Fostering the BDVA in the Small Big Data Value Association Summit in The Hague

The BDVA organized its second Summit in The Hague from March 2 to 4, 2016 – an event that was centred on Societal Impact of Big Data. More than 200 attendees from all around Europe, showing the consolidation and maturity of Big Data Value Association. Keynote speeches, one interesting panel session with 7 panellists, and 15 working sessions showed the results of BDVA Task Forces and addressed the future needs for the European Big Data Community. The European Commission took a very active participation along the Summit taking note of the progress in the different Task Forces and giving recommendations for future activities.

The working sessions were divided into several essential tracks, covering the societal impact of Big Data; the Technical Challenges related to data protection, governance, analytics and language processing; the application of Big Data to several domains to create precision industries, like agriculture, health and manufacturing; BDVA related initiatives; and the Future of Big Data, with special importance of Workprogramme 2018+ preparation, giving continuity to some of the activities initiated in Madrid Summit. The Small BDVA Summit also offered the opportunity to work on proposals for BDV PPP Call.

Collocated with the Summit, several internal BDVA meetings were held the first day: the Board of Directors, the Partnership Board and the General Assembly with the participation of the European Commission, the public counterpart of the PPP. 3 new full members and 5 associate members were admitted to the association.

The summit was powered by TNO supported by Answare Tech, Information Catalyst, ITI, U-Tad, Fraunhofer, Paluno, Dutch Digital Delta and The City of The Hague.
Sponsors included: Platinum Sponsors: Data Science Initiative, Gold Sponsors: Thales, Inria, EGI, Tilde, Orange and Vicomtech and Silver Sponsors: CWI, Delft Data Science, CINI, Paluno and NLR.