Labsharing was born from “Acea Open Asset”, a workshop in which participants were asked to imagine new ways of bringing value to Acea's assets, using them to serve the community.
One of the ideas that emerged from the initiative led, thanks to the collaboration with ENEA, to the creation of an online platform that will allow third parties to request the use of its state-of-the-art facilities and scientific support in the complex field of environmental monitoring.
The key words are sharing, innovation, and sustainability: applied to a cooperative way of working and to an innovative service.
The most interactive part of the platform is the “window” section, which showcases all active research projects: content is organized by category and users can comment and provide their contribution to existing projects or propose new projects and collaborations.
The other focus is on testing services, grouped in four “matrices”: water, air, soil, and other environmental testing. “It works just like a booking app” says Luisa Marotta, member of the Innovation Team: “we designed a dashboard on which users can check the status of their requests: see if the lab has accepted their request or if the test has been completed”.
Additionally, two sections are dedicated to the testing packages and equipment available at Acea Elabori, the company that provides technical engineering services, test labs, research, and specialist support to the other companies in the Group.
The development stage was preceded by the gathering of information on the equipment and testing services carried out by the Acea Infrastructure lab. “The platform was an occasion to collect in the same place lots of information stored in different systems. Then we had to find a standard way of categorizing it”, says Francesca Dimino, Acea Infrastructure. The work of the technical team that collaborated with the development team was essential to organize the data correctly and make it comprehensible also to external users.
Labsharing required serious teamwork. Everyone was actively involved, especially in collecting data. People took part enthusiastically.
Francesca Dimino, Acea Infrastructure
Everything was designed to be simple to understand and to use, especially in relation to booking environmental tests. “We tried to make Labsharing as intuitive as possible also for people who may want to use it just to request a test”, says Luisa.
The platform was presented in Rimini at Ecomondo 2020, the international trade fair for green economy that focuses on environment, sustainability, and circular economy. The objective is to promote Labsharing.
“We aim at reaching an external target audience of users who do not have access to state-of-the-art instruments for environmental monitoring such as those in our labs", adds Francesca, "that is the goal”. “The Labsharing can express its full potential if it used as an ‘ecosystem’. The more people have access to the platform, the more this will be important for the community”.
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