The SCoDIHNet initiative is contributing to the European Industry Digitalisation helping companies to improve their processes, products and services through the use of connectivity technologies.
The SCoDIHNet initiative is supported by AIOTI and the 6G IA and is supporting Digital Innovation Hubs that are providing services on 5G/6G, IoT, Cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
5G/6G, IoT are key technologies to develop digitalization of the European industry together with AI and cybersecurity in order to ensure flexibility, adaptability and end-to-end security.
SCoDIHNet has 71 members from 18 European countries.
Objectives
The DIH's belonging to the SCoDIHNet are providing support to the industry from a number of verticals in order to develop digital services which need smart connectivity technologies. Experiments in these vertical domains are expected at the DIH level.
New Activities
Mapping of technology providers with DIHs at local level
A catalogue of Smart Connectivity technology providers coming from European clusters of experts (AIOTI, NetworldEurope, 6G-IA) has been designed and position on the map in order to get a quick view of the relevant stakeholders that DIHs could involve to develop innovations.
Replicability of the EU project results
AIOTI has launched Replicability and Scalability initiative to support IoT and Edge Computing R&I projects, providing AIOTI members a tool and guidelines to assess and foster the Replicability and Scalability of project results, maximizing their impact, facilitating their uptake and bring them to the market. Today, the catalogue is encompassing more than 130 use cases/solutions coming from AIOTI LSP and 5G PPP projects and also more than 1000 enablers coming from the Next Generation Internet projects.
Collaborations
SCoDIHNet has developed a number of cooperations with other organisation that have common interests
- Enterprise Europe Network: European SMEs
- European Business and Innovation Centre Network
- Horizon Result Booster and Horizon Result Platform: Replicability and reusage of existing solutions
- DIH4Industry: Manufacturing DIHs network
- Digital Transformation Accelerator: The project in charge of the coordination of all EDIHs
- African DIH networks: Best practices exchange with African DIHs
- Center for Innovation Management Research: IoT technology watch
- OpenDEI project: Contribution to the task force in charge of Data-Powered Business Ecosystem Building to Foster collaboration, business interoperability between stakeholders
- DIH4AI: Artificial intelligence DIHs network
- Partnerships for Regional Innovation: 63 regions, seven cities and four Member States selected for Pilot Action
- Connecting European Facilities / 5G for Smart Communities: sharing 5G infrastructures with DIHs in order to accelerate development of innovations at local level
- European Startup Nation Alliance: including Startups in the DIHs local ecosystems
- EVOLVED-5G project: 5G startup support
- Change2twin projects on replicability
The list of all DIH in SCoDIHNet could be found here.
The SCoDIHNet platform catalog is collecting all the technical platform used by DIHs to develop services and the possibility to share them remotely among DIHs.
SCoDIHNet Platform CatalogueThe SCoDIHNet is providing training courses to the DIH (train the trainers) on specific technical subjects on 5G, IoT.
This service will propose an online catalog with contacts in order to help DIH staff to train to specific 5G or IoT technologies.
This service will also propose to organise online training sessions on specific topics that have an interest for DIH staff but also for DIH “customers”. Webinars could also be organised on demand.
The SCoDIHNet initiative is a network of DIH, it does not run experiments but offer a number of services that helps DIH in their day to day operation. A paper published in July 2020 (which will be updated soon with the final logo) is presenting these 18 services classified in 4 domains:
Catalog of servicesHow Digital Innovation Hubs could take advantage of the Large Scale Projects results to replicate use cases and solutions at the local level, webinar, 28.01.2021.
Replicability catalog Replicability Assessment ToolSCoDIHNet News
SCoDIHNet Activities in 2023
The Smart Connectivity Digital Innovation Hub Network (SCoDIHNet) has the objective to link the SNS JU with end users using the Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) which have to facilitate the digitalisation of the European Industry. DIHs are supported by the Digital Europe program and are looking after innovative solutions that can be deploy in end user industry.
It is a channel to make known and to share developments made in SNS JU projects but also a way to collect end user industry needs to ensure that the future 6G networks will be able to support them.
In 2023, the SCoDIHNet has conducted a number of activities which are contributing to the above objectives. The key highlights are summarizing below.
Smart Connectivity Technology providers mapping with DIHs
A Smart connectivity Technology providers mapping with DIHs has been developed in order to facilitate development of cooperations at local level between end users and technology providers. Stakeholders and mainly SMEs members of AIOTI, 6G-IA, NetworldEurope, 5G community CEF, GAIA-X Hubs have been identified (more than 600 organisations) and located at regional level in order to identify possible cooperation among stakeholders belonging to the sale area. DIHs which are implemented at regional level can easily find the most relevant Smart Connectivity Expertise in the area
Cooperation with the CEF 5G for Smart Community projects
5G for Smart community projects have the objective to develop and operate private 5G networks in public buildings (Administration, Schools, Hospitals, Cities, …). These 5G infrastructures have the objectives to develop use cases taking advantage of the 5G capabilities.
As DIHs are also developing innovative services over 5G, the cooperation put in place is to open these 5G infrastructure to the local DIHs in order to facilitate development of new use cases for public services.
Cooperation with African DIHs
A collaboration is running with the 5 EU funded projects aiming at developing DIHs in Africa in order to share best practices but also to promote the European Smart Connectivity technologies.
A workshop with African DIHs took place on the 23rd February together with DIH4AI, the main outputs are addressing the following points: a) Share the list of DIHs from each organisation (SCoDIHNet, DIH4AI, AEDIB|NET, AfriconEU, Hubiquitous, Make, Digilogic); b) Identify the key verticals covered by DIHs; c) Identify the key technologies used by African DIHs; d) Build a catalogue of training courses that can be shared; e) Organisation of a webinar on Replicability for African DIHs; f) Organisation of a workshop with presentation of European and African DIHs journey
All these activities are started and some already completed, we have collected and involved 66 DIHs running in 20 African countries.
Replicability initiative
Together with the AIOTI, a replicability and scalability assessment tool has been designed and developed in order to provide a replicability level to use cases/solutions developed by smart connectivity projects. Two workshops took place one in June and one in October in order to explain to projects (one for AIOTI projects and one for 5G PPP and SNS JU projects) in order to explain the objective of the initiative and the methodology put in place.
The 6GStart has collected a number of use cases developed and experimented by 5G PPP phase 3 projects and SNS-OPS did the same for SNS JU call 1 projects. These use cases/solutions will feed the Replicability catalogue which already contains more than 1000 lines coming from AIOTI projects, 5GPPP projects and NGI projects.
Cooperation with other thematic DIHs sub-networks
SCoDIHNet is the thematic sub-network covering the Smart Connectivity domain and there several others which are covering other digital domains (AI, cybersec, HPC, Manufacturing, Agriculture, CPS, robotics, …) and supported by other European partnerships. This collaboration lead by SCoDIHNet has the objective to share best practices but also to align the service offer to DIHs.
Meetings with DG CONNECT/A4 took place in order to share our initiative at it was very welcome as complementary to the Digital Transformation Accelerator which is supporting the EDIHs daily activities.
Cooperation with the Startup Nation Alliance
SCoDIHNet has been invited to apply to become member of the advisory board of the ESNA in order to establish a link between Startups and DIHs at local level. ESNA tries to align Startup support at European Level with member states and this is a way to reach regional representatives who have the contact with local startups.
SCoDIHNet service platform
In order to support the operation of DIHs, 18 services have been identified and are available on 2 platforms (Collabwith platform operated by AIOTI and DIHWare platform operated by Eurescom).
The Collabwith platform is offering services facilitating cooperation among stakeholders as the DIHWare is proposing a market place with a number of catalogues developed by SCoDIHNet.
SCoDIHNet becomes a sub-group of the Trial WG
SCoDIHNet was setup jointly by the 5GIA and AIOTI, it is attached to the AIOTI Innovation WG since the beginning and recently it has been proposed to the 6G-IA board to attach SCoDIHNet to the Trial WG.
A presentation of SCoDIHNet has been done at the Trial WG plenary meeting which took place on the 4th September. This was a first step to inform and attract 6G-IA members to cooperate with DIHs
Cooperation with the Enterprise Europe Network
The Cooperation initiated in 2022 has been reactivated following a meeting we had with the new Chairman. The most urgent action point is to map SCoDIHNet members with EEN members in order to facilitate cooperation at local level. The new EEN Digital group staff is already very involved in DIHs so the cooperation should get a new dimension and the idea is to extend it to the other Thematic sub-networks in order to cover most of the Digital domains.
SCoDIHNet Activities in 2024
January 2024
SCoDIHNet is now running since 4 years and time has come to review the membership fo the network since many organisations are no more active and representatives are not actively involved in DIH activities. At the end of 2023, network had 93 registered organisations. A survey has been put in place to check the relevance of their activities to SCoDIHNet.
SCoDIHNet has established numerous cooperations and offers many services to DIHs, and after the review of the membership, SCoDIHNet will focus on the most important services expected by the members. A survey has been put in place to collect the 5 key services among the 33 existing services that SCoDIHNet will then focus on.
An updated version of the SCoDIHNet flyer describing in 2 pages the main activities has been prepared to help interested organisations and communities to better understand the role of the network.
Collection of replicable use cases/solutions is still ongoing with the SNS JU call Phase 1 projects, that will complement the existing catalogue when developed and experimented in real conditions. The vertical tracker put in place by the SNS OPS projects is helping to identify these use cases/solutions.
February 2024
SCoDIHNet is after 4 years of running updating its membership, especially since some organizations cease to exist and new ones are willing to join. About 70 organisations are willing to stay. Following the presentation made on the 5 October 2023 in the context of the IAFA#1 of the SNS-OPS project, AIOTI members and 6G IA members will be asked to join SCoDIHNet as Technology providers to facilitate cooperation with DIHs.
A survey has been put in place to better understand the key services that DIHs members are expected from SCoDIHNet. Among the 33 services provided, the 5 key services are: 1) Development of EU proposals, 2) Organisation of pan-EU collaborative R&D, 3) Initiating (ad-hoc) EU interregional collaborations, 4) EU instruments and calls information and 5) Mapping of R&D capacities/capabilities.
The collection of replicable use cases/solutions is still going on with the SNS JU call 1 projects, they will complement the existing catalog when developed and experimented in real conditions. The vertical tracker put in place by the SNS OPS projects is helping to identify these use cases/solutions that are replicable, project could then use the Replicability assessment tool to determine the level of replicability.
March 2024
Following the survey organised earlier, 71 organisations representing DIHs and technology providers coming from AIOTI and 6G-IA membership and more, remained active in SCoDIHNet. An update of the mailing list will be made accordingly.
It was decided to keep SCoDIHNet participation open to all interested organisations.
A separate call for interest has been sent to all 6G-IA members in order to collect their interest to join SCoDIHNet.
A survey has been put in place in order to better understand the key services that DIHs members are expected from SCoDIHNet. Among the 33 services provided, the 5 key services are: 1) Development of EU proposals, 2) Organisation of pan-EU collaborative R&D, 3) Initiating (ad-hoc) EU interregional collaborations, 4) EU instruments and calls information and 5) Mapping of R&D capacities/capabilities. A white paper will be initiated in order to bring concrete actions for each of the five mentioned services.
April 2024
In the context of the SNS-OPS project, a questionnaire has been sent to phase 2 projects in order to collect information and one of the questions is addressing the replicability of the developed use cases. The projects are invited to use the replicability assessment tool to qualify the replicability level of each use case. The first feedback show that most of the use case get a good replicability level which is quite encouraging.
Following the survey to identify the 5 key services, the most important one addresses “Development of EU proposal”. In order to better understand the DIH needs and to provide concrete action plan, a workshop was organised on the 25 of April “How to create consortiums for European Funding?”. The output of the workshop will feed the white paper which will provide a set of concrete actions supporting the 5 key selected services. The recording of the webinar is available here.
SCoDIHNet presented its activities at the AIOTI Bi-monthly event on 16 April in order to update members on the past and ongoing activities. The idea was to engage AIOTI technology providers in order to facilitate cooperations with DIHs and end users.