List of Nominees 2022

Nominated by DIN - Deutsches Institut für Normung

ARCH (Advancing Resilience of Historic Areas Against Climate-Related and Other Hazards) is a European-funded research project that aims to better preserve areas of cultural heritage from hazards and risks. The ARCH team with the cities of Bratislava, Camerino, Hamburg and Valencia will co-create tools that will help cities save cultural heritage from the effects of climate change.
The impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. Cities will face frequent extreme events in future and the risk to cultural heritage and historic urban centres from climate change will also increase.
ARCH will develop a disaster risk management framework for assessing and improving the resilience of historic areas to climate change and natural hazards. Tools and methodologies will be designed for local authorities and practitioners, the urban population, and national and international expert communities. The project will present various models, methods, tools and datasets to support decision-making. ARCH‘s expert interdisciplinary team includes four European municipalities; Bratislava, Camerino, Hamburg, and Valencia; research scientists, city network ICLEI and standardisation organisation DIN.
Standardization is an essential part of the project and supported the development, enhancement and validation of the ARCH framework, as main project outcome.

WINNER STANDARDS+INNOVATION 2022

Nominated by UNE - Asociación Española de Normalización

The ARETE (Augmented Reality Interactive Educational System) project aims to support the pan-European interactive technologies effort both in industry and academia, through the multi-user interactions within augmented reality (AR) technologies evaluated in education in both professional and private contexts.

The authoring tools used within ARETE and the provision of access to the AR content developed for the broader community of users within the EU, will increase the European innovation capacity in AR.

Through systematic application of human-centred design approaches, ARETE will deliver highly usable, useful and desirable AR technologies and contents, leading to a wider uptake and further stimulate their creative usage.

Standardization is one of the most powerful tools within technology and educational infrastructures and influences the competitive dynamics and strategies of companies within the sector. Standardization is of special importance now more than ever in education to support the digital disruption transformation globally. Therefore, it is a cornerstone of the project, which has led to the elaboration of standards in IEEE and CEN, and is supported by the subcontracting of the Spanish NSB, UNE.

Nominated by ASI - Austrian Standards International

Mobile devices represent a unique challenge for law enforcement. Due to their wide use, they underpin many criminal investigations. Moreover, criminal offenders, organised crime and terrorist organisations use mobile devices for various purposes, which faces criminal prosecution with many challenges. Law enforcement need not only to access the data stored on mobile devices, but also to provide it as court evidence in a trustworthy and reliable manner.

The Horizon 2020 project FORMOBILE developed advanced, innovative tools and software for the successful acquisition, recovery, analysis and visualisation of data. In addition, FORMOBILE created and validated a curriculum giving Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) the necessary training to effectively use the new tools and successfully follow the standardised procedures.

A main project deliverable is a novel standard to provide recommendations for a complete forensic investigation chain targeting mobile devices. This standard covers good practices for the mobile phone forensics chain, tools for the acquisition, recovery, analysis and visualisation of data, as well as the necessary competencies required to effectively use the new tools and successfully follow the good practices.

Nominated by NSAI - National Standards Authority of Ireland

The GEOFIT Project (Deployment of novel GEOthermal systems, technologies and tools for energy efficient building retroFITting), is a 4-year innovation action project funded by the EU horizon 2020 programme. The general objective is the implementation of a global, effective, energy-efficient retrofitting strategy for the stock of existing buildings in Europe, boosting the adoption of appropriate geothermal based energy-efficient building retrofitting technologies and methods. The project is developing a holistic and novel approach to geothermal retrofitting, which is cost-competitive, easy to install, and capable of providing efficient low-temperature heating & high-temperature cooling by using the most innovative tools and methods.

GEOFIT will support the whole process of designing, installing, commissioning and operating geothermal systems. GEOFIT’s technology offers many significant advantages that take geothermal systems to the next level including:

• Free environmental energy with high energy efficiency
• Large energy savings
• One system for heating and cooling
• Easy to integrate into your existing installation
• A long-lasting system with very low maintenance

The creation of a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) was identified by the project consortium as a useful way to disseminate the GEOFIT project findings and results.

Nominated by UNE - Asociación Española de Normalización

SPHERE (Service Platform to Host and Share Residential Data) is a 4-year, Horizon 2020 project that aims to provide a BIM-based Digital Twin Platform to optimise the building lifecycle, reduce costs, and improve energy efficiency in residential buildings.

SPHERE’s goal is the improvement and optimisation of buildings’ energy design, construction, performance, and management, reducing construction costs and their environmental impact while increasing overall energy performance. SPHERE integrates two planes of research, innovation and improvement:

• integration of the processes under the Digital Twin Concept involving not only the Design and Construction of the Building but also including the Manufacturing and the Operational phases.
• integrated platform that will be achieved through an underlying ICT Systems of Systems infrastructure based on Platform as a Service (PaaS) service to allow large scale data, information and knowledge integration and synchronization thus allowing a better handling and processing e.g. BIMBots, machine learning, simulation etc.

The SPHERE cloud-ICT platform allows to interact all different stakeholders during any phase of the asset with a Building Digital Twin model of information of the building and a scalable set of different software tools, such as energy demand/performance simulation tools, Decision Support and Coaching Systems, BEMs or IoT enabled Predictive Maintenance Algorithms.

New guidelines for digital twins in this sector will be promoted through the creation of new standards, transferring this way the open knowledge generated in the project.

Nominated by ASRO - Asociatia de Standardizare din România

STRATEGY (Facilitating EU pre-standardization process through streamlining and validating interoperability in systems and procedures involved in the crisis management cycle) aims to develop a pan-European framework of the pre-standardisation activities for systems, solutions, and procedures, addressing crisis management issues, validated through sustainable tests and evaluation frameworks, which will improve the crisis management and disaster resilience capabilities, including European Defence Agency (EDA) initiatives in the CBRN-E area. Based on the needs identified from previous EU initiatives and the desktop research on the EU priorities, the project addresses eight thematic streams related to crisis management: Search and Rescue, Critical Infrastructure Protection, Response Planning, Command and Control, Early Warning Systems, and Rapid Damage Assessment, CBRN-E, Training, and Terminology.

Aiming at defining proposals for new standardisation items and selecting existing, evolving, and new standards relevant to solutions, tools, and procedural guidelines to deliver relative recommendations, STRATEGY will streamline and validate technical and organisational interoperability in a fully transboundary configuration with means of standards through the implementation of use cases involving EU and National Standardisation bodies.

STRATEGY aims at a consistent presence of all actively involved experts from security stakeholders throughout all stages of standardisation, from the preparatory work done in Programming Mandates until the concrete standardisation work in Technical Committees (TCs) and Common Working Groups (CWGs) to assure the success of the standardisation actions of the EC.

The ultimate project goal is to strengthen, through standardisation, the resilience of the EU against all types of natural & man-made disasters (multi-hazard approach), by ensuring first responder (FR) safety and empowering their operational capacity by validating standards and proposing new items for standardisation in next-generation solutions and procedures, providing an effective and efficient collaborative response.

STRATEGY Project has contacted and is in close link with the relevant Technical Committees, e.g., CEN/TC 391 (Societal and Citizen Security), CEN/TC 439 (Private security services), ISO/TC 292 (Security and Resilience),  OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee and the CEN-CENELEC Sector Forum on Security. The above TC/WGs were identified as being most relevant in the project's scope.

WINNER STANDARDS+INNOVATION 2022

Nominated by UNI - Ente Italiano di Normazione

Antonio’s research activity started at the beginning of 90s’ with a European Project BRITE EURAM LA-MA Laser Manuportable devoted to the evaluation of the effects of laser Cleaning on Cultural Heritage. Since then, the main focus has been on the testing methods addressed to the evaluation of the effects of Conservation Treatments. This experience was transferred to UNI national standardization activity and then to CEN framework, in particular to CEN/TC 346 Cultural heritage. A great deal of Data was collected in the field, especially regarding cleaning methods on architectural surfaces and water repellent treatments. This set of data is to be considered as a pre-normative experience, supporting the recent drafting of standards at national and European level. In doing this, both laboratory and field research has been developed on natural and artificial stone materials, from marble to mural painting objects. Some examples could be Michelangelo David, the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, archaeological remnants in the Parco del Colosseo in Rome. Recently the activity was addressed to consolidant products especially for what regards those based on inorganic materials such as Calcium phosphate. This kind of new research activity has been applied to mortars for the first time, producing several scientific papers, and it will be proposed as a base of new standards in CEN/TC 346.

Nominated by NSAI - National Standards Authority of Ireland

Enterprise Ireland (EI) is the government organisation responsible for the development and growth and competitiveness of Irish enterprises in world markets. EI uses the ISO 56000 Innovation Management Series as its framework for improving the innovation capabilities and performance of all Irish and multinational companies in Ireland to this end. EI also uses this same framework to promote innovation excellence throughout Europe.

One significant innovation delivered by EI is an online innovation scorecard innovation tool for SMEs, MNCs and public sector organisations based on the new ISO 56002 Innovation Management System guidance standard.

Based on answers to a questionnaire, the tool automatically generates a rich PDF report that includes a very intuitive heatmap which helps users to quickly understand their overall innovation position and identify key areas of strength and weakness. Users can also identify relevant development supports and understand the most effective next steps to improve their innovation management capability and performance.

The data generated by the toolset can help policy makers better address the innovation development needs of the SME, MNC and public service sectors in Ireland and across Europe.

To date the tool has been used by 172 SMEs, 88 MNCs and 31 public service organisations.

Nominated by ASI - Austrian Standards International

Dr. Elisabeth Mertl is working for OFI Österreichisches Forschungsinstitut für Chemie und Technik, since 2015 and entered standardization by joining the Austrian Standards International committee Medical technology in early 2020. She is nominated expert in ISO/TC 194, biological and clinical evaluation of medical devices, and its working groups ISO/TC 194/WG 8, irritation, sensitization, and ISO/TC 194/WG 12, sample preparation and reference materials.

Her research focuses on irritation and sensitization of medical products with the goal of developing a validated in-vitro screening method. The main problem with most in vitro methods is that they only focus on pure chemicals but not on complex mixtures of substances (extracts). She and her team managed to evaluate sensitizing substances in complex mixtures and validated in-vitro methods for this approach. Within the ISO/TC 194/WG 8 she is now pushing such in-vitro methods and supports their acceptance as alternatives to animal testing.

Nominated by PKN - Polish Committee for Standardization

Iwona Borek-Idźkowska is involved in standardization work at national level since 2001. She runs her own business EU CERTO OFFICE and is member of 2 technical committees at PKN:

• KT 158 “Safety of Machines and Technical Equipment and Ergonomics - General Issues” (cooperates with CEN/TC114 and CEN/TC122);
• KT 16 “Tractors and Agricultural and Forestry Machines” (cooperates with CEN/TC144 and CEN/TC334).

She obtained PhD degree in technical sciences in field of machine operation at Poznań University of Technology in 2013. As part of her dissertation, she developed an innovative method of hazard analysis and risk assessment of machine usage. This method is responsible for essential requirements set by Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC and harmonized standards. In 2013, it was the only method that would be so precisely adapted to the specificity of machines, taking into account human factor. On this basis, she created a computer program called MaschCE for the development of conformity assessment documentation (in Polish, English and German), with Austrian company that writes computer programs.

She conducts machinery safety tests and training in the field of standardization to support machine manufacturers in the selection and interpretation of standards.

Currently, she’s working on a new application for writing operating instructions for machines.

Nominated by UNE - Asociación Española de Normalización

Professor Lucena works at the Autonomous University of Madrid on the chemistry of chelation in the soil plant-system. His main research activities focus on Chemistry of micronutrients in fertilizers (chelates and complexes), soils and plants, including the development of different analytical methods for the determination of complexed and chelates micronutrient

He is participating actively in CEN/TC 260 “Fertilizers and liming materials” and its UNE national mirror committee since 2000, and from 2002 till 2018 he acted as Convenor of the CEN/TC 260/WG 5 “Determination of chelating agents", working on the standardization of several methods for the quantification and identification of chelating agents and micronutrient complexes.

Nominated by DIN - Deutsches Institut für Normung

Dr. Simone Wurster, senior researcher and project manager at the chair of Innovation Economics at the Technische Universität Berlin, holds a PhD from the University of Potsdam in economics and social sciences based on her thesis on strategies for success for entrepreneurial technology firms. Enriched by experience as a project manager and consultant for technology companies, her research focuses on sustainable innovation, innovation economics, socio-economic aspects of innovation and quality infrastructure, including, e.g., standards and labels.

Simone has taken part in various national and EU-level research projects as project leader, work package leader and sub-project leader including ConCirMy, STAR-ProBio, INFRANORM, ENSURE, BlockOne and CRISP, among others. Simone has published two books as well as numerous articles and papers, among them two award-winning contributions. She also coordinated the development of two DIN SPECs and co-authored a CWA. In addition, Simone participated in two OECD missions in the multi-country project "EU4Business: From Policies to Action" and co-authored its SME Policy Index report. Simone is also the initiator and co-editor of the special journal issue Circular Economy, Innovation and Quality Infrastructure.

Nominated by SFS - Finnish Standards Association

Kalle Lipiäinen has studied and introduced design guidelines hot-dip galvanized ultra-high-strength steel structures performance in fatigue loaded structures in his PhD studies. The research work is targeted to be considered in Eurocode 3: Design of steel structures. Part 1-9: Fatigue (EN 1993-1-9).

Laser cut edges fatigue performance has become more important after post-weld treatments become used to improve welded joints fatigue strength. Hot-dip galvanizing provides corrosion protection from 20 up to 100 years depending on application and coating thickness. However, the performance of steel structures may decrease via liquid metal embrittlement and cause premature failures.

The research findings can be utilized in weight critical applications like trucks and trailers for heavy transport or safety critical structures like bridges. Improved performance together with decreased weight enables higher payload and decrease in CO2 emissions. When battery-electric-vehicles are considered, the weight reduction induces possibility to increase the battery capacity to enable longer ranges.

WINNER STANDARDS+INNOVATION 2022

Nominated by NEN - Nederlands Normalisatie-instituut

Intrigued by the question of how standards enhance innovation, Ivan Navarro González has written an essay that focuses on the creativity part of the innovation process. Standards cause constraints to innovation. These might hinder the creativity that is inherent to innovation. However, applying the theory of constraints, Ivan argues the opposite can be the case: some degree of constraint might actually increase creativity levels and thus enhance innovation. By looking at standards through the lenses of idea generation and constraints theories, his paper shows how standards can positively contribute to innovation.