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Smart Agri Hubs

A €20m H2020 project that brings together a consortium of over 164 partners in the European agri-food sector. The project aims to realise the digitisation of European agriculture by fostering an agricultural innovation ecosystem dedicated to excellence, sustainability and success

Unleashing the innovation potential for the digital transformation of the European Agrifood Sector

Tags:

    Smart Agri Hubs banner

    Funding

    H2020 Grant No.818182

    Duration

    48 months

    Vertical alignment / Department

    Agri Tech

    Walton Team members

    Project Website

    Overview

    SmartAgriHubs is a €20 M EU project under the Horizon 2020 instrument, that brings together a consortium of over 164 partners in the European agri-food sector. The project aims to realise the digitisation of European agriculture by fostering an agricultural innovation ecosystem dedicated to excellence, sustainability and success. www.smartagrihubs.eu

    To this end, SmartAgriHubs employs a multi-stakeholder approach and covers a broad value-chain network across all EU member states. The consortium includes a diverse network of start-ups, SMEs, business and service providers, technology experts and end-users. The end-users form the core of the project and are the driving force behind digital transformation. The development and adoption of digital solutions is achieved by a tight ecosystem of 140 Digital Innovation Hubs embedded within 9 Regional Clusters, which are led by organisations that are closely involved in regional digitisation initiatives and funds.

    Walton Institute are the Regional Cluster lead for Ireland and the UK. (https://www.smartagrihubs.eu/regions) This network of Digital Innovation Hubs consists of 2000 competence centers and 28 Flag Ship Innovation Experiments where ideas and prototypes are developed and introduced into the market. The key to the inter-connectivity and knowledge-sharing of this network of European innovation in agri-food is SmartAgriHubs, which leverages, strengthens and connects all the different dots. There are two innovation experiments based in Ireland and the UK Region. (https://www.smartagrihubs.eu/flagship-innovation-experiments)

    Key Objectives

    In SmartAgriHubs we work with ‘deliverables’. A deliverable is something that is provided or achieved as a result of a process – an  output. During the life-cycle of the SmartAgriHubs project, we need to present the following deliverables:

    WP1 DIH Ecosystem Building

    • 1 Visual Identity;
    • 2 Communication & dissemination strategy;
    • 3 Ecosystem building strategy;
    • 4 Innovation Portal;
    • 5 Project’s outreach report.

    WP2 Network Expansion by Open Calls

    • 1 Regional Challenges;
    • 2 Roadmap for regional, sectoral and economical network expansion;
    • 3 Interaction with DIH Networks for open call preparation;
    • 4 Stocktake of potential regional and national public/private funds for Agri-Food DIHs;
    • 5 Report on match making – needs and potentials for network expansion;
    • 6 Periodic Reports on SmartAgriHubs Network Expansion by Open Call;
    • 7 Open Call – documents package;

    WP3 Monitoring & Evaluation of Innovation Experiments

    • 1 IE guidelines (or protocols, or procedures);
    • 2 IE execution plan;
    • 3 Learning takeaways from FIEs;
    • 4 Periodic evaluation of the IEs performance;
    • 5 IE Technology requirements identification;
    • 6 IE Common challenges analysis and technology reusability exploitation;
    • 7 Report on maximization of IEs market take-up;
    • 8 Success stories from IEs.

    WP4 DIH capacity building and monitoring

    • 1 Needs assessment report;
    • 2 DIH Capability Maturity Model;
    • 3 DIH Observatory web platform content and format;
    • 4 Capacity building package of materials for the establishment of a Hub;
    • 5 Capacity building package of materials for the establishment of a Hub;
    • 6 DIH Observatory update;
    • 7 synthesis report on lessons learned.

    WP5 Competence Centers (CC)

    • 1 Categorization of Digital Technologies related to Agriculture sector;
    • 2 Identification of existing CCs for DIH and IE;
    • 3 Competence profiling and White-spot Analysis;
    • 4 Procedures for Governance and Management of CC Network and Criteria for new CCs;
    • 5 Development of materials for trainings and inter-regional demonstrations of CCs;
    • 6 Report on CC Good Practices;

    WP6 Project Management

    • 1 Data Management Plan;
    • 2 Detailed Work Plan & Quality Assurance Guidelines;
    • 3 Sustainability Plan.

    WP7 Ethics requirements

    • 1 POPD – Requirement No. 1.;
    • 2 H – Requirement No. 2.;
    • 3 NEC – Requirement No. 3.;
    • 4 GEN – Requirement No. 4.