What is SmartLivingNEXT all about?
SmartLivingNEXT aims to create a digital ecosystem within the residential environment in which various stakeholders can participate. In particular, we are thinking here of the housing sector, the energy sector, and service providers within the residential environment – such as those offering care support – as well as other services designed to improve energy efficiency. The result is an open ecosystem with a federated catalogue that makes external data and services visible.
Whilst we already have access to large datasets in many areas, these are generally organised as silos and do not ‘speak the same language’ to one another. This means that data is formatted differently, the input parameters for analysis tools do not match, and there is a lack of overarching semantics – in other words, a language in which machines can communicate with one another.
In SmartLivingNEXT, we are building on the technological foundations and core technologies developed in the ForeSightNEXT project. These include an infrastructure and a common basis for the ecosystem to enable sovereign, secure and data-protection-compliant data exchange. This makes it possible both to reduce the costs of deploying new digital applications by reusing existing measurement points and to utilise additional data points.
This will also mean that end users who, for example, switch their electricity contract, can continue to access their historical consumption data or provide this to their new supplier. In this way, we avoid the lock-in effect that arises with proprietary data storage.
The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action is providing 25 million euros in funding for seven collaborative projects with accompanying research under the SmartLivingNEXT programme. Materna is developing solutions both as part of the flagship project ForeSightNEXT and for the satellite project GAiST.
What role does Materna play in ForeSightNEXT?
Materna is working in three main areas for ForeSightNEXT. We are developing a mobile app, a web app and designing a national access point for the digital smart living ecosystem.
The mobile app is designed to provide transparency on energy costs for tenants in blocks of flats. The app will also display energy-saving tips for both heating and electricity consumption, tailored to each individual’s situation. The mobile app is also of interest to landlords in relation to tenant electricity schemes, where the landlord acts as an electricity supplier and sells the renewable electricity generated by the rooftop solar panel system to the tenants. This makes the energy transition in existing housing stock and new-build properties attractive for tenants too.
Behind the web app lies an energy efficiency data portal. With the help of the web portal, scenarios for optimising greenhouse gas emissions can be developed. In addition, landlords can draw up a multi-year, cost- and energy-efficient refurbishment plan for their buildings. Through the portal, landlords can also share data that is useful, for example, to local authorities involved in heating planning. The ecosystem creates digital interfaces between local authorities, energy suppliers and the housing sector.
For us, the development of the national access point to the digital Smart Living ecosystem is arguably the most important aspect. This enables simple, secure and vendor-neutral data availability, thereby ensuring cost-efficiency in the provision of new use cases. This requires several technological building blocks, such as a Dataspace Blueprint and an IoT backend. In addition, we also draw on software components from the Gaia-X reference architecture.
How does Materna contribute to the GAiST project consortium?
The GAiST project focuses on health-oriented living for older people. As part of this project, 500 flats are expected to be fitted with so-called Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) scenarios. Sensors are used to collect and analyse health-related information. This data is linked to the SmartLivingNEXT platform and a hospital information system (HIS). Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) refers to developments and assistance systems that create an intelligent environment. Patients, carers and doctors are supported in their work to make life in people’s own homes more liveable. The use of open-source solutions, as well as medical and industrial standards, reduces costs and enables a more efficient use of existing healthcare staff. In this project, we are combining artificial intelligence, advanced sensor technology and smart home components to promote health-oriented living.
Further information:
Further information on the use cases and how the ecosystem works is provided in an expert interview with our project manager, Filip Milojkovic, on the smartLivingnext.de website.
