The name of our DIH is The Digital Innovation Hub of the Balearic Islands for Artificial Intelligence (DIH-BAITUR). This is a non-profit initiative aligned with the Smart Specialisation Strategy of the Balearic Islands (RIS3) which is focused on tourism and promotes other strategic sectors, like agriculture. 

DIH-BAITUR is co-owned by different non-profit and public entities. The cluster of technologies applied to tourism – TURISTEC, leads the creation of DIH-BAITUR together with the University of the Balearic Islands, Mallorca Chamber of Commerce, the Agricultural Cooperatives of the Balearic Islands and the Regional Government of the Balearic Islands. New members, to join in the short-medium term have been identified.  

The Balearic Islands’ DIH’s main ambition is to become a reference, not only for the Balearics in anything related to innovation and digitisation, but also at European level for the tourism sector. 

What was the biggest challenge that you have encountered in the past year? 

DIHBAI-TUR has been formally established in 2019, the main challenge we have encountered is the access to funds. 

You are participating in one of our FIEs. What has the SmartAgriHubs project brought you? 

The possibility to be part of a large network of DIHs, and therefore increasing our own network. For us it is very important to have access to knowledge and to be updated of the last news and trends. And we hope we will also have access to funds though the Open calls. 

We are celebrating the one year anniversary of SmartAgriHubs, what successes have you celebrated last year? 

The constitution of DIHBAI-TUR bringing on board the main stakeholders of the region as well as the regional government! 

What are you most proud of? 

Being a region that is mainly focused on the tourism sector, we are very proud of bringing together the agricultural and tourism sector. We are also proud of creating an innovation ecosystem that is working together to achieve the same objectives. 

What advice would you give to the other DIHs of SmartAgriHubs? 

Be active and proactive. A DIH is a living ecosystem that needs to be able to cooperate with different realities, technologies and stakeholders. Therefore the adaptation and flexibility skills should be in the DNA. 

Contact details: 

Dolores Ordóñez 

Email: dom@anysolution.eu 

Website: https://dihbai-tur.com/ 

“Being a region that is mainly focused on the tourism sector, we are very proud of bringing together the agricultural and tourism sector.”

Dolores Ordóñez

“We’re really proud of being one of the first DIHs that was recognized by BDVA as i-Space “silver label” for our activities in Big Data.”

What is the main goal of your DIH? 
We are the Aragonese initiative that, within a framework of European cooperation (DIH), extends the strategy of Economic and Industrial Promotion of Aragon and the intelligent regional strategy of Aragon, forming the technological and innovative action of the Aragonese Innovation System Towards the digitization of the Industry. For this purpose, it has the Research Organizations, Competence Centres, innovative companies and clusters, as well as the business development agencies and the competent authorities necessary to support and give shape to the Aragon Industry Strategy 4.0 (AI4.0) At present, Instituto Tecnologico de Aragon is the coordinator of Aragon DIH and, besides, its legal representative. ITAINNOVA is the Technological Institute of Aragon, a public Technology Center whose mission is to help companies, technology leaders, institutions and anyone who shapes our society towards achieving a new future through innovation and technological development. ITAINNOVA offers its services with a clear market orientation, providing real and innovative solutions from our lines of research and development, which transform and accelerate the technological processes of companies or new challenges in our society. 

What was the biggest challenge that you have encountered in the past year?  

One of the biggest challenges was to establish a successful and fruitful agreement among the founders of the Aragon DIH, in order to start working together as a whole. Now, we’re facing new challenges thanks to that reached goal! 

We are celebrating the one year anniversary of SmartAgriHubs, what successes have you celebrated last year?  
Our main highlight in the SmartAgriHubs project is the possibility of learning a lot of the SoTA regarding technology applied to the agro sector, and the really valuable set of contacts and networking acquired… We’re pretty sure that this is only the beginning. 

What are you most proud of? 
We’re really proud of being one of the first DIHs that was recognized by BDVA as i-Space “silver label” for our activities in Big Data.

And, this is breaking news, ITAINNOVA, the Aragon DIH CC, is participating now in Coronavirusmakers, with the main goal of building medical supplies for helping professionals in COVID-19 crisis. 

 
What advice would you give to the other DIHs of SmartAgriHubs? 
I’d recommend to be wise selecting the efforts to be performed… There’re a lot of communities, technologies,  etc., and it’s impossible both to contribute and to take advantage of all of them! 

Contact information 

Esther Borao (ITAINNOVA General Manager) 

eborao@itainnova.es 

https://www.aragondih.com/  (new website in the making) 

“Pellentesque eu est urna. Cras mollis tincidunt varius. Pellentesque consectetur enim quis sapien consectetur, at pretium erat dignissim. Aliquam erat volutpat.”

Firstnam Lastname

Fuction

What was the biggest challenge that you have encountered in the past year? 

Involving partners, making decisions on the best legal formula for the DIH, getting involved in other projects, developing services, learning from other in this path... There is no biggest challenge at all as all the different aspects of a DIH have to be worked out at the same time. Using the simile of a table, you have to build it up with all the legs, if you don’t put one of them, the table will not be stable. In this case, all aspects have to be developed and each of them is as challenging as the others. 

You are participating in one of our FIEs. What has the SmartAgriHubs project brought you? 

We are participating in FIE 21 Sensoring and AI algorithms for early crop disease detection and FIE 22 Iberian irrigation portal. In both cases, results from these FIEs are very important for the Andalusian agrifood sector which is our scope. In the case of FIE 21, it focuses on olive trees apart and grapevines, in addition to cork trees. Andalusia is the biggest producer of olive oil and table olive and wine is also very important, for that, being able to detect the most aggressive diseases in advance in these crops is crucial for our farmers, cooperatives, etc.. On the other hand, 25% of the Andalucía surface is devoted to irrigation, then, we need to maximise the use of water. For that, participating in FIE22 was also of great importance. 

Participating in both FIEs has given us the opportunity not only of transferring results obtained in the development of the experiments but also of meeting other experiments, other DIHs in the big events of the project and also through the innovation portal, where we think we will have many resources to continue growing and learning. 

We are celebrating the one year anniversary of SmartAgriHubs, what successes have you celebrated last year?  

Last year we grew up in terms of people working at the Andalucía Agrotech DIH. Having a multidisciplinary and qualified crew is essential to deploy our services for the agrifood sector. We are now happy to have a very motivated and engaged team. 

What are you most proud of? 

We started this adventure just a few years ago. We are still “new” on this but we are growing very fast and acquiring a big and valuable experience. We are already implementing services and getting involved in different projects, such as SmartAgriHubs, that we believe will be of benefit for our agrifood sector. For that, we are also being of reference for the European Commission and other DIHs that are now starting, something to be very proud of. 

What advice would you give to the other DIHs of SmartAgriHubs? 

We would mention two very important issues for us:  

1. Working in a network is really important. It gives you the possibility to see how others are functioning, developing their services, connecting with their agrifood sector and giving them solutions adapted to their needs, and also what experiments they are developing and how and what results they are obtaining. Learning one from another is key and also collaboration amongst us to foster innovation. In this sense, we have a very good opportunity in this project, SmartAgriHubs, and we should take it seriously. The Innovation Portal is a marvellous tool created for us with this purpose and we encourage all DIHs to use it. 

2. The digital transformation of the agrifood sector and creating innovation is our goal for the agritech DIHs, we cannot forget them in our experiments. Sometimes we put our focus on the technologies and forget that the agrifood sector must be there also. If not, how could we supply adapted solutions for their needs? The agrifood sector is our main target and we have to keep this in mind. 

Contact details: 

Judit Anda Ugarte 

Ana Belén Cabezas Serrano 

dih.andalucia.agrotech@juntadeandalucia.es 

www.andaluciaagrotech.com 

Twitter: @DIHAndAgrotech 

LinkeIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/andalucía-agrotech-dih 

“We are already implementing services and getting involved in different projects, such as SmartAgriHubs, that we believe will be of benefit for our agrifood sector.”

FIE 21

FIE 22

“I think we can be proud of a large community of people all over Europe working on smart farming and already started sharing knowledge and experiences. ”

Dr. Ir. George Beers

Project coordinator

We are celebrating one year of SmartAgriHubs and in this chapter we want to put our Digital Innovation Hubs in the spotlight. Can you tell us why they are so important to SmartAgriHubs and the digitalisation of the agrifood sector?

Digital Innovation Hubs are crucial for large scale, Europe wide adoption of Smart Farming. The agricultural community is facing many challenges and we really need digital technology to deal with those and to comply with what society is expecting from the sector; enough, safe food of high quality and produced in sustainable way. Smart farming needs to be implemented at large scale and digital technology should be available for all European farmers. To make that happen, we are targeting on having Digital Innovation Hubs in regions where agriculture is an important activity and located in the proximity of the farmers. Digital Innovation Hubs will be embedded in local organizations that are trusted by farmers and where farmers will have easy access to them.

Digital Innovation Hubs have services to support farmers that are interested in (further) use of smart farming technology. They will also promote and stimulate the use of digital technology in their region. An important Digital Innovation Hubs service is also in providing funding opportunities for digital innovation on farms. For providing these, the Digital Innovation Hub will be connected to the network of SmartAgriHubs where they will have access to up-to-date knowledge, experience and competences, potential partners and providers (technology as well as business) via the SmartAgriHubs Innovation Portal and the network of fellow Digital Innovation Hubs and Competence Centers. Farmers do not need to be knowledgeable on all aspects of smart farming, they can rely on their Digital Innovation Hub. 

Can you share with us some successes from the past year with regards to the DIHs?  

When we started the project, we needed to figure out how to make the concept of Digital Innovation Hubs working for Agriculture. Examples for Digital Innovation Hubs for other sectors are available, but do not match the specific needs of the agricultural community. To facilitate and push smart farming technology at local level, it needs to be aligned with local conditions and needs; it must match local farming practices with differ all over Europe. I think one of our successes in the first year, is that we managed to develop and set up an organization for implementing the specific Agricultural Digital Innovation Hub concept. In line with this, we managed to design and develop an Innovation Portal to facilitate communication and interaction in the SmartAgriHubs network.   

What are you most proud of, looking back at the first year of SmartAgriHubs? 

After the first year of hard work, I think we can be proud of a large community of people all over Europe working on smart farming and already started sharing knowledge and experiences. Already in the first year I dare to say we connected a lot of dots, and we are just getting started. Another achievement of the first year, is that we established 28 Flagship Innovation Experiments. These are good examples for introducing new applications and where Digital Innovation Hubs are developing and maturing their services. This portfolio of interesting cases already attracts a lot of attention of the European farming community.  

What do you hope for and want to accomplish with regards to the DIHs in this new year? 

Now that we have the Innovation Portal available, it is crucial to fill it. All parties in the network are invited to expose themselves and particularly, to make visible what and how they can contribute to the digital transformation in agriculture. Existing and new Digital Innovation Hubs are requested to make visible what service they can provide; Competence Centers can reveal how they can support digital innovation projects and Innovation Experiments (and other projects on smart farming) will demonstrate themselves as good practice that can inspire farmers in other regions.