Interop V-Lab
Created in 2007, INTEROP-VLAB (aisbl), the International Virtual Laboratory for Enterprise Interoperability (EI) is a network of organisations, which brings together leading academics, research centres, industrial stakeholders, and Small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Its members are established in European countries, China, and represent 250 researchers and 70 organizations. INTEROP-VLab is the result of the 42-month (Nov. 2003 - March 2007) INTEROP Network of Excellence (Interoperability research for networked enterprise applications and software).
Motivations
Enterprise Interoperability (EI) definitely appears as the appropriate concept to address the development of integrative solutions adapted to the management of heterogeneous industrial systems, public administrations, or other organisations. Competitiveness of European enterprises or organisations (public or private) depends strongly on their ability to use interoperable ICT systems solutions.
INTEROP-VLab is an initiative to develop networked research with critical mass in the EI domain and is capable of aggregating research laboratories in close connection with industry, to achieve a number of goals that each single participant organization could not reach.
INTEROP-VLab’s mission is to maintain and develop the defragmentation of the ERA (European Research Area) in the domain of EI in cooperation with other regions of the world:
- by supporting the development of research, education and innovation in Enterprise Interoperability
- by acting as a Centre of Excellence in the domain of Enterprise Interoperability world wide
INTEROP-VLab is the official repository of Enterprise Interoperability public domain deliverables, produced by European research projects under the 5th, 6th and 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission (DG INFSO unit D4).
Research, Education and Dissemination Activities
INTEROP-VLab develops a range of activities: research, education and training services, state of the art, standardisation advice, dissemination of knowledge, common use of research funds...
The originality of the research in INTEROP-VLab is based on the integration of three key thematic components:
- Information and Communications Technology, the technological base of interoperable systems
- Enterprise Modelling, to implement suitable organisations for interoperable enterprises / public organisations
- Ontology, to ensure the semantical consistency of networked organisations and solutions along three main lines: (i) theoretical foundations; (ii) enabling technologies; (iii) exemplary applications.
INTEROP-VLab presents the two main results among the twenty developed during the INTEROP- NoE project:
- the I-V KMap (INTEROP-VLab Knowledge Map), which is a competency management system in the EI domain, using an ontology-based search engine. I-V KMap can be used for retrieving and storing relevant content (documents, project and product descriptions, people’s competencies, organizations, events of all kinds, such as meetings, visits...) in a specific knowledge domain, based on the ontology related to the domain concerned.
The I-V KMap technology can be applied to other domains than EI, since it relies on a semi-automated knowledge acquisition value chain.
- the I-V e-Learning platform which contains more than 50 web courses and tutorials developed by specialists in EI, in four domains related to EI and also related topics such as Enterprise Modeling, Ontologies and Architecture & Platforms.
These two services are put available on the private part of the INTEROP-VLab platform for its partners and are also proposed to non-partners.
External links
Members
Based on the concept of “pole” (a “pole” is a set of partners located in a geographical territory region, country, set of countries or connected parts of countries). Activities in poles are synergized at the European scale by a coordination structure.
The members of INTEROP-VLab are:
INTEROP-VLab Pole France-Belgium Grande Région (INTEROP-GR)
- DFI (Deutsches Forum für Interoperabilität e.V.)
- INTEROP-VLab China Pole
[INTEROP-VLab Portuguese Pole (INTEROP-PtRP)]
- North Pole (Norway, Sweden, Finland)
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