ILUSTRE stands for Innovation Lab for Utilities on Sustainable Technology and Renewable Energy and is one of the 17 Innovation Centers for Artificial Intelligence (ICAI) within the ROBUST Long-Term Programme (LTP). The ROBUST LTP is a consortium of knowledge institutes and industrial stakeholders collaborating on multi-year academic research into reliable artificial intelligence and focusing on the translation of the research results into trustworthy technologies and processes to support and improve interactions between people and systems.
Based on the lovely Island of Curaçao, ILUSTRE will focus on long-term academical research and talent development to stimulate, support and facilitate the energy transition in the Caribbean and Latin American region and make significant steps in attaining the “United Nations” Sustainable Development Goals 6 Clean Water and Sanitation and 7 Affordable and Clean Energy.
The overall scientific aim of the lab is to create, test and implement accurate and reliable AI solutions to improve the efficiency and effectivity of water and energy production and distribution. This will be revolutionary for the Dutch Caribbean Islands. To achieve the scientific goal, we have formulated five scientific topics and challenges:
- Achieving a proper balance between human operators and AI algorithms (hybrid AI),
- Developing forecasting algorithms that are both accurate and reliable,
- Realizing predictive maintenance involving time-to-failure predictions,
- Developing AI for power grid balancing using recommendation enhanced Demand Response, and
- Understanding and advancing the readiness to accept and use of AI both within the critical infrastructure and the general population.
Research is key, and instant translation and adoption are more powerful! To support the translation and adoption of the AI solutions the knowledge institution will focus on Talent Development for both short-term and long-term. For the short-term a Professional Education portfolio will be developed to training and coach employees of the Local Industry Partners. For the long-term the aim is to create an Academy with curriculum for minors, bachelors, masters to support Energy Transition and Economic growth.
The planning is to start the Lab operations in Q1 2023, and the coming months we will finalize the preparation activities within the ROBUST LTP consortium and work together with our ILUSTRE main partners: JADS , Aqualectra , Ministry of Economic Development (MEO), KPN, Alliander , University of Curacao, LaNubia Consulting and more, to be ready to take up the challenges to help the Dutch Caribbean Region in its Energy Transition.
If you are interested in this great development, please follow our ILUSTRE company page on LinkedIn and/or like or social channels to receive the upcoming monthly publications. If you want to join the movement and explore collaboration options, feel free to contact one of our main ILUSTRE partners.
