ICT4Water Action Group "Interoperability & Standardization" (I&S)
Actions related to this group from the “Digital Water Action Plan”:
1) To develop an European Catalogue of ICT4Water standards and specifications including: Adoption of Priority and Feasibility of integration
2) Development of information exchange water standards26 including common languages to properly contextualise the business processes in the water domain (E.g. SAREF, Hy-Features, etc.)
Action Group news
Linking Digital Water to EU policies for the twin green and digital transition.
ICT4Water cluster event, June 21, 2023, 9:00 – 11:00, Brussels, BluePoint
On June 21, members of the ICT4Water cluster, policy makers from various DGs, and other professionals gathered in a session to discuss the linkage of digital water to EU policies. The session was part of Water Project Europe, one of a series of events organised by Water Europe and attracted over 50 people. Continued
ICT4Water special side-event at Water Innovation Europe 2023
On June 21, the ICT4Water cluster will host a special side-event to Water Innovation Europe (WIE) 2023. This year’s conference focuses on putting water at the heart of our next European Commission’s programme and next years’ plans by deploying a strategy to build a European Water-Smart Society. The focus of the ICT4Water event will be on the digital transition for the water sector. Central in the discussion will be the updated Action Plan and the latest developments in its six thematic areas, being:
- Enable Data Sharing
- Intelligent and Smart Systems
- Critical Infrastructure Protection
- Actor Engagement and Co-creation
- Policies
- Business Models
The event will take place at BluePoint in Brussels on June 21. For more information and registration check https://watereurope.eu/events/water-innovation-europe/
Flash Report: Water Projects Europe 2022
THE EU DIGITAL TRANSITION FOR THE WATER SECTOR IN THE EU GREEN FUTURE CHALLENGES, PRESSURES AND ACHIEVEMENTS
THE NEW ICT4WATER ACTION PLAN
Hybrid workshop
October 19, 2022, 9:00 – 13:00, Brussels, BluePoint
On October 19, members of the ICT4Water cluster, policy makers from various DGs, and other professionals gathered in a workshop to discuss the digital transition for the water sector and the cluster’s activities and plans for the next few years. The workshop was part of Water Projects Europe, one of a series of events organised by Water Europe. The hybrid workshop attracted about 50 people who attended physically and an online audience who participated remotely.
Andrea Rubini welcomed the participants on behalf of Water Europe and stressed the good relation between Water Europe and the ICT4Water cluster. Continued
ICT4Water cluster and ETSI cooperate to deliver open standards supporting digitalisation of the water domain
From the digitising of industrial processes to creating smart services for citizens, it is essential to accurately record data together with its context information and to transfer these without misinterpretation to other systems.
The Interoperability and Standardisation (I&S) Action Group of the ICT4Water cluster is closely collaborating with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to develop open standards for the water domain.
In 2020, this cooperation reached a milestone when a Smart Applications REFerence (SAREF) ontology for the water domain was released. A SAREF is a family of standards that allows devices from different providers and different sectors to communicate among them in the framework of Internet of Things. SAREF ontologies for other domains (in total ten) were already released and updated in the last years (for example energy, environment, buildings, health, transport, smart industry and manufacturing, smart agri-food, etc.) but the new one for the water sector was released only this year.
Aitor Corchero, one of the leaders of the (I&S) Action Group has underlined that this is an important step towards the further and safest use of smart technologies aiming at a more efficient use of water resources.
This new tool, called SAREF4WATR, is accessible on a page where specialists can explore documentation (terms definitions, examples, schemas) and freely download such ontology.
Complementing this ontology, the ETSI Industry Specification Group on Context Information Management (ISG CIM) is developing a cross-domain model and an application programming interface to allow the data exchange, using ontologies such as SAREF4WATR to contextualise the information.
The ICT4Water cluster promotes the digitalisation of the water sector as outlined in its action plan. One of the pillars of such action plan is to increase interoperability and the use of open standards between water digital systems at EU and national levels. The work done by projects and organisations from the ICT4Water cluster in deploying field demonstrations using these open standards provided key inputs for the release of the new SAREF ontology for water.
Contribution by: Franck Le Gall, Aitor Corchero Rodriguez, and Xavier Domingo Albin.
Read the original article at the EASME website.
Standardization and Interoperability towards a water-smart society and economy: the story so far
One of the objectives of the water sector is to create a paradigm shift from traditional water management towards a more inclusive and transparent sector. Within this process, the digitalisation of the sector implies to make the society part of this transformation and therefore, introduce them into the water economy. To generate reliable water-smart digital services for society, data management and subsequent interpretation are essential. There is a challenge to avoid data misinterpretation and therefore, establish common strategies to collect and explore water data openly. Continued