At the social dinner on 2nd September during the OpenLivingLab Days we welcomed 13th wave of ENoLL Adherent members. Adherent members of ENoLL undergo a thorough evaluation process before being accepted to the network by the General Assembly.

We are proud to showcase inspiring examples from the latest Living Labs to join the network! Please find descriptions of new members bellow.

Intergener8 – Australia

Intergener8 Living Lab is a co-research and co-design entity working with over 100 industry, government, civil society and academic stakeholders to develop technology-based strategies to nurture intergenerational resilience.

Intergener8 has four key pillars:

1. Intergenerational. Our focus is on young people but we take an intergenerational approach to strengthening individual and community resilience.
2. Place-based and Translatable. Western Sydney, the fastest growing and most diverse region in Australia, struggles with social, cultural and economic inequality and ecological challenges. Common to other urban settings, they mean the learnings from Intergener8 can be translated to national and international settings.
3. Digital. We both develop develop technology-based strategies for resilience, and understand the digital more generally as an influence shaping our ways of being online and offline, a setting for transformation rather than a solution in itself.
4. Ongoing and iterative. Through continuous facilitation, we empower our community to generate, analyse and utilise meaningful data via a unique co-research and engagement Toolkit.

Global Centre for Modern Ageing  – Australia

The Global Centre for Modern Ageing and its LifeLab (LifeLab) is creating an innovation eco-system that empowers people, businesses, researchers and governments to co-create and validate solutions that reflect the opportunities for Modern Ageing. The LifeLab provides commercial services for businesses to support them in developing better products, services, and solutions to meet the needs of the growing and changing older communities.

The LifeLab applies high standard methods and processes. The LifeLab has qualified staff with long histories of working in living labs, user research and product development to offer a wide range of services in real life or simulated research studio settings. Special attention is paid to user engagement, data management, ethics review processes and stakeholder relationships. The LifeLab works extensively to engage the academic research community and other innovation partners to collaborate in projects and ensure the use of the most valid methods.

LifeLab has a fit-for-purpose facility at Tonsley, Australia’s leading innovation district. The facility is tailored to meet the requirements of older people and provide a pleasant place for various co-design sessions and user studies. The lab is equipped with a state-of-art audio and video data capture solutions to perform usability studies and simulated ethnographic studies.

NEST – Switzerland

The Next Evolution in Sustainable Building Technologies (NEST) living lab at Empa in Dübendorf, Switzerland, is a versatile, modular platform to accelerate innovation in the areas of construction, building automation and smart living, as well as the sustainable use of materials, electricity and water.

As such, it provides partners from academia and industry with a real-life open-innovation environment to implement and evaluate their concepts and technologies. Its modular design enables rapid adaptation to emerging research topics and allows for a continuous learning process. The worldwide unique NEST infrastructure currently features six thematic research units, in which people live, work and exercise, making it a highly dynamic living lab. In addition, the NEST WaterHub offers a platform for wastewater research and the EnergyHub connects all units with electrical and thermal storage in a neighbourhood grid.

The DigitalHub adds a virtual layer with a digital twin and an IoT network on top of this physical infrastructure. NEST has over 1000 visitors per month and regularly offers workshops for professionals from the construction and energy industries. Since 2016, NEST has created a strong ecosystem of more than 140 partners.

LABe – Digital Gastronomy Lab – Spain

Basque Culinary Center’s (BCC) started to lead the design, conceptualization, implementation and management process of LABe – Digital Gastronomy Lab, within a territorial development framework since the beginning (Etorkizuna Eraikiz “Gastronomy4.0”) and strategy supported and seed-funded by Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, Basque Government and San Sebastian City Council.

LABe emerges as a mission-driven innovation lab of experimentation, co-creation, prototyping and testing of new products, services and solutions integrating technology, to contribute to the transformation of gastronomy and add value to people and planet, through a methodological approach based on two pillars: Open Innovation and Human-centered Design.

Living Lab Handicap –Switzerland 

The Living Lab Handicap (LLH) is a network for co-creation and innovation. This new initiative connects people with disabilities with scientists, companies and all the other stakeholders interested in collaborating in the field of disability and the co-creation of innovative solutions.

Founded in 2018 by the HES-SO Valais-Wallis and the Innovation Centre for Assistive Technologies (IATLab), with the collaboration of ASA Handicap Mental and the Foundation for Research in Favour of People with Disabilities (FRH), the LLH is creating an innovation platform for disability. The LLH enables an exchange of ideas between many different partners on problems of disability and the technological and service solutions which might solve them.

PROLIDA – Austria  

PROLIDA supports quadruple-helix stakeholders in the field of Health and Wellbeing (AAL/AHA) in the participative development, multi-perspective (real-life) evaluation and longterm-anchoring of innovations in the market. We focus on technological innovations related to an active and healthy living, formal/informal care services and holistic health and wellbeing approaches.

PROLIDA complemented the classical co-creation approaches (focused on older end-users) with a multistage evaluation-model (usability/UX/acceptance/efficiency/cost-benefit) with a strong focus on longitudinal, big piloting actions in real-life settings, which implement the evidence base for concrete business models and ecosystem anchoring strategies (on micro/meso/macro level).

PROLIDA provides companies (social providers/entrepreneurs/SMEs and industry) with an innovation environment in which they can extensively develop and try out innovative solutions together with end users and related stakeholders – managed by a multi-disciplinary Living Lab team. The approach therefore can create value for the different stakeholder groups related to their need situation in a very modular, effective and near-to-the market way. PROLIDA is integrated in a strong academic institution and is therefore also obliged to a strong research context and high level of research outcomes and follows clear legal, ethical, business IPR aspects.

Thessm@ll – Greece  

Thessaloniki Smart Mobility Living Lab fosters initiatives encouraging development in the transport sector and the sustainability of mobility schemes by the provision of novel technologies and innovation. Actively engaged with the end-users and relevant community stakeholders, the lab pursues a co-creation and co-design strategy of technological solutions to improve transport conditions and upgrade mobility services.

Thessaloniki Smart Mobility Living Lab collects, filters, processes and analyses data related to the mobility of persons and -soon- of goods, with a focus in Thessaloniki. It also ensures and validates data quality and provides value-added services to raw data combining multiple sources and contents in a modular and scalable way. This means that it has the ability to easily integrate new data sources and procedures and at the same time manage efficiently the big volume of data.

Following the principles of the “open data” movement, Living Lab’s data and services are available to public and private institutions as well as to the citizens aiming to facilitate every-day life. Thessaloniki Smart Mobility Living Lab creates appropriate algorithms and uses special software packages for facilitating the re-use of data as well as for supporting decision making at both the private and public sectors.

Liberté Living Lab – France   

Mixing together personalities and activities is the main goal of the Liberté Living Lab. The aim is to work with this idea of hybridity which is really the DNA of the space: bringing together people who want to solve the greatest challenges of society. The Liberté Living-lab thus brings together private and public actors alike, academics, startups, NGOs, designers, entrepreneurs and large corporations. It fosters collaboration and builds community to make tech serve common good and society. The Liberté Living-lab hosts 50+ organizations. The Liberté Living-lab also hosts networks such as : Le French Impact, FEST (France Eco Social Tech).

It also hosts teams of intrapreneurs from large corporations (Société Générale, EDF), teams from the public sector (Programme Entrepreneurs d’Intérêt Général d’Etalab, DINSIC) and academics such as La Chaire d’Innovation Publique de l’ENA et de l’ENSCI.

Creative Daegu Living Lab – Rep. of  Korea 

The Creative Daegu Living Lab(D-Lab) identifies various needs of citizens and the city to have stakeholders participate directly from the first stage of creating the solution. We create a user-driven open innovative ecosystem providing with ‘prototypes/products’, ‘use-case services’, ‘technologies’, and ‘new policies and institution’.

The important characteristics of D-Lab are:

-Urban innovation platform with direct citizen-engagement

-Citizen training across various projects, such as Social Living Lab, Alley Living Lab and Smart City Service Living Lab.

-Self-organizing through operating a “Spiral Helix Innovation Model” to manage the entire processes of creating valuable products/services.

-Global-oriented purposes: in the areas of urban regeneration, smart cities and social problem solving to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

-A stable funding model delivering living lab operations funded from various entities such as Daegu City, national government and private enterprises, etc.

Neurolab ADACEN – Spain  

A user-centric integrated systematization for the incorporation of pioneer technologies and models for socio-sanitary rehabilitation and independent living of people with neurological disability as a key driver of social transformation.  User-centric integrated systematization: identification, cocreation and development of new technologies and solutions is a core part of our daily work.

Incorporation: we incorporate the solutions in people’s daily life and test them in long term, essential to measure their real benefits.

Pioneer technologies: we integrate technologies not used in our field, breaking the gap between the high-technologized sanitary environment and the low-technologized socio-sanitary one

Socio-sanitary: we work with a whole approach for the social, physical and psychological

rehabilitation of the person/family

People: people with ABI and their families are not just our objective. They are ourselves. We are they. We build always from the users’ perspective .

Neurological disability: we are specialized in this fieldABIsince 1994

Key driver of a social transformation: we understand techs as a lever for change. Building a new world of more empowered, autonomous, healthy and socially integrated people with ABIneurological disability.

PPS The Water Route – The Netherlands

Multiple stakeholder ecosystems take up the challenge presented by changes in climate and water in the region, through the creation of innovative solutions. Entrepreneurs, municipalities, social organisations and education institutes are working together to train water worker 2.0 (technicians/ employees) in the Drechtsteden region and Alblasserwaard-Vijfheerenlanden in The Netherlands.

Our goal is to create new expertise and to educate people in up to date knowledge and skills so that they can address the (future) challenges related to Water and Climate. We undertake to organise effectively this infrastructure of expertise in order to contribute our knowledge and human capital to our region. We aspire to advance from research and innovation to knowledge creation, including co-design, new products and processes, leading towards initial education and life long development of professionals.

Special focus of the Living Lab

1. Learning as a core value: Third order learning community (Learn to Learn from each other, learning

culture driving innovation)

2. Learning at the very core of the challenge: pop-up local knowledge workplaces are used to work

exactly there where the main societal challenge is most strongly observable and/or where problems

arise. Real-world practice and innovation, testing in the complexity of the authentic real-world setting

3. Open Learning Space and Open Innovation: admission for all people interested

in agriculture, climate and water

HSB Living Lab – Sweden    

How do we create the sustainable home of the future? That is the focus of HSB Living Lab.

HSB LL is a unique research and collaboration project of 12 partners in the built environment sector. The LL is built as a residential building with 29 apartments for students and guest researchers on the campus of Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. The involved partners, the available 2000 sensors system, and the established processes all aim to facilitate and develop sustainable solutions for the future of living.

HSB LL is referred to as the 3rd generation of LLs because it is a real-world environment where target-users participate in both testing and development of innovative products and services. This is where students and researchers of all ages and nationalities will live for a period of 10 years while research on innovative technology, sustainability, architecture and social connections will be conducted simultaneously and around the clock. Its main goal is to identify and study the barriers and, thereby, to optimize the interface between human behaviour and technological systems. The realistic setting ensures that the solutions developed meet market needs, providing the real estate industry with innovative, financially attractive and viable building solutions.

Lugano Living Lab – Switzerland     

The City of Lugano is the result of a challenging aggregation process between 18 Municipalities between 2004 and 2013. This courageous and innovative choice led the city to change drastically, both in terms of number of inhabitants (almost tripled from 28’675 to 67’201), and of territorial surface (multiplied by six times – from 11.6 km2 to 75.8 k2).

In essence, starting in 2013, we found ourselves managing a new city to all effects. This awareness has led local politics to reason according to new paradigms with respect to the past and to embrace an approach based on data (data driven decision making) and on result of innovative data analysis and interpretation approach that are really applicable, relevant, objective and credible towards the population, economy and institutions.

From 2013 to today, a process has begun to involve the population and the territory for new choices linked to a new institutional reality. Over the years, it became clear that they had embraced the “Living Lab” principle spontaneously but also for concrete needs. All this led the City of Lugano to decide during 2018 not to simply act concretely but also to declare and formalize the spirit embraced for some time within the strategic alliance with the Lugano University, created specifically to this end. It was therefore decided to formalize Lugano Living Lab LLL) with the purpose of continuously testing and applying new technologies (with emphasis on Artificial Intelligence, AI) in real-life-setting to enable positive change and overcome everyday challenges, ultimately improving the quality of life and the competitiveness of the City and the region.

Sofia Urban Living Lab – Bulgaria     

SofiaLab1 was set up as an Urban Living Lab – a Smart City community infrastructure and ecosystem, promoting urban innovations and local development by bringing together leading actors from public administration, academia, industry and social organisations.

It aims to encourage bottom-up idea generation, open innovation and value co-creation at the centre of its maker space for active experimentation and pilot testing. SofiaLab hosts a large number of events and social activities such as awareness campaigns, community workshops and trainings, hackathons, research and innovation, startup acceleration, social events, digital technologies camps, venture capital related events, technology transfer and company matchmaking and others.

SofiaLab is open to companies and individuals driving the digital transformation within the city context and extends the potential of innovations to a large number of national and international partners.

The unique feature of SofiaLab is that it is a means for the development and implementation of Sofia Smart Specialisation Strategy which has the concept of Smart City in the core. SofiaLab is the hub of a large number of Living Lab nodes in the city. SofiaLab aims to establish an experimentation and maker space to motivate further piloting of digital innovations within the smart city context.

La Marina Living Lab – Spain    

In La Marina de València we define our Living Lab as an urban laboratory, which uses systematic practices of participatory co-creation to design and reimagine inclusive and innovative public spaces. What distinguishes our experimental ecosystem from many others is its sheer magnitude and scope of work. Our living lab activities extend over the entire 1 million square meters territory of La Marina de València, counting both land and water, and they impact millions of people every year.

La Marina Living Lab is about revitalizing an underused waterfront through the active participation of research organizations, public administrations, private companies and of course – the citizens. It is a vast and ambitious undertaking fueled by the conviction that bringing all relevant stakeholders on board is the only way we can design public spaces that truly work for everybody. A really important attribute of our Living Lab is its focus on innovation.

In La Marina we believe that open and inclusive public spaces have the capacity to foster innovation and advance the economic development of our waterfront, and why not of our entire city.

Living Lab Precision Agri & Food – Belgium   

The Living Lab Precision Agri&Food (LLPA&F) consists of real-life experimental infrastructure, knowledge and a network of stakeholders with the goal to collaborate in real-life context for ideating, prototyping, experimenting and validating new services, products and systems that will optimise future farm and food processes.

Aims of LLPA&F include:

– a higher adoption rate of sustainable technology and digitalisation through demonstrations involving both suppliers and end-users (farmers, contractors and food processing companies)

– evaluating technology from a technical, economic, social and ecological perspective in practice conditions through experimenting in real-life settings and objective evaluation

– offering tailored advice for end-users based on state-of-the art knowledge and infrastructure

– enabling the development of new sustainable data driven solutions through a co-creative process involving different stakeholders and through the development of suitable and viable business models

Busan Living Lab – Rep. of Korea     

Busan Living Labs aim to serve as the hub for Living Labs working on various fields in Busan. BLLs work in collaboration with universities, companies, local government, local communities and citizens. We promote bottom-up innovation process in real life context by involving relevant stakeholders. Since 2015, BLLs have constructed 11 areas of Living Labs and an IoT Platform (development portal) in cooperation with private corporations: Factory, Medical, Transportation, Energy, Urban Regeneration, Logistiacs, Fishery Science, Senior Well-being, Barrier-Free, Film and Open Data. BLLs are open to possibilities to establish various Living Labs dealing with new field.

BLLs implement open innovation practices through Living Lab process: : discussion about private & public issues – co-creating idea solving the issues – making prototype – users’ feedback – developing trial product or service – demonstration of trial product-service. Based on this process, we support users to participate actively in product development and construction of public infrastructure for local innovation.

In addition, BLLs organize the network for Industry-University-Institute-Citizen Collaboration to support communication in Living Lab activities. Through this network, we induct greater participation from public and private sectors, more openness to utilize public research resources, and unnecessary regulation improvement.

B@Arca – Italy    

The B@ARCA Living Lab is the meeting point for all partners of the research project with the same name, the acronym for BIM @ ARCA, funded by the Innolabs call for funding of the Regione Puglia (http://www.sistema.puglia.it/SistemaPuglia/innolabs).

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a methodology for managing buildings by digitally sharing information related to all phases of their lifecycle. Today BIM is generally recognised “as set of interacting policies, processes and technologies generating a methodology to manage the essential building design and project data in digital format throughout the building’s life cycle.

The B@ARCA project aims to optimize and improve the management efficiency of the vast public housing heritage owned by the entity ARCA Sud Salento, through the re-engineering of the current maintenance process and the digitization of information using BIM-based methods and technologies.

MYA Manage your Art – Italy     

MYA is a collaborative working environment shared between partners of different nature: industrial, academic, public and individual society. The MYA Living Lab (MYA LL) aims to provide support to organizations operating in the CCI (Cultural and Creative Industries) sector through a process of user-centric and user-driven innovation.

It identifies an open experimental functional area, characterized by the co-presence of public and private (Public-Private-Partnership) to create, prototype, validate, test new services, products and systems in a real-life context typical of performing arts such as concerts, theatre performances, conferences, where the technological change related to ICT (for design, operation management and collaboration) must be to support the innovation of production processes.

The community is made up of industrial partners, creatives, companies active in the performing arts sector and in the different areas of the CCIs, public institutions and universities, and it proposes itself as creative driven organizations. Extracting the best skills from the company mentioned, the LL, will be able to build new business models and to transform or introduce new processes/ work methods and to promote organizational change, catalyzing the organization’s (often unknown) internal energy and skills.