European Federation of Data Driven Innovation Hubs

Project Information

EUHubs4Data

Grant agreement ID: 951771

DOI

10.3030/951771

Project closed

EC signature date 25 May 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 29 February 2024

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 12 486 662,50

EU contribution

€ 11 999 031,25

Coordinated by

INSTITUTO TECNOLOGICO DE INFORMATICA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - EUHubs4Data (European Federation of Data Driven Innovation Hubs)

Reporting period: 2022-03-01 to 2024-02-29

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The value and impact that data have on the European economy, industry and society is unquestionable. SMEs, academia, citizens and public bodies generate a huge amount of data and the projection of the following years is even more promising. However, most of the potential of these data remains untapped and many of European SMEs and small actors are lagging behind in data driven innovation. This is why, data driven innovation hubs have become so important to foster at regional and national level the adoption and use of latest advances on big data and AI. However, these hubs work often in an isolated basis focused on their own ecosystems and no real collaboration is established among them to fully exploit their capacities. To tackle this problem, the European federation of Data Driven Innovation Hubs aims to consolidate as the European reference for data driven innovation and experimentation, fostering collaboration between data driven initiatives in Europe, federating solutions in a global common catalogue of data services, and sharing data in a cross-border and cross-sector basis.
With this objective of serving as reference to the establishment of the Common European Data Spaces and becoming a key instrument for growth in a global data economy, the federation was initially composed of 12 hubs and has been extended during the project to 30 hubs in 20 countries. At the end of the project, EUHubs4Data represents the point of reference in Europe for experimentation and innovation in Data an AI, offering a pan-european federated catalogue with 230 datasets, 247 services and 80 courses, and very practical experiences from a legal, ethical and data management perspective on 42 experiments with SMEs and innovation hubs.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project implemented a strategy towards establishing and sustaining a Federation of i-Spaces. A working group was created to accelerate the formalization of the Federation. The group created a Terms of Reference and Code of Conduct documents, as well as the Federation Handbook focusing on its organization and governance model. Another important process targeting the creation of the federation was the onboarding of 18 new hubs, through a dedicated open call, completing a list of 30 i-Spaces at the end of the project. Legal checks were also conducted for establishing the EUHubs4Data Federation and engaged with policy makers, analyzing the impact of upcoming legislation (DGA, DA, DSA, DMA).
From the technical perspective, the project implemented the approach offered by IDSA Reference Architecture Model, and the Hubs deployed IDSA compliant connectors and developed APIs to make them work. One of the main objectives of the project was the creation of the federated catalogue. The hubs provided a list of services, datasets and courses to be added as part of such catalogue which reached 247 services at the end of the project. To prove the quality of the services and the support offered by the hubs, 3 open calls for experiments were launched resulting in the implementation of 42 experiments. Related to this, the Programme of Advanced Data Driven services was completed with the participation of 13 SMEs. The experiments were assessed by the Ethics Monitoring Group and an External Ethics Advisor. In parallel, EUHubs4Data made the effort to promote training courses offering 10 to 15 training events per year.
The dissemination of all this work was essential, and several campaigns were designed to reach a large audience. In terms of events, the project organized and participated in, among others, the different editions of Data Forum, Data Week, European Big Data Value Forum and the sponsorization of Gaia-X Summit 2021.
The project ended with a list of assets to be exploited by the Federation, including the Community of i-Spaces,the Stakeholders Group, the Big Data & AI Maturity Model and the Federated Catalogue. Finally, a business model and a financial plan focusing on operational profitability and delivering value was created.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

EUHubs4Data project made an impressive progress in different areas, opening the way for accelerating the adoption of the data economy:
• Continuity and connection of the Horizon 2020 initiatives around Data and the new Horizon Europe/Digital Europe programs and new initiatives, keeping engaged all the stakeholders.
• A new way of performing ethical assessment of data experiments, creating a toolkit as an Open Source result that can be used by many initiatives.
• Design of one of the first Data Intermediary Service Providers in Europe, as a solution to fulfil de requirements of the Data Governance Act and to keep the community together.
• Governmental basis of the Federation of i-Spaces, composed by three kind of legal entities (i-Spaces, the Federating Entity and the Data Intermediary Entity), with a common Governance and common assets like the Federated catalogue (Services, Training and Courses).
• Enriched the 3 main events around Data and AI in Europe along the year: Data Forum (now integrated into the Data Spaces Symposium), Data Week and European Big Data Value Forum.
• A software tool to create and synchronize a federated catalogue among different nodes (i-Spaces), which is delivered as Open Source and can be useful for different distributed/federated communities.
• Agreement of the BoD of BDVA to give continuity to the Federation of i-Spaces inside BDVA, as the Federating Entity, and supporting economically till the exploitation model is deployed.
• Consolidation of i-Spaces as key players in different initiatives in Europe, like Testing and Experimentation Facilities (TEF), eDIHs, Data Spaces, HPC and others.
• A sustainable plan for the continuation of the Federation, based on the exploitation of the common assets provided by the project.
As a consequence of the 3,5 years of the project, the Federation and the i-Spaces has consolidated as a needed partner for the European Digital Policies, because it is:
• A tool to achieve the targets of the European Digital Decade: i-Spaces are a core part of the main instruments defined by the European Data and AI Strategies.
• A European data & AI sandbox: i-Spaces provide a safe but complete environment to innovate and help in the adoption of Data and AI.
• The access point for SMEs and start-ups to the data economy: i-Spaces are the trusted party to help SMEs and start-ups to become data driven and exploit all the opportunities that the data economy brings.
• The forum for discussing about AI and data ethics: This ensures that innovation is prioritized in full alignment with European values and principles.
• An education and training hub for data and AI: i-Spaces provide experimental Big Data and AI labs and very practical materials.
• A connector between digital ecosystems: i-Spaces are very well positioned in different initiatives in Europe, so they are linking and opening the door to their local companies to access those initiatives.
• A guide to navigate the regulatory and standards complex landscape: i-Spaces can intervene in the discussions when the regulations are being created and help companies and also public administration to adopt and follow them.
• A sustainable point of destination for many data innovation initiatives: Most of the data innovation projects end with very interesting results but difficult to be exploited alone. i-Spaces Federation provides a global pan-European catalogue where these results can be included and reach the market.

9th Plenary meeting (Valencia, 24th October 2023)

EUHubs4Data experiments per country

EUHubs4Data 4 main pilllars

First f2f EUH4D Plenary meeting (Leuven, 29th March 2022)