INESC TEC strengthens European leadership in big data

INESC TEC joined the Big Data Value Association (BDVA), a European organisation that promotes the research, development and adoption of Big Data technologies in a sustainable and innovative ecosystem. This is an important step for the Institute, allowing to advance the impact and visibility of INESC TEC's research in different projects, as was the case of InterConnect.

The research carried out at INESC TEC has progressively prioritised the concept of open data - the practice of making data freely available for use, by any entity or individual, as a basis for contributions to open science. David Rua, researcher at INESC TEC, stated that joining the BDVA was a crucial step, because it follows the same approach as the research activities carried out by the institution in several areas - allowing the Institute to disseminate the results produced, focusing on the Big Data domain.

"A good example is the process of transferring the results of the InterConnect project (funded by the H2020 programme), which developed a framework for semantic interoperability to support energy services in buildings and smart grids. In this case, the data is a very important asset for validating the development of new tools and services”, he mentioned

BDVA will be one of the entities benefiting from the results of the project that will become available, and continuously supported by INESC TEC, TNO and Vizlore.

In addition, as an independent entity that promotes various initiatives, joining the BDVA will allow INESC TEC to be close to relevant decision-making forums, namely withing the European Commission. “We will be present in more digitalisation and interoperability initiatives - areas where we've been able to generate important results, with an impact on our institution and our partners", explained David Rua.

InterConnect will be the flagship project of this partnership due to its size and scope; however, in the upcoming years, "more projects and initiatives will benefit from the synergies with BDVA, particularly to demonstrate and emphasise INESC TEC capabilities as a leading research entity, a major agent in producing innovation and technology transfer capacities for industry and business sectors", he concluded.

This article was first published on 4 October by INESC TEC.