Project
RockChain.
Transversal technological skills for the ornamental
rock industry focusing on the applicability of
Blockchain in a Circular Economy.
PROJECT
The Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, Article 173, related to industry, promotes that the Union’s action should be aimed at fostering better exploitation of the industrial potential of policies on innovation, research and technological development. According to the New Action Plan for the Circular Economy of the EU (Brussels, 11th March 2020), the current legislation on waste has brought improvements since its implementation, but it must be constantly modernised to adapt it to the circular economy and the digital era.
Currently, companies are immersed in a process of digital transformation, needing to hire profiles with knowledge of digital skills, but have difficulties in finding qualified workers.
According to the European Commission, 44% of the Union’s population and 37% of the workforce lack digital skills.
The increase in waste generation rates is leading to problems in finding suitable destinations to manage waste properly. Introducing technological tools that help to obtain more data (IoT, Smart Sensors, etc.) does not ensure correct data handling. The massive growth of data requires credibility and security in the exchange of information between the agents involved. And this is where the role of Blockchain appears.
In the last years a lot of utilities are being finding in Blockchain technology. One of the most remarkable is its application in environmental sustainability, where it will play a very important role in strategic planning improvements, environmental planning, logistics or sustainable supply chain. Its involvement in the Circular Economy of cities will guarantee the security and reliability of the data obtained in the Smart Cities.
Digital technologies will be the fundamental basis for economic and social development in the 21st century. That is why we must take full advantage of the potential that these new technologies offer for the benefit of a more sustainable economy, both for society and for the environment.
The RockChain project was born under this concept: to create a basic training base for professionals over 45 years old and technicians in the stone and construction sector and waste managers, in which the potential use of combining a novel technology such as blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data in the management of waste from the ornamental rock industry is promoted.
The funding of the RockChain Project is the necessary impulse to implement the necessary educational resources to address the digital transformation of the ornamental rock sector in terms of control for waste management, as this is a sector that is not very digitised, based on the extraction and exploitation of resources. The sector requires a training base, such as the one presented in the project, which encourages the reintroduction of waste into the value chain of the stone industry, thus putting an end to the linearity of this economy and favouring its circularity and environmental sustainability.
OBJECTIVES
- To provide professionals over 45 years old and technicians from industry with digital training tools that increase their qualification to the emerging labour and social needs in terms of digitisation and sustainability.
- To carry out research and data collection on the waste generated by the ornamental rock industry and how it is being managed, so that it can be used to create an information base of good practices, to reintroduce waste into the value chain, promoting the idea of circularity and zero impact.
- Identify the benefits that Blockchain can bring to Circular Economy, theoretically devising what would be the application framework and architecture of the blockchain system within the Waste Management (WM) process in the stone industry.
- Create a curriculum to manage and organise the dissemination and training of teachers, professionals over 45 years old and professionals from companies in the sector, in the field of WM, Circular Economy and Blockchain.
- To develop an interactive tool based on Blockchain, which allows to put into practice the knowledge acquired in the training materials, from how the data would be managed (origin) to its treatment at destination, thus visualising the way in which the data is implemented in the blockchain and with it, the impossibility of being manipulated, allowing to propose new forms of planning and management of the same.
