Author: dsa_admin

By Milena Perraudin, data innovation alliance

Immersing ourselves in the realm of captivating ideas, gaining firsthand insights into the journeys and lessons learned from innovators, and seizing the opportunity to exchange ideas and network with like-minded enthusiasts – doesn’t that sound exciting? Such was our most recent Project Day on December 14th, 2023, hosted at Oracle in Zurich.

30 enthusiastic participants gathered to hear about a wide range of innovative ideas supported by the Innovation Booster Databooster ranging from data-based battery diagnostics to various projects in the health sector. Participants gained valuable insights into eleven different innovation projects and profited from their lessons learned. The afternoon also offered networking opportunities that sparked new innovative ideas and provided the opportunity to come up with future collaborations.

To dive into some highlights, the project presentations started with the brilliant idea from Schwabe Pharma and OST (Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences) on how to better understand the individual appearance patterns of health issues like Tinnitus. They applied BPM (business process mining) algorithms to health data to analyze the multiple factors influencing tinnitus on an individual level but also to improve our general understanding on the health concern.

Another highlight was the presentation of the inspiring innovation project from leg&airy and how they aspire for fair human mobility by revolutionizing the world of orthopedic devices. Leg&airy follows the idea of using digital fitting and data-driven design to predict optimal orthotic fit to avoid painful pressure injuries, improve mobility, while enhancing patient privacy by automating the customization process.

Fluence Energy and ZHAW presented their project “AI-Based Health Prognostics for Battery Energy Storage Systems” and shared some valuable advice for a successful journey from a Databooster funded idea that led to an Innosuisse funding for the upcoming year.

The diverse array of projects showcased the power of collaborative innovation and the transformative potential of data-driven solutions. It was inspiring and valuable spending an afternoon to learn from other innovators, discuss radical innovation ideas and connect for future collaborations.

Thank you to the eleven innovation teams that shared their projects, provided some learning opportunities and sparked new ideas: bodenproben.ch, BFH and ZHAW, DNext and HESSO Geneva, Fluence Energy and ZHAW, leg&airy and ZHAW, modulos and ZHAW, opensource.construction, SUPSI and ZHAW, Carity, ZHAW and hospitals, Schwabe Pharma and OST, Stadler Rail and ZHAW, as well as zubischuhe and ZHAW.

And of course, thank you to the participants for their active engagement!

In its end-of-year-meeting, seven members of the Data Ethics Expert Group came together for discussing potential innovation projects in Responsible AI. Both researchers and industry representatives discussed the question: “What do we see as the biggest challenge for research / in our company on the way to Responsible AI?” Below you find a short summary of the discussion points.

The “Innovation Booster” is the current vehicle of the data innovation alliance to push new innovative ideas that have potential for new marked solutions or that solve pressing problems in data-based value creation. Christian Hauser (Fachhochschule Graubünden) presented details on how the Booster works based on the example of an ongoing project. This project intends to support decision-making within companies on various ethical and legal aspects of making business with data.

In a next short presentation, Frank-Peter Schilling (ZHAW) presented activities of the new Center of AI. A focus of ongoing activities concern certification of AI – an issue that will gain relevance due to the upcoming EU regulation of AI. They address the question of how to implement AI systems evaluation at the technical level for high risk AI. This is a pressing topic of various actors such as ISO, IEEE, EASA and the German Fraunhofer Institute. The goal of an ongoing Innosuisse research project carried out at the Center for AI in collaboration with CertX AG is to establish a workflow that should support the certification process.

Another domain where new challenges may emerge is the Metaverse. Eleonora Viganò (Fachhochschule Graubünden) presented the raising trends that companies create own “metaverses” or aim for being present in the larger existing metaverses. Although these developments are still young and diverse, it is foreseeable that the economic relevance of the Metaverse will raise, although many legal and ethical issues remain unsolved. Her research aims to develop guidelines for desirable behavior in the Metaverse such that companies do not risk their reputation in this new domain.

Christoph Hauser (University of Applied Sciences Luzern) presented the topic of how generative AI may affect the generation of cultural assets, a highly relevant topic for the creative industry. Again, many unresolved legal and ethical issues, e.g. related to copyright or liability, may have an impact on the use of this technology. The presentation triggered a lively discussion, pointing to the fact that some industries (such as banks) internally block the use of generative AI completely to avoid any legal risks, although many use cases would exist. The group came to the consensus that any solution that could make the use of generative AI safer in a legal sense would be of great help for such companies.

Anna Broccard, working on data and digital ethics at SBB, presented ongoing activities within the company – also related to a project of Christian Hauser, where SBB is a partner. The current main goal is to establish suitable internal structures and decision-making processes that incorporate different perspectives and teams to address digital ethics issues.

Daniel Blank (ZKB) pointed to a pressing problem of data driven risk rating – a key process of insurances and bank: nondiscrimination in risk rating. The main problem is here that the application of fairness principles does not necessary guarantee that the result is nevertheless seen as unfair in the public domain – and transparency on which fairness principles were used actually increases the problem. Also this topic generated a lively discussion pointing to the problem that for many such decisions a lack of consensus on applicable fairness within the society generates an inherent reputation risk. One possibility may be to factor in the likelihood of reputation risks in the current risk rating models – but whether this may be a feasible approach would need further considerations.

Finally, Markus Christen (University of Zurich) outlined a project that recently has been submitted for funding. The project aims to make an intercultural comparison on the adoption of AI solutions in various industry domains and education between Switzerland and Ukraine. The goal is to assess how existential threats a country in war experiences affects both assessment and actual use of AI technologies, including those considered “high risk” from the EU legislation standpoint.

The Expert Group will meet again on Thursday February 1 in a public event at the Technopark Zürich (https://data-innovation.org/events/expert-group-meeting-data-ethics-and-responsible-ai/). At this event, challenges of the new EU regulation for startups will be discussed.

(by J. Meierhofer, ZHAW and R. Leiterer, data innovation alliance)
On November 23, 2023, ERNI in Zurich hosted this workshop co-organized by the GEOSummit, the data innovation alliance and the SGPF. The event was a success, with 23 participants from industry, academia, and governmental organisations and with different skills and interests joining the workshop. Jürg Meierhofer (ZHAW) was our moderator and guaranteed a result-oriented and structured course of the workshop.

The workshop dealt with the topic of value generation with open data – with an initial focus on developments in the field of decentralized energy supply.

Creating value based on open data is difficult, as topics such as harmonization of data formats, automatic data lineages or the standardization of data linkage processes are technically challenging and also not unproblematic from a regulatory point of view. But even supposedly simpler steps such as contextualized data search and raising awareness of the availability of open data in general have only been implemented to a very limited extent.

Related to the energy topic mentioned above this includes, for example, the analysis of consumption data collected by sensors and smart meters – or, more generally, exploiting the potential of energy management systems due to the increasing electrification. Especially regarding energy savings (e.g. usage-specific lighting scenarios), these so-called IoT recommender systems have the potential to deliver great added value, for the respective households but also for the electricity providers (e.g. regarding dynamic tariffs). in this context, we discussed topics such as data protection, data infrastructure and data management, open platform ideas for data sharing and trading and the smart services that could be built on them.

In the hands-on session the participants worked in teams to solve these real-world problems with open data. Each team was given a predefined problem related to open data, such as smart grid, smart city, or gamification. The teams had to analyse the problem, identify the best opportunities and ideate the most viable solution. They also had to present their ideas, solutions, roadmaps or action plans to the judges and the audience. The workshop followed the double diamond design approach.

In a first round, the participants explored the problem space by mapping the ecosystem and the relevant actors with their jobs and pains. In the second round, they discussed how these actors can be supported by data driven solutions and services, including quantitatively estimating the business potential of the solution approaches.

The event was a great opportunity to network with other data enthusiasts, learn from experts, showcase creativity and innovation skills, and have fun. The event was followed by a networking session, where the participants exchanged feedback, insights, and contacts.

By Thomas Zaugg, Roche and Manuela Hürlimann, ZHAW

On November 30, 2023, a pivotal event centered on Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Healthcare unfolded, featuring four expert presentations. 

The gathering, attended by around 30 participants both in-person and online, sparked vibrant discussions and received positive feedback.

• Elif Ozkirimli from Roche illuminated the strategic integration of NLP across the pharma value chain in her presentation, “Adoption of NLP in Healthcare: a Strategic Perspective Across the Pharma Value Chain.”
• Matteo Manica from IBM delved into the innovative use of language models to expedite material design in his talk titled “Harnessing the Power of Language Models to Accelerate Material Design.”
• Ahmad Aghaebrahimian from ZHAW presented a work in progress, “Medical Informatics Powered by Large Language Models and the Semantic Web,” highlighting the cutting-edge amalgamation of LLM and the Semantic Web in medical informatics.
• Nicolas Löffler-Perez from Swissmedic showcased “Medicrawl,” a machine learning-based application designed for detecting illegal products in online markets.

The event was a successful exploring the multifaceted applications of NLP in healthcare, demonstrating innovative approaches and fostering collaborative discussions.

By Jürg Meierhofer, ZHAW

From October 18 to 20, 2023, we had the opportunity to conduct an exciting workshop on “Resilience and Sustainability in Smart Service Ecosystems” at the Mobiliar Forum in Thun, Switzerland. The workshop was organized by the Databooster program, which supports innovative partnerships and is a hub for data-driven innovation in Switzerland. The workshop brought together three companies from the energy and logistics sectors, as well as researchers and experts from the field of service innovation and digitalization, to discuss how companies can become more resilient and sustainable with their partners and customers through new and existing services.

The workshop was motivated by the high volatility of the business ecosystems in recent years, which was unexpected and caught society and economy unprepared. Both on the human resources side and in the material logistics, there were unforeseen bottlenecks. The market situation was determined by the insufficient availability of resources and not by the demand. As a result, there was a wave of short-term oriented management reactions that were not sustainable in the medium and long term and thus laid the foundation for the next wave of challenges.

Against this background, it became clear that the business ecosystems need to become more resilient, i.e., able to withstand shocks and adapt quickly to dramatically changed situations. Resilience can be achieved by increasing the ability to absorb shocks (e.g., through more redundancy, robustness, or agility) and by developing dynamic capabilities to adjust to changing needs (e.g., through creativity, adaptability, or flexibility).

Smart service systems are closely linked to the ability of dynamic adaptation. By their inherent design of tightly interconnected resources, smart service systems inherently contain the ability to dynamically realign and rewire existing resources to adapt to dynamically changing needs.

The workshop started with a discussion to gain a deeper understanding of resilience and sustainability in smart service systems. Then, the situations of the three participating companies were examined from this perspective in sub-groups and opportunities for new services were identified. Building on this, the moderation very smartly guided the development of common solution approaches that involve all three companies. As a result, joint project ideas are now available, which are to be further elaborated in a follow-up step towards implementation.

The workshop groups had access to various design and prototyping tools and sources provided by the Mobiliar Forum. The groups had to present their results and recommendations repeatedly during the workshop.

The workshop was a great learning experience for all of us as we gained new insights into the topic of resilience and sustainability in smart service systems. We also enjoyed interacting with other participants from different backgrounds and perspectives. It became apparent that such workshops are very valuable for fostering collaboration and innovation among companies, researchers, and experts in Switzerland.

A big thank you goes to Sophie Bürgin for the excellent moderation, to Fabrizio Laneve for providing the beautiful and inspiring Mobiliar Forum infrastructure and to all participating company representatives for their spirited participation and co-creation.

By Jürg Meierhofer, ZHAW

The Smart Service Summit was a one-day conference held in Zürich on 27 October 2023. The event brought together experts and leaders from various fields such as smart services, digital transformation, and product management. The aim of the summit was to explore how smart services can help build resilience in a changing world.

The summit was a success in terms of attendance, engagement, and feedback. The participants expressed their satisfaction with the quality and relevance of the content, the diversity and expertise of the speakers, and the networking and learning opportunities. The organizers received positive comments and suggestions for improvement from the attendees.

The main outcomes and takeaways of the summit were:

• Smart services are a key driver of innovation and resilience in a changing world, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the digital transformation.
• Smart services require a holistic and customer-centric approach that involves co-creation, collaboration, and integration of different stakeholders and technologies.
• Smart services pose significant challenges and risks, such as data security, privacy, ethics, and regulation, that need to be addressed and managed effectively.
• Smart services offer tremendous potential and value for various industries and domains, such as manufacturing, healthcare, education, and mobility.

The organizers of the summit thanked the speakers, sponsors, partners, and participants for their contribution and support. They also announced that the next edition of the Smart Service Summit will take place in 2024 and invited everyone to stay tuned for more information.

By Jürg Meierhofer, ZHAW

On October 25 and 26, 2023, we conducted the Smart Data Forum, a two-day event co-organized by Easyfairs and the databooster, at the Messe Zürich. The theme of the forum was “Smart Services and Resilience”, and it featured presentations and discussions from experts and practitioners in the field of smart service systems.

The forum aimed to explore how smart services can help businesses and society cope with the challenges of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) in the current and future environment. The speakers shared their insights and experiences on how to design smart services that are resilient, sustainable, adaptable, and innovative.

Some of the topics that were covered in the forum included:

• How to use data and analytics to support decision making and service innovation in smart service systems
• How to leverage digital platforms and ecosystems to create value and network effects in smart service systems
• How to apply design thinking and agile methods to develop user-centric and co-creative smart services
• How to balance resilience and efficiency in smart service systems
• How to measure and improve the performance and impact of smart services

The forum was moderated by Jürg Meierhofer, senior lecturer and director for studies (CAS Smart Service Engineering, MAS Industry 4.0) at the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences. He also provided some useful frameworks and tools for understanding and designing smart services.

The speakers were Reto Zuest, Mirko Maurer, Daniel Politze, Nikolas Schaal, Nikolaus Obwegeser, and Jean Paul Potthoff. They represented different sectors and domains, such as manufacturing, IT management,  transport, or research and development. They presented some interesting case studies and best practices from their own organizations or projects.

We learned a lot from the forum and I enjoyed networking with other participants who shared a common interest in smart service systems. The forum was a valuable opportunity to exchange knowledge and ideas on how to create smart services that can enhance resilience and sustainability in business and society.

By Jürg Meierhofer, ZHAW

On September 29, 2023, the Expert Group Smart Services held its first presence meeting since 2019 to discuss strategic topics for the Expert Groups in the upcoming years. There was broad agreement that service value creation using generative artificial intelligence has significant future potential and that there is a considerable need for research in this area. From the perspective of service value creation, embedding artificial intelligence in service concepts along the value chain and customer lifecycle represents a promising topic. Interestingly, the multidisciplinary perspectives of the Expert Group turned out to be relevant for successful projects, such as consumer and work psychology aspects, data analytics and data management, as well as business modelling.

The Expert Group’s strategic core team meeting was followed by a very inspiring presentation by Dr. Sebastian Domaschke from our member company eraneos (https://www.eraneos.com/). The presentation showed by 3 impressive case studies how data could be used in practice to create business value. Many thanks to Sebastian!

By Markus Konz, Swiss Re, and Jürg Meierhofer, ZHAW

On August 29, 2023, we conducted an idea mining workshop in the field of financial risks of smart services in Zurich. The topic of the workshop was centered around the following two risk types, which emerge from the new characteristics of data-driven services:

1. If a provider (typically in manufacturing, i.e., providing a machine) goes to output oriented services, it takes over the risk of temporarily being not able to provide the output promised. This may create financial damage to the customer and depending on the contract, the provider must pay a penalty for this or does not get the fee from the customer because there is no output. How can this financial risk for the provider be quantified and what would be possible instruments to mitigate this risk? 
2. If the provider going to a XaaS (e.g., machine as a service) offering, it lowers the investment hurdle for the customer because there is only OpEx, no CapEx. However, the provider needs a priori financing for the machine, e.g., by a loan. It pays interests for this loan which need to be re-financed by the recurring service fees. Additionally, there is an uncertainty regarding these future cash flows (e.g., due to insolvency).

Applying the service design methodology, the workshop had the goal to shed light on these questions:

• Desirability: To what extent do machine builders actually have the pain assumed above and need a solution?
• Feasibility, viability: To what extent do financial service providers have the capacity to deliver services for these needs in an economical way?

Almost twenty attendees from several countries contributed to the rich and multifaceted discussion, which brought up the potential for further going analysis and projects.

By Reik Leiterer and Gundula Heinatz, data innovation alliance

On the 24^th of August, the data innovation alliance once again organized an Expert Day – this time at the Technopark Zurich, ideally suited for this purpose with its important role in the innovation ecosystem of Switzerland. Current challenges in the field of data science were addressed and the 50 participants were able to enjoy an exciting program with a keynote speech and parallel, subject-specific workshops.

In addition to several input talks, the workshops also included ideation sessions in which challenges were identified and possible solutions discussed in the context of the databooster program (powered by Innosuisse). As usual, the event was concluded with an aperitif used for a lively exchange between the experts – and all participants agree: Together we move faster.

The Expert Day was kicked off with a keynote by Kyle Alves (Senior Lecturer of Information Systems ＆ Operations Management, University of the West of England), who presented experiences of creating the world’s first digitally traceable sandwich.  The Digital Sandwich project is a national demonstrator of a digitalized food supply chain, focused on sandwich manufacturing – relying on an integrated digital platform that fuses multiple industrial digital technologies (Blockchain, AI, IoT, Finance) into a single technology stack operating within a standard business ERP.

Of course, this is not a trivial process and thus Alves presented the interdisciplinary challenges they faced: in the areas of food production, land use, policy/regulation, food logistics, energy systems, consumer behaviour, and many others.

Directly linked to this topic, a Data Food Challenge was carried out (organized by Shaun West – Expert Group Smart Services) to illustrate the diversity of opportunities associated with the increased adoption of digital technologies in food chains.

The challenge team (see photo) dealt with topics such as the adoption of new supply chain technology by SMEs, what knowledge and skills are needed for sustained performance, or possibilities on how food supply chain performance can simultaneously meet ESG requirements and profitability targets.

As AI continues transforming all application sectors, discussions about its ethical implications and regulatory requirements are gaining a lot of traction. The workshop Machine Learning and Responsible AI took up precisely this current development. Organized by Ricardo Chavarriaga (ZHAW), Philipp Schmid (CSEM), Andrea Dunbar (CSEM) and the Databooster Focus Topic on Responsible AI, the current state of discussions on ethical implications and regulation of AI systems was presented, and the participants learnt about state-of-the-art techniques for explainability and interpretability. Next to enjoying the inspiring impulse talks about “Ethics, Operationalizing Responsible AI and regulatory compliance» and «Advancements in Interpretable AI for Healthcare: Paving the Way Towards More Reliable Computational Models”, the participants got the opportunity to discuss their specific challenges, meet potential partners and identify ideas to follow. Moreover, representatives of the Databooster program were present to help participants in receiving further support for developing innovative approaches and further research to address challenges in responsibly applying AI in real-world cases.

The workshop Hidden opportunities: Geo-spatial applications in the age of OpenData (organized by the databooster Focus Topic Spatial Data Analytics), had the aim to bring together experts from different fields to jointly identify needs and possible new approaches in the field of open data and geospatial applications. Impulse talks by Anne Wegmann about  the opendata organisation,

Florian Scheidegger (IBM Research) and Raphael von Thiessen about the KI Sandbox offered by the Canton of Zurich) and Michele Bolla about the GeoML use case developed by ERNI, showed how complex and diverse the topic of opendata is in Switzerland. In the subsequent Idea session, it became clear that there is still a lot of potential for development, especially in the linking of open data, the standardization and harmonization of meta-information, and the transformation of ideas into profitable business models.

The workshop Build a Cloud IoT System Using a RaspberryPi offered by D-ONE (Heiko Krömer, Stepan Gaponiuk) gave an interactive hands-on experience with the Internet of Things (IoT). Participants were able to set up their own end-to-end cloud IoT-system using RaspberryPi microcontrollers and following a brief theoretical introduction to RaspberryPi, a sensor to controller connection was realized.

The format convinced once again with very good speakers and open-minded participants interested in exchange and cooperation. We are already looking forward to the next event and a lively and active participation.