ISG) released its first Group Report, ETSI GR SAI 004, which gives an overview of the problem statement regarding the securing of AI. ETSI SAI is the first standardization initiative dedicated to securing AI.
The Report describes the problem of securing AI-based systems and solutions, with a focus on machine learning, and the challenges relating to confidentiality, integrity and availability at each stage of the machine learning lifecycle. It also points out some of the broader challenges of AI systems including bias, ethics and ability to be explained. A number of different attack vectors are outlined, as well as several cases of real-world use and attacks.
To identify the issues involved in securing AI, the first step was to define AI. For the ETSI group, artificial intelligence is the ability of a system to handle representations, both explicit and implicit, and procedures to perform tasks that would be considered intelligent if performed by a human. This definition still represents a broad spectrum of possibilities. However, a limited set of technologies are now becoming feasible, largely driven by the evolution of machine learning and deep-learning techniques, and the wide availability of the data and processing power required to train and implement such technologies.
Standards@Rail: CEN and CENELEC celebrate the European Year of Rail
2021 is the European Year of Rail. On this occasion, CEN and CENELEC are proud to highlight the important role European standards play to ensure the well-functioning of a key sector for the future of Europe. Standardization on railways application is part of CEN and CENELEC’s wider work on transportation, a complex and large portfolio: it includes 1234 standards from CEN and CENELEC. These standards are mainly developed by two Technical Committees (TCs), CEN/TC 256 'Railway Applications' and CLC/TC 9X 'Electrical and electronic applications for railways'.
In particular, standards on rail cover a wide range of topics specifically related to railways applications (products, processes and services), such as, among others, safety, rolling stock capacity, system efficiency, as well as cybersecurity, digitalisation, and automatic couplings. This work on rail contributes massively to the development of safe, innovative and efficient railway systems infrastructure, rolling stock and systems, and supports the EU in its strategic ambitions.
ETSI Launches New Group on IPV6 Enhanced Innovation
In the 5G and cloud era, IPv6 will grow rapidly. Strengthening new generation IP network technologies based on IPv6 and its innovative technologies has become the common direction of the IP industry. To tackle the increasing Industry needs for IPv6 adoption in multiple Use Cases and Scenarios, ETSI has recently launched ISG IPv6 Enhanced innovation (IPE). IPE aims to drive full connectivity of IPv6 on everything and facilitate the business success of this technology. IPE members include 43 organizations to date, comprising carriers, vendors, and academia, working together to improve the industry ecosystem and accelerate innovation.
The group will first analyse the current landscape of existing IPv6 standards deployed on prime technologies such as 5G, IoT and Cloud Computing to identify gaps and thus accelerate IPv6-based innovations. Two other reports will cover data centre and Cloud use cases on one hand and 5G Transport use cases on the other hand. The last pieces of work will define Industrial IoT/enterprise requirements and IPv6 only transition requirements across new and evolving technology domains and areas.