The European Union funded project DIGIECOQUARRY achieves its first milestone and begins an exciting new phase with both hands, and feet, on the job.
DIGIECOQUARRY is a Horizon 2020 project aiming to design, develop and validate in five pilot environments an Innovative Quarrying System (IQS) comprising sensors, processes, tools and methods for data capture, processing and sharing to provide integrated, digitalized, automatic and real-time process control for aggregates quarries.
The consortium behind DIGIECOQUARRY, formed by 25 organizations from eight different EU countries and two international partners, has just reached an important step related with the definition of all the initial requirements needed to evaluate and define the developments that will be implemented in the following stages of the project. It consists of all the deliverables of work gathered under the title: «Towards the digital innovative quarry – requirements for a sustainable, social, safe, resource-efficient quarrying operation» (package I) as well as the first deliverables from the section named: «Mechanisms for social acceptance & interaction with policy makers».
The deliverables that have just been fulfilled are associated with the implementation of the project and include a detailed analysis of the quarries where the technologies will be developed and tested (known as “pilot sites” in this project). Due to travel restrictions caused by Covid-19 preventative measures, most of the meetings took place via online which has implied an extra effort on the part of all participants. All these deliverables would not have been possible without the close collaboration of all the partners involved in the project.
The DIGIECOQUARRY consortium combines the latest researched and advanced technologies applied to quarry operation together with the integration of selected innovative digital solutions to boost the capacity of the aggregates industry, to enhance Health & Safety conditions for workers, to improve the Process and
Efficiency of the aggregate’s extractive sites, to maximize Sustainability and Resource Efficiency in the quarry operations and to foster Social Acceptance.
This phase includes the following deliverable reports that have just been completed:
D 1.1. «Requirements for improved extraction, rock mass characterization and control report» categorized as public dissemination and corresponding to task 1.1: “Requirements for Improved extraction, rock mass characterization and control and Innovative Treatment (crushing/screening/washing)”.
D 1.2. «Requirements for Innovative Treatment processes» listed as public dissemination (belongs to task 1.1).
D 1.3. «Requirements for Quarry full digitalization (for Smart Sensors, Automation &Process Control, and for ICT solutions, BIM and AI report” listed as public dissemination. Which is included in task 1.2: «Requirements for Quarry full digitalization (for Smart Sensors, Automation and Process Control, and for ICT solutions, BIM and AI)”.
D 1.4. «Requirements for H&S improvement, Environmental impact minimization and energy and resources efficiency report» listed as confidential (at this point access is reserved only for consortium members, including commission services). From Task 1.3: «Requirements for Health and Safety improvement, Environmental impact minimization and energy and resources (mineral, water & other) efficiency».
On the other hand, another report that has been completed is the one under the title: «Context narrative, social risk matrix and stakeholder mapping» part of task 7.1: «Social risk analysis in the 5 pilot sites» in which a deep study of the situation of each pilot site has been carried out.
