EPIS aims at deepening the understanding of potential market developments and trends, of the potential evolution of technologies and of business models. The project main objectives consist of the development of an observatory of trends in technology and business evolutions related to ICT, the running of foresight exercises on selected areas in ICT and the investigation of specific implications for policy (in particular R&D policy on ICT). EPIS is the follow up project of FISTERA, a Thematic Network on "Foresight on Information Society Technologies in the European Research Area"

In 2007 the thematic focus is on the creative content sector, looking at content creation, content distribution and user interaction, assessing future technological trends both on the supply and demand sides, at the technology level as well as at the market application level with a view to identifying fast emerging trends and hot issues, to draw the attention of policy makers to unexpected trends.

EPIS is being undertaken on behalf of the EC DG INFSO in cooperation with the ETEPS network. The core ETEPS team members are: Fraunhofer-Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung (ISI), Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe GmbH (ITAS), University of Sussex (SPRU), ARC systems research GmbH (ARCSys). The ITAS part in 2007 is to write a policy briefing paper on the Creative Content Sector and to produce an Annual Monitoring Synthesis (AMS) report analysing foresight studies, roadmaps, and ICT news in the media to gain a broad picture of current hot topics and significant trends.

• For further information see the EPIS-website
• A leaflet about the EPIS project can be downloaded here
• The website of FISTERA is available here.

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