CROSS-TEC

CROSS-TEC laboratory of ENEA, situated in Bologna, in the northern Italy, is one of the TECNOPOLO ENEA laboratories dedicated to the industry and addresses five main areas corresponding to 5 units:

1) technologies for interoperability and supporting technologies and standards with a special focus on adoption in networks of enterprises (mainly manufacturing SMEs in textile-clothing, tiles, agrofood and mechanical industry) and smart cities (X-Lab unit).

2)  CAD/CAM technologies, with a special focus on CAD 3D modelling, rapid prototyping (additive manufacturing) and reverse engineering, with the aim of raising the technological level and competitiveness of enterprises both from the point of view of product development and production; the target is on  design based industry (fashion, accessories, jewelry) and historical heritages (museums, archives)  (PROTO-Lab unit)

3) methodologies and technologies for demonstrative projects for urban solutions, with the purpose to structure, experiment and consolidate cross and single framework approaches for demonstrative projects development on urban solutions. Solutions are defined as structured combination of interconnected technologies, business model and citizens active participation.  (jUST-Lab unit)

4) high performance computing technologies, especially in the field of deterministic and stochastic simulation of complex systems, collaboration platforms in research environments for data and code sharing, scientific data 3D representation and remote 3D. (HPC-Lab unit)

5) Innovative fuels, characterisation of energetic components and IT applications for energy (Energy-lab, being constitued).

The laboratory has a large experience in leading international projects, developing specific researches and transfer research results to industries: SPES (Central Europe, coordinator), ARTISAN (FP7, coordinator), SESEC and SET (Intelligent Energy, partner), ELECTRA (FP7, partner), VISAGE (COSME, partner), NIMBLE (FOF11, partner), Texwin (FP7, partner), Ricerca di Sistema Elettrico, are some of the most recent ones.

The CROSS-TEC laboratory represents, in ENEA, the contact point between the whole Energetic Technologies Department and the activities related with industrial districts and SMEs networks of the Emilia-Romagna region while being active also in the whole Italy.

The fields of application of these projects are different (from development and application of instruments for creative 3D designing and energy efficiency improvement in textile industry to SME networks and interoperability for energy grids, up to biogas and hydrogen based fuels), the common element is addressing the industrial districts of manufacturing SMEs on a local and sectorial basis by providing them methodologies and IT tools to improve competitiveness and sustainability.

The wide range of experiences guarantees the capacity of CROSS to afford the different aspects of project coordination and to manage and positively solve possible issues that can arise in the activities.