Dipartimento Tecnologie Energetiche e Fonti Rinnovabili
Unit Responsible
Gianluca D'Agosta
Unit description
X-LAB is a laboratory, located in Bologna, dedicated to technologies and standards for interoperability and their transfer and adoption to business networks (mainly in the manufacturing sector, with a specific attention to SMEs) and cities (smart city) ). X-LAB was born as joint initiative of ENEA (a state owned Italian research instution, www.enea.it) and FTI (Forum per la Tecnologia dell’Informazione, www.forumti.it, a no profit organisation of ICT providers and customers) launched in 2003 and following 13 years of activities of ENEA DTE-SEN-CROSS unit (already known as UDA-PMI or UTT-PMI) in the fields of the industrial districts and networks of enterprises in Italy. Since March 15th 2011 X-LAB is part of the CROSS-TECLaboratory in the Technopole Manifattura of Bologna of the Regional High Technology Network of the Emilia Romagna region.
Activity
The activities of X-LAB can be grouped in four main areas:
1 - interoperability and tools for smart cities
development and analysis of data exchange specifications between verticals at different levels
specific demonstration projects
methodologies for interoperability testing
2 - Building, promotion and adaptation/contextualisation of interoperability standards and dictionaries
promotion or partecipation to the creation of B2B standards (CEN/ISSS TexWeave, Moda-ML, collaborations with OASIS on UBL and ebXML , eBIZ-TCF project, UBL-Italia initiative)
awareness creation and fostering the B2B standard adoption (collaborations with Euratex, CEN/ISSS, eBIZ-TCF project)
participation to roadmapping activities in the fields of standards and Enterprise interoperability (CEN/ISSS eBIF, eBiz, European Technology Platform for Future Textile Clothing)
training material (paper based or web managed courses)
3 - Research on Enterprise Interoperability and enterprise networking
Semantic based tools to support new standardisation paradigms
ICT support for establishing extended smart organisations and supply networks
Collaboration processes modelling and profile/agreement management
Semantic based tools for interoperability testin
Self-adapting data exchange interfaces
4 - technology transfer projects and demonstrators, related with territorial demands
technology animation and demonstration on local scale (Centro CROSS, LISEA lab) and support to the creation of center of services at district level
sectorial specific projects of technology transfer or standard promotion
From a technological and scientific point of view the main interests are:
xml based technologies
participation to definition, adaptation and adoption of eBusiness standards (like ebXML and UBL)
implementation and development of tools to facilitate/speed-up the setting up of the collaboration in the enterprise networks
ontologies (OWL) to manage from a semantic point of view common dictionaries and ‘document factory’
data analysis methods
interoperability testing methods
The technological keywords are: XML, Web Services, B2B standards, ebXML, UBL, ontologies and semantic interoperability, virtual organisations.
Equipments
The laboratory equipments in short:
Laboratory server network.
Document factory tools: tools for creation and maintenance of standard o standard-aware data models.
Applications and Java libraries to manipolate XML Schema and XML documents.
Test bed for standard conformance and for networked enterprises interoperability
Services
Services offered by XLAB are accessibile to the tecnica and scientific community (enterprises as well as pubblic administration) that arte interested on these issues. The laboratory resources are available for:
requests for documentation, feasibility study and training,
sperimental activities on ICT technologies (including the development of prototypes and demonstrators)
development/adaptation of standardised electronic documents; development of their use profiles
study and design of pre-competitive architectures for interoperability "XML based"
project building and management for pilot projects on interoperability technologies
design and pre-competitive development of SW tools supporting interoperability
X-Lab hosts currently students universities for stages and development of projects (mainly from engineering and computer science courses). Researchers from national and international institutions can be hosted.
Work Opportunities
Currently there are not open calls. Applications for stages for researchers could be evaluated.