Big Data Alliance wraps up its first members’ meeting

On 26 January 2022, the first official Big Data Alliance (BDA) meeting took place in an online format. During the meeting, the current BDA participants were able to interact and get an initial idea of their capacities and expectations in relation to the expected work.
First, Roman Serdar Mendle, Coordinator for smart cities, circular economy and climate neutrality at ICLEI, made a brief presentation about the BDA's cyclical stakeholder process to connect and utilize open data sets. Roman pointed out that the collaboration between data sets and solution providers is a key factor for the co-creation of solutions.
Second, Marcelo Lampkowski from ICLEI, a global network of local and regional governments committed to sustainable urban development, highlighted the activities pursued by the network within the scope of data collection, so as to generate added value for local and regional governments.
Following Marcelo, Nikos Dimitropoulos introduced the work developed by the Decision Support System Laboratory, a multidisciplinary scientific unit within the National Technical University of Athens’ (NTUA) School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He emphasized its research in areas such as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. NTUA is the oldest and most prestigious academic institute in Greece.
After that, John Avramidis presented the concept and objectives of the H2020 BEYOND project. The BEYOND project develops and offers a big data platform and set of technologies that allow a data consumer to find and utilize data generated by buildings and exploit them during the real-time operation of the buildings so as to optimize their operation and energy performance. John expressed his interest in sharing the lessons learned in BEYOND and in exploring possibilities for the commercial exploitation of scientific outcomes together with the BDA participants.
Following John, Javier Parra Domínguez presented the AIR Institute and the IoT Digital Innovation Hub (IoT DIH), which were developed to promote and develop scientific research in the field of computer science and artificial intelligence. In doing so, it encourages technological innovation and knowledge transfer and the involvement of the IoT DIH with innovation-driven organizations that aim to help SMEs become more competitive through the adoption of Internet of Things technologies.
Next, Ulrich Filippi Oberegger, senior researcher and leader of the smart building team at Eurac Research, presented the work developed by the Institute for Renewable Energy on advanced energy systems and its thematic areas: sustainable heating and cooling systems; photovoltaic energy systems; energy efficient buildings; energy retrofit of historic buildings; urban & regional energy systems; overall energy system modelling & e-mobility. Ulrich discussed the possibilities of cooperation with industry and highlighted some of their ongoing EU projects, such as BuiltHub, INFINITE; MEZeroE and MATRYCS.
Following Ulrich, Wolfram Willuhn, CEO of the research-driven technology start-up Plutinsus, highlighted the challenges faced by operators of buildings and energy districts by mentioning that "better resource efficiency can be achieved through tighter coordination and maintenance of components and systems. This requires data-driven approaches to monitoring, maintenance and optimization; and these approaches are directly related to easy to use, flexible and cost efficient data analysis software".
Finally, Dr. Álvaro Sicilia from Ramon Llull University La Salle Barcelona Campus, highlighted the work carried out by the research group IAR - Integrated Architectural Research. Among the featured projects were the Open Data Sant Cugat, a platform for analysing integrated data from the public administration developed under contract with the municipality of Sant Cugat del Vallès; H2020 TIMEPAC - Towards innovative methods for energy performance assessment and certification of buildings, currently coordinated by La Salle Barcelona Campus; and the RETABIT project: Multi-dimensional data driven services to foster residential building retrofitting programmes in the implementation of SECAPs.
In conclusion, all participants committed to defining their roles as data providers, solution providers or data users and expressed their interest in building strategic partnerships.
The next BDA meeting will discuss topics related to asset aggregation, data access and capacity and it is scheduled for the end of March.
Find out more about the BDA and join here.