Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HATCH (SME-led Space Portal for Europe)

Teaser

Europe is a strong player in the space sector. In 2017 the estimated value of the European space industry was EUR 53-62 billion. The European Union itself ponders investing EUR 16 billion between 2021 and 2027, 50% more than over the previous financing period. However, the...

Summary

Europe is a strong player in the space sector. In 2017 the estimated value of the European space industry was EUR 53-62 billion. The European Union itself ponders investing EUR 16 billion between 2021 and 2027, 50% more than over the previous financing period. However, the results of past and current projects are difficult to access, as relevant information is fragmented and difficult to find. As a result, important trends may be overlooked, parts of projects are repeated time and again, finding suitable partners is a challenge, and there is a risk of double financing.
Against this background, the main goal of the HATCH project was to develop a scalable, contemporary, interactive and user-driven platform for promoting European space projects and related activities to professionals and citizens alike.

Work performed

The main result of the project was creation of the HATCH portal, which makes the findings of the European space projects available to professionals in the field and citizens interested in space-related information. It also encourages greater collaboration and partnerships. Additionally, the portal analyses findings, commercialises results and generates interest in space exploration and science among the space enthusiasts.

WP1: Concept Specification and Analysis
This WP enabled the team to review the work undertaken in the pre-project phase and to ensure that the audience for HATCH was fully identified and characterised. Additional outcomes included reference points in terms of design, development and deployment to ensure that the platform became functional for audience needs.

WP2: System Architecture
Having successfully created all the required specifications for a smooth development phase, the development team defined most important values that should guide and motivate the architectural approach for HATCH: robustness, scalability, security, performance, automation and separation of concerns.

WP3: Design
Under this WO, wireframes were developed based on a careful analysis of all project inputs and iteratively produced low-fi designs for all the screens to be developed on HATCH’s user interface. Moreover, besides processing the project documentation, the design team continuously conducted research and benchmarking in order to produce solutions that would exceed, only meet the requirements. Other outcomes included the Brand book and contents of the portal itself.

WP4: Development
Under WP4, the HATCH portal came to life thanks to efforts towards development of the portal\'s backend (development of back office, imports of data from CORDIS, integration of the diversity search algorithm, and maintenance of staging and production environments) and frontend (the architecture was defined and implemented focusing on performance, languages localization and component reutilization).

WP5: Communication and Dissemination
Following creation of a communication and dissemination strategy that would be adapted to different target groups and communication channels, active communication on social media and the temporary website was implemented until the launch of the HATCH portal. After that point, communication and dissemination activities were conducted via social media channels and the portal itself. Moreover, the team participated in a number of events (conferences, workshops, pitch events) during which it promoted HATCH and distributed promotional materials, as well as creating a stakeholder contact list thanks to the networking activities undertaken.

WP6: Long term sustainability
Under WP6 the consortium prepared a proposal of HATCH business plan, which included insights into the suggested approach for ensuring the sustainable operations of the portal in the longer term.
The initial business plan assumptions were verified during the first round of talks with stakeholders approached as potential funders of HATCH after the end of the H2020 grant. The results of those consultations informed the final version of the business plan. Results of the second round of talks helped to refine the strategy for the future sustainability of the portal.

WP7: Deployment, Testing, Validation, and Support
Under this WP, HATCH repository was created, altogether containing information on 2250 organizations, 11 funding bodies, 1141 R&D projects, 758 publications, deliverables and other files, and 155 articles and Quick Knowledge entries.
Regarding UX Verification, all of the schedule evaluation activities were successfully deployed, with both citizens and professional users validating the aesthetic aspects of the portal, and professional users further validating its usability. Self-reported qualitative metrics of aesthetics and usability aspects obtained through online questionnaires were consistently higher for Hatch compared to Cordis. Moreover,

Final results

HATCH project impacts:

1. Centralisation of projects will allow for an easy search for projects that fall under a particular domain, cluster or theme.
The Portal automatically inherits the project information already available via CORDIS and supports a ‘data gap’ analysis to ensure coverage. Multiple levels of search are in scope (including clustered and bundled results).

2. Serve as archive from a scientific and technological angle
All materials available via the Portal have static resource identifiers to allow each item to be found and referenced consistently. The platform is scalable, to allow inclusion of an ever-growing number and range of projects and media types. Features were envisaged to facilitate content discovery around scientific or technological themes.

3. Allow to identify potential partners
Information within the Portal is stored without any implicit hierarchy (unlike typical databases). The connections between projects, involved organisations, technologies, materials and impacts are of equal importance, and any object may form the ‘root’ of a search response. Network discovery and thematic exploration are enabled using a graph database.

4. Showcase European results and publications
User preferences can be used to promote content likely to be of interest. For non-authenticated users, automatically updated recent news, publications, events or other R&D highlights shall be displayed. The intelligence that also provides diversity in our search results also facilitates a ‘home’ page with a variety of content to help retain visitor interest.

5. Provide European citizens and professionals with a single-entry point for space research activities related information
Before HATCH, there was no obvious entry point for citizens. Large organisations’ websites, such as space agencies and system primes, are attractive and interesting, but are not intended for the dissemination of research outcomes.

6. Socio-economic science and humanities
Within the ‘power user’ capabilities of the HATCH portal design (and available via the API) is access to meta-data about the Portal itself. This capability is a convenient mechanism to track impact, and especially the communications and dissemination KPIs.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.spacehatch.eu/.