Meeting DATA4CIRC Project partner NTT Data in Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Published May 2026 © DATA4CIRC

The DATA4CIRC partners gathered together in Cluj-Napoca, Romania for their third General Assembly meeting earlier this month. It was a chance for different work packages to share their progress and for the partners to plan activities for the coming period. It was also an opportunity to network and build relationships within the consortium. Read on to find out what we got up to!

Cluj-Napoca is the second biggest city in Romania and is considered the unofficial capital of the historical province of Transylvania. But its history goes back far further – the name ‘Napoca’ pre-existed the Roman conquest of the area in 106AD. The city has had many names – as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire it was known as Klausenburg – and only received its official title ‘Cluj-Napoca’ in the 1970s. The city is now a centre for culture, learning, business and industry, being home to the country’s largest university and a significant student population.

Day 1: Wednesday 6th May

Our meeting began on 6th May with a welcome from our hosts, project partners NTT Data Romania, followed by opening remarks from Project Coordinator, Álvaro Ojeda Roldán, who reported his satisfaction with the overall running of the project, noting that, whilst the next few months will by busy as a number of tasks need to be finished, work has progressed steadily and the project is on track.

Technical Achievements:

The next presentation concerned the Data Pooling and Sharing Platform and outlined the general architecture that has been adopted. It also included explanations of the two prototypes and DATA4CIRC Data Space Portal. The next steps will include improving the User Interface and inclusion of additional features, such as smart contracts. We were then treated to a demonstration of the Data Space and DS4CIRC Portal.

After a swift break for coffee, we proceeded with further updates on the design schema and DPP4.0 developments based on the Asset Administration Shell (AAS). Over the next 6 months, these will be refined with the support of our Use Case partners. The Digital Twin and Digital Threads were also outlined and briefly demonstrated – they will also continue to be developed over the next half year.

The morning session finished with a presentation on the Lifecycle Analysis tool. This tool is designed to allow circular value chains to be tracked. The methodology for this has been completed and machine learning models have been selected. The AI will be trained and validated.

After lunch, DATA4CIRC’s contributions to the CEN standardisation group were highlighted. The partners then split into two groups, which sessions for the Technical Partners to discuss alignment of the framework and tools; and a session for the Non-Technical Partners to gather information on training requirements that must be met for companies/organisations to successfully adopt the tools being designed by the Technical Partners.

Technical and Social Sessions:

The Technical session discussed the ontologies the project will adopt to ensure clarity of terminology and a common vocabulary for users of the tools. Various questions relating to ensuring secure access to the portal were raised. A list of open questions was generated and partners agreed to begin periodic technical meetings to work on resolving these.

The social session revolved around a series of questionnaires and surveys. The Technical partners had previously completed a detailed survey to assess what they saw as the key skills needed to implement the tools they are developing. This allowed a shortlist to be drawn up and presented to the Use Case partners, who were then asked to assess their current skills in each area. The resulting comparison between required skills and existing skills will allow the identification of training needs and inform the development of training material to boost the effectiveness of the platform’s uptake.

The day concluded with a team dinner, allowing the partners to enjoy some of Cluj-Napoca’s famous speciality dishes.

Day 2: Thursday 7th May

The presentations on day 2 focussed on the project’s innovation for circularity aspects: from ensuring the accessibility of the project website through the use of plug-ins for the visually impaired and the addition of translations into multiple languages; to the development of circularity boardgames and podcasts (coming soon!) to raise awareness of circularity issues. One of the next key tasks will be the development of training material.

The meeting closed with a look at plans for the coming months, in particular the coming Review Meeting in Brussels at which the project’s progress will be presented to the European Commission. All in all, the meeting was highly productive and allowed fruitful discussion of a range of important topics. It revealed work to be on track and, as we enter into a key period of development, underlined the high levels of engagement of all partners.

We hope you are as excited as we are to follow the DATA4CIRC journey! You can keep up to date on the latest developments from our project by following us on the DATA4CIRC social media channels: