FEDeRATED Málaga meeting 15-16 June 2022

On 15 and 16 June, 14 FEDeRATED project partners and many LivingLab project leaders met in Málaga at the premises of ADIF, hosting the 12th Consortium Board meeting and a workshop. The major issues being:

  • Speed up the current progress towards delivering factual output - tangible LivingLabs, a concise Reference Architecture and a shared vision on the content  of a (to be validated) FEDeRATED MasterPlan and data sharing prototype .
  • Seek for interopability and collaboration between the LivingLabs
  • Agree the basic (Reference) data sharing  Architecture
  • Keep loading the mental engine of the participants also identifying the generic engines that can enable LivingLabs to effectively share data in a collaborative way

To streamline FEDeRATED partner engagement, an overarching Action Plan was developed to assist all partners executing their share of the FEDeRATED workflow management. This plan will be further detailed while executing. A template to measure the progress of the project in connection to the various topics identified in the Grant Agreement is also developed - Grant Agreement Audit List (federatedplatforms.eu).  

Mlaga June 2022During the meeting, the IT Architecture Board agreed on a document covering the Reference Data Sharing Architecture (Basic Data Sharing Architecture Mitchell Out IT Architecture Group June 2022 (federatedplatforms.eu). An important challenge to the FEDeRATED project will be to describe the Reference (baseline) data sharing Architecture in “simple words”. Words that should not only provide sufficient meaning and context to IT Architects, but preferable also to a multitude of various stakeholders (logistic operators, public authorities – law enforcement/policy people – and stakeholder organisations). Therefore, the DTLF federative network of platforms policy approach might be explained as an EU data sharing grid for logistics and freight transport enabling Distributed Data Resources (DDR) - i.e. IT systems/platforms that provide or use data aimed at delivering services  - to connect. On a local or national scale this implies DDR's will be empowered to scale their activities onto an overarching – interoperable - EU grid. The EU grid enables millions of IT systems/platforms to draw data at some times and supply data at other aimed at providing tailor made services to all participants in the grid, including compliance with legislation. The FEDeRATED mission is to identify the required DDR competences  leading to full fletched, thus sustainable EU grid interoperability. Very complex to plan for, orchestrate and keep in balance. Innovative and transitional at the least. 

In 2022, high on the FEDeRATED agenda is the development of the FEDeRATED Milestone 10 report (due 31 October). This will serve as a follow up from the Interim MasterPlan - Milestone 2. The basis being the DTLF Building Blocks and FEDeRATED Core Operating Framework (elaborated in  37 Leading Principles). The follow up will be to identify and elaborate the functional requirements of a federated network of platform approach, being:

  • Language (see more here)
  • Service Register
  • Security
  • FEDeRATED/data sharing node

The LivingLabs will illustrate how the  functional requirements of the DDRs can be technical implementated through real life business use cases. A next step will be to define the organisational requirements for actual federated data sharing between DDR's. This should be done through interoperability protocols - a set of arrangements between the participants of the grid - regarding:

  • Connectivity
  • Security
  • Presentation
  • Linked Event Data
  • Business processes 

During the FEDeRATED Málaga meeting, the partners and LivingLab managers showed their commitment to give it a try – both from a top-down as well as a bottom-up perspective - and assist the EC developing and establishing the minimum building conditions.

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FEDeRATED semantic interoperability

If you want to share data, you should be able to understand another: semantic interoperability.  This is a major issue within the FEDeRATED project. Since 2019 FEDeRATED has done a lot of working on semantics, i.e. the FEDeRATED Semantic model.  The importance being to enable any logistics stakeholder to access  various (standard based) data  silos through a FEDeRATED bridge. 

To illustrate our semantic work, a number of presentations - developed by Henk Mulder (Chairman Semantic Data Model/IATA Digital Cargo lead) is available:

3 workshops on the FEDeRATED Semantic Model:

 

 


A fun video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3t2VPcHwCw

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FEDeRATED workshop The Soul of the Machine

On 29 and 30 March, 52 people participated in the EU CEF FEDeRATED workshop "The Soul of the Machine", including 5 representatives of the EU CEF FENIX project. The workshop took place in Delft (the Netherlands). After 2 years of Covid-19 isolation, an important  goal of the meeting was to compare notes between the achievements of the architecture and semantics groups and the developments within the 23 FEDeRATED Living Labs. 

FEDeRATED Group 29March2022

The images of workshop, including its participants, are available here WeFEDeRATED

A major focus of the Workshop was to allow the participants  to structurally connect and seek for opportunities to collaborate. Some energetic discussions took place between the particiants on how to foster collaboration between the  LivingLabs. eCMR in connection to eFTI, the definition of the interfaces in relation to semantics, and Identity and Access Management  proved to be important issues.

In the workshop 5 participants of the EU CEF FENIX project participated. A presentation on data sharing in the Trieste Port pitot side area was given. by Maria Pia Fanti (Poliba) . This presentation opened the floor to discuss the differenence between the general concept of the FENIX and FEDeRATED CEF projects. The primary FENIX focus is on the development and piloting of technology based connectors - brokers, ID management, access control - between different platforms. FEDeRATED focus on an overall system  interoperability, with a short term focus on the integration of semantics into the interfaces. 

For the general part of the workshop, two major presentations were delivered:

Between 2020-2021, the FEDeRATED project seems to have developed a two-speed approach. On a conceptual level, FEDeRATED advanced very well regarding semantics and architecture issues. These insights are fully shared and acknowlegde by the EU DTLF. The question emerged, whether these insights sufficienly  meet the both-feed-on-the-ground project approach. On a practical application level, the Covid-19 period proved to be a period of rather stand alone functioning for many LivingLabs. Thereby, they missed several opportunities to fully connect  with the conceptual FEDeRATED architecture  framework developments. In addition,   fostering full stakeholder engagement within the LivingLabs proved to be difficult.

An important FEDeRATED project challenge for the upcoming period is to reduce the current gap between the architectural and semantics framework and its concrete translation  in actual FEDeRATED LivingLabs. To reduce this gap a dedicated workshop was given on how to deal with sematics in a LivingLab. See

Sandra Haraldsson drew her impression of the wortkshop (hereunder).

Feferated semantic modeling

 

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FEDeRATED publishes LivingLab testing report

FEDeRATED has issued a new report  (Milestone 8) on the progress of its 23 LivingLabs. In this  Interim Testing Report click)  - the progress of the FEDeRATED LivingLabs is compared to the FEDeRATED Interim Masterplan.  A downloadable version is available here. 23 FACTsheets on every LivingLabs availablle here.

The structure and validation of the LivingLabs is illustrated hereunder

FEDeRATED LLs

 

An important goal of all LivinLabs is to enable realtime data driven logistics. The conditions to successfully pursue data driven business cases for logistics are:

  1. Full stakeholder’s engagement.
  2. Non propriety data spaces development,
  3. Application of the overarching EU Interoperability Framework EIF).
  4. Digital readiness – competence. To benefit from this enabling Internet provision, stakeholders need to be competent, digital ready.
  5. Full engage with the virtual infrastructure, the Internet,
  6. Applicability of the DTLF and FEDeRATED stack (explained in chapter 1  of the  Interim Testing Report (Milestone 8)

The major findings of the report are:

  • In general, the 37 FEDeRATED Leading Principles cover the overall concept of the federated network of platform concept – functional requirements and technical specifications. However, many LLs ask for more architecture guidance and interaction.
  • Most Living Labs cover some or all of the following elements: specified business process, dedicated services, security, data semantics, API’s, various data exchanges techniques, Identity and Authentication, Access control and access points, Authorisation and Identification.
  • Five Living Labs are exploring all 37 of the FEDeRATED Leading Principles (SIMPLE, Internet of Logistics, RFID in Rail, eGovernment Logistics and Real-time Multi-Modal Transportation platform). These LivingLabs are focussed primarily on developing comprehensive infrastructures based on the FEDeRATED semantic model and pull-based data availability.
  • In general, the Living Labs’ development can be identified as being under one of two separate levels.
    • Level 1 - developing a data sharing platform - providing a limited number of operators access and experimenting their solutions on a wide variety of different services
    • Level 2 - developing a federated infrastructure provision - focussing on genuine platform interoperability and elements such as: Index, Service Registry, Access, IAM (integrated assessment modelling) and semantic modelling.\
  • In 2022 and 2023, the LLs will intensify their collaboration and finetune their solutions with the technical settings developed by DTLF Subgroup II and FEDeRATED Activity 2.
  • The FEDeRATED Leading Principles should be further developed as functional requirements and technical specifications, allowing the development of a validated Master Plan, possibly including a Toolbox and “How To” guidebook, in 2023. The various aspects laying down the foundations of a federated infrastructure provision should cover the following functionalities (global features – the FEDeRATED stack), closely related to DTLF Subgroup II recommendations and FEDeRATED Activity 2 work, i.
    • Semantics with (open) standards – 17 LL’s indicate to (also) focus on this functionality
    • Identity and Authentication - Determining the identity of a person/organisation/’thing’ from a recognised provider-- 17 LL’s indicate to (also) focus on this functionality 
    • Access points and control - determine what data a person has access to and to identify the points for integrating organisations with or unlocking IT services (GUI) of the infrastructure – - 20 LL’s indicate to (also) focus on this functionality 
    • Findability - Search systems with metadata - findability of all kinds of data (cargo, qualifications, certificates, electronic documents) for supervisors and enforcers - 12 LL’s indicate to (also) focus on this functionality
  • The implementation of the federated network of platforms approach in terms of technical solution indicate the following:
    • 7 LL’s indicate to contribute to developing/facilitating a Peer2Peer solution.
    • 15 LL’s indicate to contribute to developing/facilitating Single Platform solution.
    • 10 LL’s indicate to contribute to developing/facilitating Multiple Platforms solution.
    • 7 LL’s indicate to contribute to developing/facilitating P2P and a Platform solution.
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Season's greetings 2021

The FEDeRATED team wishes you 

Xmas2021

Despide the pandemic the representatives of the 15 FEDeRATED partners maneged to substantially progress in 2021. Apart from many virtual meetings we even mnaged to organise a sucessful Mid Term Event. Many of our meetings are recorded and available on our YouTube channel.Click here

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This project is co-funded by the European Commission Connecting Europe Facility (CEF)