Sustainability, digitalization, human dimension – the triple transition stood in the focus of Technology talks 2024 held in Vienna. Some 900 attendees convened on 12 – 13 September to speed up Austria’s transformation towards a human centric, digitalized and net-zero economy that can compete on an international playing field. Certainly not an easy challenge and the keynote speakers wasted no time to deliver the message: Europe has once already lost the battle for technology leadership. Instead of quick adoption, European lingering played out in favour of foreign economies which our data helped to grow. This time around, the EU´s competitiveness is said, as per the Draghi report, to depend on the quick adoption of a new technology – artificial intelligence (AI).
“The key driver of the rising productivity gap between the EU and the US has been digital technology (“tech”) – and Europe currently looks set to fall further behind.”
Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness, 2024
Above: A presentation on AI in the workplace by Microsoft’s Alexia Cambon
A new opportunity, a new set of challenges, but the speakers clearly shared three convictions. Firstly, we all have to benefit enormously from AI. Secondly, Europe is home to an abundant talent pool. Thirdly, the time to speed up its integration into our work has never been more critical. Powerful keywords were echoing through Vienna´s MuseumQuartier: speed, courage and collaboration.
From Egosystems to Ecosystems
The fundamental resource in the AI race is data but Europe is in acute lack of it. If Europe wants to be a leader in AI, Deputy Director-General DG Connect Thomas Skordas re-affirmed the need to unlock data and presented data spaces as the European solutions. But while the transformational effect of data sharing for the industry was clearly pitched at the Manufacturing X special session too, 80% of industrial data in Europe is never used. If our competitiveness depends on AI, collaboration on an ecosystem level is needed to standardise and unlock data needed. In the bid for AI leadership, competitiveness of value chains, instead of single players, will break or make European success. When the goal is to connect industrial value chains, the so-called trust framework must be considered as a building block. Keeping control over data must be a fundament of every industrial business case.
RecAL as the Data Space for Aluminium Recycling
From words to action, triple transition lies at the heart of the RecAL project. RecAL is an industry-driven project connecting a range of specialist researchers (metallurgists, chemists, etc) and key actors in the European aluminium processing, manufacturing and recycling value chain. While many key technologies for aluminium recycling are being further developed within RecAL (up- and recycling methods, new recyclate based alloys, blockchain-based material traceability etc), the central denominator connecting them all is a prototype of the RecAL Dataspace. The Dataspace is expected to be data-based, collecting, calculating and aggregating data across the various steps of value chain. A data lake is expected to be set up, with larger datasets from sorting and dismantling analysis managed and stored locally, but partially connected via the Dataspace at the later stage of the project. This Dataspace will be used for planning, monitoring, and improving the circularity of aluminium throughout the value chain and will interlink the single players into a collaborative, holistic aluminium recyclate management system.
Data moves at the speed of trust
The consortium partners identified an essential requirement for ensuring the willingness of potential participants (at TRL 9) to share data essential to the final RecAL Dataspace: data sovereignty. The ReAL Dataspace’s technology provider already has a solution that meets the requirement and is in line with the Common European Data Spaces policy as set out by the European strategy for data, and they will offer (under fair terms) an additional federated and sovereign data demo setup for the RecAL consortium. This will keep data protected and accessible at the same time, maintaining full control of providers’ data and enabling access decisions under given conditions.
An advanced technology stack from CANCOM will provide the much-needed data-sharing software architecture to allow data to remain solely with the respective owners throughout the project. Together with business cases crafted for data sharing, this aims to ensure the willingness of companies in the value chain to securely share data on their recyclate availability and needs. If RecAL aims to become the central digital data space tracking aluminium recyclates across the continent, then data security, granularity and access management must be ensured to keep sensitive data secure and re-usable.
Looking Ahead
By end of 2028, it is expected that the RecAL Dataspace prototype will be a in a stable working condition using real data for testing by the industry partners, together with clear data sharing terms. A stable Dataspace prototype, together with key RecAL´s recycling technologies, aims to demonstrate that a data-driven solution can increase the use of secondary resources and contribute to the European competitiveness while reducing environmental impact. With the offered possibility to be built on the top of sovereign and scalable architecture coming from the RecAL technical project partner, the developed technology and collected data in the Dataspace can be a critical take off pad for integrating AI into European aluminium industry. According to Draghi, such AI integrations can unlock the urgently needed higher European productivity, as generative algorithms improve performance and reduce material use, can optimise supply chains by predicting demand, reduce inventories, accelerate time from research to market and increase labour productivity.
Post 2028, the RecAL Dataspace aims to become a fully functional virtual marketplace reaching TRL9, providing realistic recyclate availability based on real live industry data.
“The problem is not that Europe lacks ideas or ambition. We have many talented researchers and entrepreneurs filing patents. But innovation is blocked at the next stage: we are failing to translate innovation into commercialisation.”
Mario Draghi, The future of European competitiveness, 2024
Are you interested in collaboration? Join us as a member of the RecAL Expert advisory board! We are looking for:
- exchange of lessons learned
- advise and feedback to the project team on topics of value creation and data space business model, as well as on governance, incentives and monetisation for increased industrial data sharing
We offer travel cost reimbursement, under necessary NDA signature waiving any ownership of over results generated.
Ana F. Povh, LL.M. (RTDS Group)
Ana is responsible for Exploitation & Legal matters at RTDS Group in Vienna.
