Go to news

The EUHubs4Data project will set up an European federation of Data Innovation Hubs

The use of both public and private data will be key to transforming our society, and a huge amount of data is generated in Europe that could be used to create an optimised, efficient and sustainable economy. However, it is estimated that only 4% of this data is stored and used to achieve improvements.

In this sense, EUHubs4Data aims to support companies on their way to digitisation by bringing them closer to all smart data-driven technologies. The project has a budget of 12.5 million euros and, according to Daniel Alonso (head of the project and of the ITI’s area for promoting projects in Big Data and artificial intelligence), it is “a significant commitment by the European Commission to facilitate access by companies to shared knowledge that will enable the creation of a strong and competitive economy”.

The project, led by ITI, the Technology Centre for ICT research, development and innovation, has an international consortium of 21 partners from 12 different countries: Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Ireland, Slovenia, Poland, the United Kingdom and Belgium.

ZABALA in EUHubs4Data

In the words of the head of the International Projects area at ZABALA, Blanca Rodríguez, “EUHUBS4DATA is a great initiative of the European Commission from which we want to make available to SMEs and Startups a great catalogue of data and services for their exploitation, which will allow companies to develop new products and/or improve their internal processes. In addition, it offers financing of 3,600,000 euros for experiments“.

ZABALA will provide the project with the management of the open calls for the distribution of 3,600,000 euros and will implement all the necessary mechanisms to select the most relevant and challenging experiments through three planned rounds of open calls.

Thus, SMEs, start-ups and the web-based entrepreneurs’ group will propose experiments in the calls that make use of federated data sources and data-driven services in a cross-border basis, and ZABALA will be in charge of their correct definition, publication, evaluation, monitoring and analysis. “This is a great opportunity for those companies that are taking advantage of the digital transformation as a competitive advantage”, says Rodríguez.

According to Sergio Girbés, R&D consultant and head of the project from ZABALA, “the EUHUBS4DATA project will also serve to continue placing ZABALA as a European leader in entrepreneurship projects in the ICT sector based on cascade financing“.

European Data Innovation Hubs Federation

The kick-off meeting of the project, held from 29 September to 1 October, marked the start of EUHubs4Data, with the aim of setting up a European federation of Data Innovation Hubs. These are figures on which the digitisation strategy based on European Commission data is based, and serve to provide companies with unique, neutral and objective access to technologies, business models or funding in the digital field, and where they can experiment with them.

Regional access to all European developments

EUHubs4Data will offer companies unique access to the knowledge of the 21 partners that make up the federation, all of which are benchmarks in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data. Furthermore, it will be a union and collaboration point between the different regions to promote digital innovation.

Therefore, the project is aimed at providing access at regional level to the latest European developments in the field of Big Data and AI. To this end, it will facilitate a professional exchange of information to offer companies and SMEs a complete catalogue of data-based services and solutions.

Thus, each of the Data Innovation Hubs will offer companies the solution that best suits their needs, so that their production processes, businesses, products, or services are more competitive thanks to the implementation of digital technologies. A tailor-made solution based on knowledge and innovations from all over Europe.

In short, EUHubs4Data, which will be developed over the next three years, is the gateway to a data-driven world.