EU PROJECTS

BRILLIANT – Boosting excellence in the European lighting value
chain (2020 – 2022)

ELCA is the Coordinator of the newly granted European Cluster Excellence project – BRILLIANT whose consortium has just signed the Grant Agreement with the EASME Agency – COSME Programme!
The project activities kicked-off on the 3rd of February 2020!

In the era of the knowledge economy, knowledge management is increasingly important, as it is one of the core factors influencing enterprise competitiveness, affecting innovation performance and sustainable development. Technological progress and globalisation are revolutionising the way of doing business, offering tremendous opportunities for innovation and growth. Lighting is one of the few sectors of building industry that has undergone the most revolutionary changes in the last years. The rapid evolution of lighting technologies and IoT systems in buildings offer emerging market opportunities for the EU lighting, furniture and construction industry. And clusters must be in the front line to support their companies in seizing the business opportunities and become competitive on the global market. These challenges require skilled and adaptable people who are able to drive and support change.

The main objective of the BRILLIANT project is to support its project partners – cluster organisations in closing these gaps and exploiting the full innovation and grow potential that clusters can offer to their SME through added-value services and efficient organisational structure and governance.

BRILLIANT will support 7 industrial clusters of lighting, furniture and construction sectors in exploiting their potential as industrial network, by increasing skills and know-how of clusters managers in managing their cluster organisations to better serve the needs and expectations of their firms. Managers will develop complete and longstanding cluster strategies, based on clusters’ distinctive value proposition.

BRILLIANT will endorse cross-cluster learning and networking to explore and take up new business deals coming from Smart Home and Building concepts.

Furthermore, partners will take advantage of the ClusterXchange professional programme for SMEs to facilitate international, sector, and cross-sector cooperation between clusters, SME and scaling-up organisations. Design-thinking, experiential learning and business model tools will be adopted in training and networking to help clusters outline better their vision, objectives and services from different perspectives. Above activities, like pieces of a puzzle combine with each other creating an important contribution to cluster management excellence.

CONSORTIUM:

The European Clusters involved in the project represent ecosystems and in particular, companies operating in various segments of the building sector, that interplay in the lighting value chain – lighting clusters, furniture clusters and construction cluster, with complementary expertise necessary to establish a fruitful mutual learning paths, knowledge co-sharing and cross-sector cooperation processes to seize the emerging market opportunities and become competitive on the global market

The BRILLIANT project partners:

1. ELCA – Project Coordinator – European Lighting Cluster Alliance
2. Cluster Lumière Association, France
3. Rete di Imprese Luce in Veneto, Italy
4. Cluster d’Illuminacio de Catalunya – CICAT, Spain
5. IQ Kecskemet – MIENK Cluster, Hungary
6. Klastr Ceskych Nabytkaru Druzstvo – KČN, Czechia
7. Cluster Legno, Arredo e Sistema Casa Fvg Srl Consortile, Italy

More information on the project and its business support activities will be available soon!

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ECOSLIGHT – Environmentally conscious smart lighting (2019-2022)

The construction sector faces new challenges in order to provide smart, energy-efficient and sustainable lighting environments for infrastructure, cities, buildings and the industry, in order to follow the 2050 low-carbon economy roadmap of the EC.

Current professional discourse on lighting design portrays different approaches to the profession depending on academic background. As such, a holistic approach to lighting design is not achieved, but rather confined and not addressing interdisciplinarity, a must-have skill of the 21st century. As such, there is an imminent and growing need of lighting design skills that bring together lighting design and smart technologies, as well as skills that take into account ecological and human-centric issues on lighting systems in the connected world that we live in.

The creation of an Environmentally Conscious Smart Lighting (ECOSLIGHT) Designers training program will actively enhance employability and improve the career prospects of lighting-related professionals.

ECOSLIGHT will identify the competencies required as well as particular job role profiles related to them and will create modular VET curricula (EQF 5) based on the learning outcomes approach. Engaged professionals will be upskilled participating in a MOOC and to specialized professional development activities, including work-based learning and collaborating through communities of interest.

The project will adopt EQF, ECVET and EQAVET in order to improve the recognition of the identified qualification, both in EU and national levels. ECOSLIGHT will build upon well-known and widely accepted EU frameworks, such as the e-CF, DigComp, EntreComp, and the framework for the 21st-century skills. Overall, the project is expected to present a serious impact in raising the productivity and results of professionals working in the construction sector, and especially in the areas of exploitation of contemporary technologies, energy-saving, and human well-being.

ECOSLIGHT aims at upskilling and enhancing the employability of professionals and HEI students linked to lighting-related issues in the construction sector at an EQF 5 level, in order to respond to the market needs for Environmentally Conscious Smart Lighting Designers. Following a thorough needs analysis in the participating countries, a set of 3-4 job role profiles will be selected. The following role profiles will be addressed:
a) The Light Pollution Specialist,
b) The Human-Centric Lighting Specialist,
c) The Road Lighting Safety and Security Specialist.

The Consortium is composed of 12 partners from 5 EU countries (Austria, France, Germany, Greece and Italy).

1. HELLENIC OPEN UNIVERSITY – COORDINATOR, Greece
2. NATIONAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS, Greece
3. TECHNIKO EPIMELITIRIO ELADAS, Greece
4. EUROPEAN GRANTS INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY SRL, Italy
5. LINK CAMPUS UNIVERSITY, Italy
6. FORSCHUNGSVERBUND BERLIN EV, Germany
7. EUROPEAN LIGHTING CLUSTER ALLIANCE-ELCA, Italy
8. EUROPAISCHER VERBAND BERUFLICHER BILDUNGSTRAGER (EVBB), Germany
9. BUNDESVERBAND DER TRAGER BERUFLICHER BILDUNG EV, Germany
10. UNIVERSITE PAUL SABATIER TOULOUSE III, France
11. ECQA, Austria
12. ASSOCIATION FRANÇAISE DE L’ÉCLAIRAGE, France

More information on the project will be available soon.

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CYBER SECURE LIGHT (2018 – 2020)

The CYBER SECURE LIGHT project is co-funded by the European COSME Programme, in the framework of the COS-CLUSTPARTNS-2017-3-02 call for proposals. The overall objective of this call was to boost industrial competitiveness and investment in the EU via cross-regional cooperation and networking by supporting the establishment of European Strategic Cluster Partnerships for smart specialisation investments (ESCP-S3).

The CYBER SECURE LIGHT as officially labelled ESCP-S3 partnership by the EASME Agency, aims at facilitating cluster cooperation in the IoT cybersecurity area related to regional smart specialisation strategies, in particular to trajectories related to ICT and smart building, and at increasing the involvement of industry in the context of the Smart Specialisation Platform for Industrial Modernisation.

Project background:

Today’s smart buildings are increasingly enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT) and made functional by the ongoing convergence of operational technology (OT) systems and information technology (IT) systems in buildings. These systems have thrown open an otherwise closed-loop building architecture into one that necessitates the open access and control of many operators and service providers. The industrial product and service providers of the smart building value chain must collaborate to address various aspects of buildings digital security.

In this framework, Lighting positions itself at the heart of Smart Buildings and at the forefront of the Internet of Things revolution. Modern LED technology is intersecting with the IoT-enabled devices assigning IP addresses to individual lights to allow lighting control through a smartphone app and other remote control systems. LED lighting systems serve as a connectivity link between sensors, things, smart applications, artificial intelligence programming and even new connected wearables. As one of the most densely distributed elements within the built environment, lighting fixtures provide the ideal platform for gathering essential data about what is happenings in the workplace or at home.

Unfortunately, this evolution beside its numerous benefits, has also its downside linked to the digital security aspects of IoT-enabled interconnected systems. ICT security – cybersecurity is becoming a major issue in the coming lighting systems for smart building. Therefore, meeting the cybersecurity challenges requires more reliance on teamwork than ever before. The whole value chain of the building industry must communicate and collaborate because of their shared responsibility for the IT systems involved.

CONSORTIUM:

The Clusters involved in the project represent companies operating in various segments of the smart building sector, as SSL lighting, digital lighting, Electrical Equipment, sustainable construction, design (BIM), engineering, building automation, building energy management, digital infrastructures, digital security, IoT, Big Data analytics, domotic technologies – home automation, telecommunication, with complementary expertise necessary to build knowledge co-sharing processes

The CYBER SECURE LIGHT project partners:

1. Rete di Imprese Luce in Veneto – the Italian innovative lighting cluster of the Veneto Region, Project Coordinator
2. Domotys – Spanish Cluster of home & Building automation and Smart Cities, Barcelona
3. Slovenski Gradbeni Grozd – Construction Cluster of Slovenia
4. POLE SCS – French cluster specialised in security & digital identities technologies, mobile networks and services, IoT and contactless from Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region
5. ELCA – European Lighting Cluster Alliance
6. SIPH INNOWATOR – Polish Construction Cluster INNOWATOR
7. ARCHENERG – Hungarian international cluster for renewable energy and building trade

OBJECTIVES:

The main objective of the CYBER SECURE LIGHT is to develop a Joint Cluster Partnership Strategy to pursue proactive and business-oriented cross-sector cooperation of SMEs and industrial clusters of the IoT smart building value chain, with a particular focus on the security aspects.

The CYBER SECURE LIGHT specific objectives are the following:

• to foster interregional business-to-business collaboration deals for innovation and smart investments, between SMEs members, R&D providers and other stakeholders representing strategic market players for companies growth in the smart building/IT/cybersecurity sector through customised open matchmaking process;
• to reinforce cluster-to-cluster cooperation by customised capacity building and sharing cybersecurity knowledge, skills and capabilities as well as SME-oriented technology transfer opportunities necessary to guide the companies in their innovation-led development and international market exposure;
• to individuate 12 innovative and market promising pilot business cooperation initiatives and technology transfer projects – and provide them with a joint highly-expertise extensive mentoring and tailored support to facilitate commercial alliances, access to finance and investments, and technology transfer cooperative agreements.
• to ensure a steady and constantly evolving co-learning and knowledge-sharing process to mainstream the project mission and results and to support the development of cluster bridges with other complementary ecosystem actors to enlarge the CYBER SECURE LIGHT consortium and investigate new development and cooperation opportunities;
• to stabilize and regulate the CYBER SECURE LIGHT consortium in order to ensure durability of its intercluster cooperation and joint business support service and enlarge its membership of additional strategic partners

More information on the project and its business support activities are available on the project website: www.cybersecurelight.eu