Last Thursday, we had the pleasure of hosting Javier Valiño, Program Manager of the Data Space Working Group (Data Space WG) from the Eclipse Foundation, at Universidad de Cantabria.

During the meeting, Javier presented the latest advancements made by the Data Space WG. Their mission is to promote the global use of dataspace technologies, supporting the development and maintenance of secure data-sharing ecosystems. We also discussed SEDIMARK's initiatives in creating technologies for decentralized and secure data exchange.

Data Space WG goals are closely aligned with the SEDIMARK's innovative proposals for a decentralized marketplace, thus we will keep exploring future collaborations in the Data Space world.

On Wednesday, June 5th, the SEDIMARK Midterm review with the European Commission took place. The meeting highlighted the project's achievements so far, including a presentation of the architecture supporting the decentralized SEDIMARK Marketplace. Additionally, the progress of the four use cases was presented, along with plans for the upcoming period.

We received an initial positive feedback and are now awaiting the final remarks and feedback from the project reviewers. In the meantime, we continue to work on the future of data exchange through the decentralized and secure SEDIMARK Marketplace.

In April, all twelve partners of the SEDIMARK consortium convened in Helsinki for a productive General Assembly meeting, marking a significant milestone in our journey to establish a decentralized marketplace. With the first half of the project completed, we are now preparing for the next phase, which promises to be filled with significant milestones.

Our discussions focused on five key scenarios crucial to SEDIMARK's development: Onboarding, Offering Lifecycle, Data Exchange, Data Processing Pipeline, and Open Data. Through our collective efforts, we are advancing these scenarios, moving closer to their integration and the realization of the SEDIMARK Marketplace.

Special thanks to our hosts, Forum Virium Helsinki, for their exceptional organization, which made our time in Helsinki both productive and memorable. The city's enchanting charm provided the perfect backdrop for our collaborative endeavors. Here's to the progress we've made and the exciting journey ahead!

The culmination of three intense and enjoyable days marked the conclusion of #SEDIMARK's third General Assembly. This face to face meeting was held in the Universidad de Cantabria premises, during the 17th, 18th and 19th of October, gathering together all the partners from SEDIMARK.

The event kicked off with a highly engaging technical workshop on the first day, fostering fruitful discussions and exchanges. The hands-on session, along with parallel sessions in the afternoon that extended into the late hours, saw relevant questions surface and discrepancies emerge—an encouraging indication that progress is underway. Partners tackled these challenges head-on, establishing a robust foundation to pave the way forward.

Days 2 and 3 delved even deeper into technical aspects, allowing us to identify areas for improvement to ensure the realization of our envisioned and ongoing development goals. In retrospect, this General Assembly was exceptionally productive thanks to all partners for their active participation and cooperation.

A special note of gratitude goes to our hosts, the Grupo de Ingeniería Telemática from Universidad de Cantabria. Once again, they demonstrated unwavering reliability, combining hard work, brilliant ideas, commitment, and an element of fun.

Stay tuned for more updates on the exciting progress of the SEDIMARK project.

SEDIMARK recently participated in Data Week 2023 in Lulea, Sweden, which was organised by the Big Data Value Association (BDVA), a European initiative promoting data-driven digital transformation of society and the economy. Sedimark presented their work at a session organised by the Data Spaces Business Alliance (DSBA), an organisation promoting business transformation in the data economy.

The session, entitled, “Data Management and Data Sharing for trusted AI platforms” saw SEDIMARK present their concept alongside a diverse group of EU Horizon funded projects (Waterverse, STELAR, EnrichMyData and HPLT) also focussed on future tools for data management and quality control. The session pondered the question of how the tools and approaches developed within these projects would support the implementation and deployment of data driven and trustworthy AI applications within data spaces.

A further aim of the session was to consider how the projects could make use of and contribute to a number of core common building blocks for data spaces outlined in a recent working document of the DSBA. The individual project presentations were followed by a lively panel discussion, in which these questions were further pursued.

* Image credit: BDVA Twitter account

This week, SEDIMARK participated in the workshop on ‘Tech Adoption Scenarios and Data AI 2030’ that was organised by the LeADS project (Leading Europe’s Advanced Digital Skills), which is a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) funded by the Digital Europe Programme, and among other objectives, it aims to provide guidance for the deployment of the DIGITAL programme Advanced Digital Skills (ADS) over the next 7 years.

The aim of the workshop was to assess the key predictions developed by LeADS for market adoption within the AI and Data technology areas which included over 80 tech groupings.

From SEDIMARK, University of Surrey (@cvssp_research) contributed to the co-creation exercise facilitated by Martin Robles from BluSpecs, which focused on the definitions of market dynamics in relation to data management and analysis.

The exercise involved assessing:

1. The applicability of the identified use cases, grouped under AI, BI/Data Science, Cloud, Cybersecurity and IoT, to data management skills relating to data collection, curation, analysis, quality and interoperability.
2. The hypotheses presented based on several factors, which included legislation, AI automation and Cybersecurity, that could have an impact on these skills.
3. The relevance and magnitude of the impact that data management skills would have on the different use cases.

Most of the use cases listed were applicable since data management plays a central role in most technologies, which include remote health monitoring, environmental monitoring detection, manufacturing operations and agricultural field monitoring.

In relation to legislation, compliance oversight over different aspects of data management will be expected to increase, and a possible impact of this is that there will be significant reservation among developers to provide decentralised and distributed solutions to address today’s massive energy consumption of cloud-based centralised systems, by handling data closer to the data source, which in many scenarios will require collaborative data sharing between different data providers. And this will inevitably raise alarms regarding data protection, and therefore compliance entities need to cooperate and clarify, rather than police tomorrow’s developers.

With regards to AI automation, the hypothesis presented was that more automation of digital systems will be driven by AI throughout an application’s development lifecycle. This would be the case for well-established uniform processes, but not yet for processes dealing with new or unfamiliar data sources especially when it comes to handling semantic interoperability.

As for Cybersecurity, an increase in experts in this field is expected due to the increase in federation of data flows and models in systems. This will highly likely be the case as there will be a need for auditing mechanisms for checking data integrity and provenance to ensure the correct use of data and AI models.

Finally, when it came to assessing the relevance and magnitude of the impact of data management on today’s main technology, most areas listed were expected to be highly affected by how skills in data management will evolve.

In conclusion, the workshop highlighted possible scenarios on how skills development in the future will be influenced, especially when it comes to balancing innovation in data management and the protection of data.

SEDIMARK has been present today in the sustainable mobility event with the participation of @unican and Ayuntamiento de Santander, highlighting the importance of fostering the usage of environmental-friendly mobility solutions, like biking, core part of one of our use cases. More information about the event in https://ascentic.org/jornada-movilidad-sostenible-en-cantabria/.

SEDIMARK attended the EBDVF 22 | Data and AI Event in Prague on the 22nd of November, organized by the BDVA - Big Data Value Association. In his pitch within the "Lessons learnt from Data Platforms projects" session, SEDIMARK's technical leader, Luis Sánchez from Universidad de Cantabria, presented the project goals and ambitions in Data Spaces.

On October 26th - 27th SEDIMARK held its Kick-off meeting at fabulous Magdalena Peninsule in Santander. A great way to devirtualize each other, trigger the technical discussions and enjoy some time together!

During the meeting, we held the initial discussions on the project, setting the ground for the future work to meet the ambitious goals foreseen, including the novel use cases that will be carried out throughout the project's lifetime.

Stay tuned to discover more about our thrilling progress!