Periodic Reporting for period 3 - AURORAL (Architecture for Unified Regional and Open digital ecosystems for Smart Communities and wider Rural Areas Large scale application)
Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-03-31
Lower population, business density and worse infrastructure makes creating new offerings in rural areas more challenging, negatively impacting socio-economic indicators. AURORAL supports rural areas by transitioning them into smart communities, moving on three main drivers: 1) digital, 2) socio-economic, and 3) environmental.
1) The digital driver, focuses on building an open interoperability layer – the AURORAL Middleware. Similar to a peer to peer VPN, it connects its users into a data sharing network based on REST and NGSI-LD. All data resides on the source node, while the Middleware takes care of peering, service/data discover, firewalls (e.g. through the hole punching), authentication, (smart) Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) based contracting and access control.
2) The socio-economical driver led to creating a dense network of smart communities that co-designed the SmarTomorrow platform. SmarTomorrow offers a community of practice, ready to use business models, maintenance of core services, helps to asses public and private funding and is offering direct funding via FSTP (open calls), to foster SmarCommunities and support rural innovators.
3) The environmental driver results from the Middleware’s integration of green innovation, intelligent territorial management services, green governance mechanisms, climate adaptation tools and green recovery instruments. Actively contributing to mitigate climate change and supporting the UN’s sustainable development goals.
The AURORAL consortium unites 30 partners from 10 European countries. Its solutions were demonstrated in 8 pilot regions: Alentejo (PT), Penedès (ES), Piedmont (IT), Southern Burgenland (AT), Västerbotten (SE), Lapland (FI), and Hålogaland and Nordland (NO). Further 20 open call projects validated the technology and extended the ecosystem with new services.
1) The digital driver, focuses on building an open interoperability layer – the AURORAL Middleware. Similar to a peer to peer VPN, it connects its users into a data sharing network based on REST and NGSI-LD. All data resides on the source node, while the Middleware takes care of peering, service/data discover, firewalls (e.g. through the hole punching), authentication, (smart) Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) based contracting and access control.
2) The socio-economical driver led to creating a dense network of smart communities that co-designed the SmarTomorrow platform. SmarTomorrow offers a community of practice, ready to use business models, maintenance of core services, helps to asses public and private funding and is offering direct funding via FSTP (open calls), to foster SmarCommunities and support rural innovators.
3) The environmental driver results from the Middleware’s integration of green innovation, intelligent territorial management services, green governance mechanisms, climate adaptation tools and green recovery instruments. Actively contributing to mitigate climate change and supporting the UN’s sustainable development goals.
The AURORAL consortium unites 30 partners from 10 European countries. Its solutions were demonstrated in 8 pilot regions: Alentejo (PT), Penedès (ES), Piedmont (IT), Southern Burgenland (AT), Västerbotten (SE), Lapland (FI), and Hålogaland and Nordland (NO). Further 20 open call projects validated the technology and extended the ecosystem with new services.
AURORAL started in January 2021 with the design phase (M01–M06), to setup project governance structures, project intern committees and to craft an implementation plan. In the following implementation phase (M07–M24), the AURORAL Middleware with all its accompanying services was created. In total 46 vertical (single domain) and 12 horizontal (cross-cutting) AURORAL enabled services were developed, in strong collaboration with the 1,400 stakeholders from the pilot sites forming the stakeholder advisory board. In phase 3, integration (M25–M36), all services were demonstrated at the pilot sites. This includes general purpose services like the Knowledge Graph Builder, AURORAL AI tools, user sentiment analysis, oHA online platform, but also specific solutions like the KOULUKYYTI app for transporting school children, oHA touristic offerings and car sharing, Biomass traceability tools, or the Energy Community Dashboard. In the finial consolidation phase (M37–M51), the solutions were scaled up, marketed, replicated and the ecosystem was extended. 20 successful open call projects (FSTP/cascaded funding) implemented additional services and validated AURORAL for their use case and in their region. The AURORAL Academy and Smart Learning Community proofed to be a valuable tools for teaching AURORAL’s fundamentals. AURORAL solutions were successfully replicated in several new regions. 22 business models were formulated after being validated at the pilot sites.
In total 47 scientific peer reviewed papers were prepared, complementing AURORAL’s technical output. AURORAL contributed to 10 standardisation boards, like ETSI SmartM2M TC or W3C Web of Things Working Group. AURORAL connected with 23 initiatives and projects, like Living-in.EU its sister project dRural, or with the EDIHs datalife Spain and Location Innovation Hub Finland. The project was present at more than 230 events and reached more than 2,600,000 people with its dissemination efforts.
One of AURORAL’s most important results is the founding of the https://SmarTomorrow.eu(opens in new window) platform. Many rural innovators presented their use case in the community of practices events, and interested parties were consulted on how to grow their business and assess funds. Possible partners were connected via the matchmaking platform and introduced in the many events. SmartTomorrow unlocks 350 Mio. Euro in public and private funding opportunities by listing them and providing support on how to assess them. In the future more direct funding will be supplied via further FSTP (open call) projects. SmarTomorrow further guarantees continuity of AURORAL solutions at the pilot sites and the maintenance of AURORAL’s outputs, like services, business models and know-how.
In total 47 scientific peer reviewed papers were prepared, complementing AURORAL’s technical output. AURORAL contributed to 10 standardisation boards, like ETSI SmartM2M TC or W3C Web of Things Working Group. AURORAL connected with 23 initiatives and projects, like Living-in.EU its sister project dRural, or with the EDIHs datalife Spain and Location Innovation Hub Finland. The project was present at more than 230 events and reached more than 2,600,000 people with its dissemination efforts.
One of AURORAL’s most important results is the founding of the https://SmarTomorrow.eu(opens in new window) platform. Many rural innovators presented their use case in the community of practices events, and interested parties were consulted on how to grow their business and assess funds. Possible partners were connected via the matchmaking platform and introduced in the many events. SmartTomorrow unlocks 350 Mio. Euro in public and private funding opportunities by listing them and providing support on how to assess them. In the future more direct funding will be supplied via further FSTP (open call) projects. SmarTomorrow further guarantees continuity of AURORAL solutions at the pilot sites and the maintenance of AURORAL’s outputs, like services, business models and know-how.
The AURORAL Middleware is the core technical solution of AURORAL. It enables seamless and secure data sharing across public and private networks. Distributed ledger technology enhances on authenticity in data sharing and enables smart contracts. The defined ontologies have been created, based on best practices from FIWARE, NGSI-LD or Schema.org and are thus easily extendable and applicable. The Middleware further introduced the possibility for federated semantic discovery, fine grained access control via ODRL privacy policies, firewall through the whole punching to connect from private networks bundled with automatic peer discover. Semantic discovery is not only used to find peers and data sharing opportunities, but also to fuel many of AURORAL’s accompanying services with meta data, like the CKAN data catalogue or the AURORAL Services Store.
28 innovations were identified during AURORAL’s implementation. They range from more general applications, like LLM based services for sentiment and user feedback analysis, to domain specific solutions, like the energy advisory service to improve building’s performance ratings including the use of virtual reality, or livestock precision farming using AI analysis of sensor collars and IoT powered production monitoring. All solutions showcase the benefits of standardised interoperability and data sharing, e.g. SafeSEARCH bundles weather data, maps, public incident information, with IoT and live data from drones, to manage search and rescue missions guiding several teams and organisations; or in Hålogaland tourism pilot, were public transport schedules, mystery tours, donation system, 360° interactive panoramas, map data, point of interests and local information are all bundled within the oHA horizontal service to present a seamless digital experience to tourists. AURORAL AI and dash boarding services are used to analyse the collected IoT data of visitor counters, trash bin sensors, user feedback and application log data to give insights into tourist behavior, better plan new experiences, optimise maintenance and to improve touristic offerings.
SmarTomorrow in itself presents a huge innovation, offering many benefits to digital doers and rural regions. Besides helping innovators to bring their vision to live and sustain them, many problems in the current digital landscape were identified, described and new alternative more financially, economically and socially sustainable solutions were developed. The AURORAL business models are also special, since they are based on a newly developed business model canvas template which also takes socio-economic aspects into account.
28 innovations were identified during AURORAL’s implementation. They range from more general applications, like LLM based services for sentiment and user feedback analysis, to domain specific solutions, like the energy advisory service to improve building’s performance ratings including the use of virtual reality, or livestock precision farming using AI analysis of sensor collars and IoT powered production monitoring. All solutions showcase the benefits of standardised interoperability and data sharing, e.g. SafeSEARCH bundles weather data, maps, public incident information, with IoT and live data from drones, to manage search and rescue missions guiding several teams and organisations; or in Hålogaland tourism pilot, were public transport schedules, mystery tours, donation system, 360° interactive panoramas, map data, point of interests and local information are all bundled within the oHA horizontal service to present a seamless digital experience to tourists. AURORAL AI and dash boarding services are used to analyse the collected IoT data of visitor counters, trash bin sensors, user feedback and application log data to give insights into tourist behavior, better plan new experiences, optimise maintenance and to improve touristic offerings.
SmarTomorrow in itself presents a huge innovation, offering many benefits to digital doers and rural regions. Besides helping innovators to bring their vision to live and sustain them, many problems in the current digital landscape were identified, described and new alternative more financially, economically and socially sustainable solutions were developed. The AURORAL business models are also special, since they are based on a newly developed business model canvas template which also takes socio-economic aspects into account.