Discover the 2024 BDVA i-Spaces!

The Big Data Value Association (BDVA) announced during the main event of the European Research and Innovation Data and AI community, The European Big Data Value Forum (EBDVF) 2024, the 2024 i-Spaces. Two new organisations joined the i-Spaces community, after obtaining their BDVA i-Space label for the first time. On the 2nd of October, during the i-Spaces ceremony, the Data Space Demonstration Centre of Catalonia and GATE i-Space were officially welcomed within the community by BDVA President Thomas Hahn, BDVA Vice-president Laure Le Bars and BDVA Secretary General Ana García Robles. On the same day, Algebra LAB, was granted a label of a new tier – the Gold BDVA i-Space label, to recognise its continuous growth and all the progress of the organisation within the last year.

Algebra LAB is a Slovenian-based Digital Innovation Hub, which serves as a one-stop-shop for companies, willing to undergo Digital transformation. It is an open innovation lab offering access to a network of experts, applied research and a platform for knowledge dissemination.

Data Space Demonstration Centre of Catalonia, is an undertaking of i2CAT institute, located in Barcelona. Its focus is on such topics like 5G/6G, IoT, immersive and interactive technologies and Artificial Intelligence.

GATE i-Space was established by the GATE Institute – the first Centre of Excellence in Bulgaria. The ambition of the organisation is to work on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence at the regional and European levels, actively engaging with the local Bulgarian community, e.g. with the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of Sofia University.

Find out more about all of the other i-Spaces here!

The i-Space label is a quality standard that serves as a benchmark, supporting organizations in their growth and helping them achieve their ambitions of expanding their networks and increasing their impact. The entities that have obtained the i-Space label form a community of 31 hubs across 20 countries in Europe, creating unique opportunities for collaboration and synergy building. The i-Spaces community is today a large European network of federated hubs fostering data innovation and AI experimentation grounded in secure data-sharing and computing facilities, By federating themselves, these organisations have formed a super-core for Europe, bringing together computing power, ethical guidelines, business models and more, creating a pan-European federated catalogue that accelerates the evolution and adoption of data-driven innovation and AI technologies.

BDVA recognises the i-Spaces as pivotal instruments for driving data-driven innovation in Europe. These cross-sectorial and cross-organisational innovation hubs are central points for regional technology businesses to develop their products. i-Spaces accelerate the uptake of data-driven innovation across commercial sectors such as Manufacturing 4.0, Logistics, e-commerce and several others. Providing secure accelerator-style environments for running experiments in both private and open data, i-Spaces foster technology and application development.

The evaluation process conducted by BDVA emphasises excellence in crucial domains such as infrastructure, services, projects and sectors, ecosystem/impact, business/sustainability strategy, federation capabilities and ethics.

About BDVA:

BDVA is an industry-driven international not-for-profit organisation with 250 members all over Europe and a well-balanced composition of large, small and medium-sized industries, start-ups as well as research and user organisations. We focus on advancing in areas such as big data technologies and services, data platforms and data spaces, Industrial AI, data-driven value creation, standardisation and skills. Our mission and objectives are:

• To boost Data and AI research, development and innovation for European competitiveness, societal wellbeing and sustainable progress
• To develop the innovation ecosystem that enables and accelerates the data-driven and AI-enabled digital transformation of the economy and society, with European values and focus but global impact and ambitions.
• To foster excellence in European Data and AI research, in science and business.
• To anticipate, lead and keep up with the dynamic change that Data and AI brings to business and society.

BDVA is a private member of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and it is a founder member of the AI, Data and Robotics Partnership (Adra). BDVA has developed a strong and growing cooperation with Gaia-X, IDSA and FIWARE through the Data Spaces Business Alliance (DSBA) and collaborates with many data and industry-driven AI national initiatives and other European communities.

In October 2024 the BDVA community celebrates the Association’s 10th anniversary, that keeps on growing in breadth and in depth thanks to our members, our team and our collaboration partners. Join us in the celebration!

BDVA is open to new members! Visit BDVA.EU to learn more about members and activities. You can contact us anytime at info@bdva.eu.

About EBDVF 2024:

The European Big Data Value Forum (EBDVF) is the flagship event of the European Big Data and Data-Driven AI Research and Innovation community. EBDVF 2024 took place in Budapest from 2-4 October and highlighted Europe as a main stage for Global Leadership in AI & Data. It brought together over 450 industry professionals, business developers, researchers and policymakers to discuss the challenges and opportunities in the big data sector.