The SIREVIVAL project involves teams from Belgium, France, Algeria and Tunisia and started on March 1st, 2022. To conclude the project, the partners contributed to a Lessons Learned Workshop, held in Tunis (Tunisia) in February 2025, to summarize and share the main accomplishments. All beneficiaries were represented and discussed their specific objectives and research experience in the SIREVIVAL project. Oral presentations and participant interventions focused on the current achievements and addressed future directions involving machine learning and Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies.
In particular, the emerging IoT technologies warrant energy management methods with real-time, high-throughput data monitoring, smart automation, predictive planning, and adaptive control features. The ongoing integration of IoT with renewables facilitates the adoption of resilient and sustainable energy systems. The SIREVIVAL Lessons Learned Workshop participants discussed topics relevant to energy management, like industrial IoT infrastructure implementations. For waste management, CRTSE highlighted that IoT offers salient benefits, such as improved operational efficiency of waste collection, monitoring of possible contamination of the recovered materials and tracking of products towards chemical plants for upcycling. Notably, the materials developed in the project by UCLouvain and IEMN could contribute to state-of-the-art supercapacitors and micro-supercapacitors eco-designed for providing power supply backup to IoT sensor grids. The real-time protocols for performance monitoring applied to photovoltaic power generation and storage could benefit from IoT networks when operated in remote areas, via communication with the cloud through web services for fast fault diagnosis. The predictive maintenance capacities of IoT technologies were underlined by CRTEn and ENSIT partners.
During the workshop, participants also met Tunisian energy specialists at UTICA (“l’Union Tunisienne de l’Industrie, du Commerce et de l’Artisanat”) and ENSIT. While UTICA (https://annuaire.tunisie.co/portfolios/930/utica-siege-tunis-263415) represent approximately 150,000 companies from all industrial sectors, the discussions were hosted by the CSPV (“Chambre Syndicale du Photovoltaïque”) branch. The capacity of the African stakeholders to absorb innovations in the energy sector was analysed. It was stressed that supplementary proactive effort is needed to protect both the emerging knowledge and the young workforce, as well as to enhance the employment standards. The barriers for technology transfer were most vividly discussed, like the product and market knowledge gaps, the administrative burden and efficient leveraging of new technologies.
