Amal Alrish

Sustainable Places Conference 2022

Our colleagues from Ro Technology, represented by Amal Alrish, Diego Grimani, and Damiano Vallocchia, disseminated the Dig_IT project at the Sustainable Places Conference 2022 in Nice from 6- 9 September. They discussed collaboration opportunities together with over 150 projects addressing all of the Horizon Europe work program’s topics that have to do with creating a better, more sustainable built environment.

The opening plenary served as an invitation to innovate for sustainability with France, its Region Sud, and Nice Côte d’Azur. The European Commission, the French Ministry of Sustainable Development, the Mayor of Nice, and regional industry innovation clusters provided the opening keynotes. The session also included an info day where a relevant selection of forthcoming EU funding opportunities through the LIFE and Horizon Europe calls were presented. After the session, they had the chance to connect and create research and Market opportunities with the global Sustainable Places community during the networking and welcome drink.

During the second day, they had the chance to attend several seminars and workshops covering various topics at the Sustainable Places Conference. For example, digitalization of the building sector, AI and ethics in manufacturing, and Smart meter roll-up. In addition, in the afternoon, they attended other interesting workshops related to Ontologies in Digital Twin, and Deep renovation. Moreover, they participated in celebrating the 10th anniversary of this #event during a unique social dinner at the iconic Le Negresco hotel in the evening.

The third day of the Sustainable Places Conference featured different workshops and paper sessions on the topics of innovative renovation techniques, renewable technologies, circularity, and grid-scale technologies. Our colleague Amal Alrish presented the Dig_IT project’s objective, concept, use cases, achieved milestones, and foreseen ones during the Sustainable Construction session.

During the fourth day, besides attending several interesting workshops on Energy Skills in Construction 3.0, Urban transformation, renewables, and AI & digitalization, they had the opportunity to visit the Nice Smart City Innovation Center (IMREDD – Université Côte d’Azur) in the afternoon. This center is interested in a social challenge: the intelligent and resilient territory tackling all environmental problems. It aspires to develop the Mediterranean city of the future. They had the chance to know the majority of its operations, which are centered on four Strategic Activity Areas (SAAs). These include intelligent buildings/neighborhoods, mobility, risks, the environment, and, in a transversal manner, human beings. The core of smart city projects is the philosophical, ethical, safety, well-being, behavioral, and usage aspects.

The first milestone (MS1) press release

Check out the first press release first press release which reports our first milestone “User requirements, systems and assets of use-cases are mapped”

8th Technical Meeting

On the 24-25th of May, the 8th Technical Meeting of Dig_IT has been held at Bergamo, Italy. The work package leaders presented the work accomplished during the period and discussed with other partners the open points of their tasks. 
We had the opportunity to visit the Marini Marmi mine, thanks to MARINI, learn more about the process of managing activities in the mine site in order to facilitate the production of Ceppo di Gré and Nuvolato di Gré stones, and control the location of the working area to install the sensors. During the “open discussion” session, the main topic was on the sensors that have personal information of the heart rate, and how to do the test to calibrate the sensors on the real scenarios with volunteers without making any ethics issue. 

 

7th Technical Meeting

On the 22nd of February 2022 the 7th Technical meeting of Dig_IT has been held online. Every WP leader has shown the work undertaken during the last period. Each WP was analyzed with the comments and questions of the involved partners. 

In addition, a list of open points was reviewed, the risks for the next actions were analyzed and possible management and solutions were discussed.

1st Review Meeting


After planning of conducting the review meeting at Bergamo and visiting Marini Marmi mine, once again Covid 19 interfered with our plans and impeded us from meeting in person. Thus, on the 19th of January, the project review meeting of the first Reporting Period has been held remotely. At the meeting, Dimos Paraskevas, the project officer, and Marek Praski and Cristina Monsone, the technical expert reviewers for the European commission, were present to evaluate the project development.

All work package leaders presented the work done during the first reporting period (18 months) with regard to the overall work plan and emphasized significant project milestones achieved. In addition, partners replied to the doubts and questions of the reviewers and explained their strategies to manage and mitigate the risks. Partners appreciated the suggestions from the reviewers and the project officer, to improve the work in the next period.

The first impression of the reviewers after the completion of the review was that of satisfaction and recognition of the good work done so far, of course with recommendations for improving some aspects of the work.

6th Technical Meeting

Dig_IT project kicked off in a very critical period when Covid-19 pandemic has started. Since the time, we had to adept at organizing efficient virtual meetings to keep the project’s goals on track and meet deadlines. Finally, we met for the first time in presence for the 18M Technical Meeting, on the 23-24th of November, at Kajaani in Finland organised by Tampere university together with the ITAINNOVA, the coordinator. Each work package and task leader presented a summary of their progress and discussed with the other partners the open issues.

We had the opportunity to visit the Sotkamo Silver mine, thanks to Tapojarvi, and learn more about the process of managing activities in and around the mine site in order to facilitate the production of a mineral product. In addition, we had the chance to install the first sensors to gather assets data and to test the first version of the smart garment.

5th Technical Meeting

On the 7th of September the 5th progress meeting of Dig_IT has been held online. every partner has shown the work undertaken during the period. In particular, every WP leader went through the list of open points of their tasks. Each WP was analyzed with the comments and questions of the involved partners.

A special discussion on the installation of the first sensors to gather assets data and testing the first version of the smart garment in Sotkamo mine, was taken up.

It was agreed to try to hold the next technical meeting in a face-to-face format. TAU and Tapojarvi will organize the meeting in order to conduct the meeting at their premises, including a visit to Sotkamo Mine. 

4th Technical meeting

On the 7th of May 2021 the 4th progress meeting of Dig_IT has been held online. Partners presented their ongoing work for each Task and planned the activities for next months. They discussed all the open issues with the partners involved and at the top of them, the lack of real data from the end users. 

It was highlighted the necessity of seeing a future product to be exploited by the mines and final users.

At the end, a few comments and conclusions from the PSC meeting were disseminated.

Dig_IT portfolio is now available on Raw Materials Knowledge Gateway

Dig_IT project is now available on Raw Materials Information System (RMIS), the European Commission’s reference web-based knowledge platform on non-fuel, non-agriculture raw materials from primary (extracted/harvested) to secondary (recycled/recovered) sources, along their entire value/supply chains. RMIS meets the needs of empowering the European Union Raw Materials Knowledge Base (EURMKB) and acts as the central entry point to this nature of knowledge and as interface for policy support.

One of the thematic sections of the RMIS platform is the “Raw Materials Knowledge Gateway” (RMKG), which is a key element of the RMIS as it provides an access point with concentrated knowledge on raw materials from several providers, at European, national, and international level.  The portfolio of Dig_IT was published in December 2020 to the RMKG and can be found via this link https://rmis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/?page=rmkg. At a first glance on Dig_IT portfolio, the visitor will notice the visual identifier of the Project (Project’s logo) and the Project’s webpage. Furthermore, the visitor has the chance to navigate through the thematic sections “Overview”, “Raw materials Knowledge”, “Research and Innovation” and “Links and Contacts” where the relevant details are presented.