The event allowed the presentation of results from two agendas under the Recovery and Resilience Programme: TEXP@CP (Pact for Innovation in the Textile and Clothing Industry) and ATE (Alliance for the Energy Transition).
The Gaia-X Summit, one of the leading events in the field of data interoperability, took place in Porto – with INESC TEC’s participation. By welcoming participants from 36 countries, the initiative organised by TICE.pt proved to be an excellent platform for presenting and disseminating the results achieved under the TEXP@CP (Pact for Innovation in the Textile and Clothing Industry) and ATE (Alliance for the Energy Transition) Agendas, promoted by the Recovery and Resilience Programme (with the Institute’s contributions).
“Dedicated to the digital transition and adaptation to Industry 4.0 in the textile and clothing sector, the Text@CT agenda incorporates a unique information model for implementing digital collaboration processes between companies in this sector”, explained César Toscano, researcher at INESC TEC. The process – based on each company’s ERP systems – is known as semantic interoperability and enables distinct management systems, produced by companies using different technologies, to share the same communication language in transactions between ERP systems.
The second aspect, as the researcher mentioned, concerns the “creation of a data space for the Portuguese textile and clothing sector” that enables the digital sharing of data to support the digitalisation of collaborative processes. According to César Toscano, through this tool, “all business transactions between textile companies, activated within their ERP systems, are transmitted over the Internet in a secure manner, whilst maintaining confidentiality and privacy in communications.” This is what researchers refer to as “technical interoperability.”
The project presentation – which took place on the second day of the event, dedicated to national projects – was followed by a Q&A, with César Toscano describing the overall balance as “positive.”
In addition to being organisers of the event, TICE.pt is, together with INESC TEC, one of the partners in Work Package 12 of the ATE agenda; and the CLOUDIA4.eu platform was developed precisely within this scop – and later presented in considerable detail at the Gaia-X Summit. “The CLOUDIA4.eu platform enables the sharing and creation of data processing workflows and AI agents, making it possible to design complex scenarios and interact with services such as preventive maintenance,” explained Fábio Coelho, researcher at INESC TEC.
As a complement to the platform, the presentation featured a digital passport service (along with the integration steps) that introduces traceability capabilities and property updates for goods and assets; this work was led by researcher Ana Alonso. “Both outcomes – the CLOUDIA4.eu platform and the product digital passport service – have the potential to serve various value chains beyond the energy sector, the context in which both were developed,” emphasised Fábio Coelho.
Beyond the presentation of results, engagement with other event participants helped to “attract potential interest,” with contributions to CLOUDIA4 being “well received” by researchers. “Our stand received a number of visits from entities with potential interest in exploring the results,” the researcher added, also highlighting subsequent contacts with “a data centre cluster in the Caribbean region that expressed interest in discussing a local proof of concept.”
The Gaia-X Summit did not end without an award for INESC TEC: namely for Rui Pedro Ribeiro, as part of a competition held throughout the two days of the event, which aimed to provide a practical and didactic explanation of the initiative through augmented reality games. The game, as explained by the INESC TEC researcher, was a means of establishing “different connections” and “exchanging insights” that will prove useful for the master’s thesis he is currently developing – focused on semantic interoperability, a crucial topic for the implementation of data spaces.
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