XXXI International Mineral Processing Congress 2024 Proceedings/Washington, DC/Sep 29–Oct 3 1111
from the different partners or services involved. After this,
there is the application tier which focuses on allowing use of
this information. Lastly, the integration tier, considered the
most complex stage of interoperability, focuses on enabling
analysis of the information available.
Considering the framework’s purpose for issue identi-
fication with data interoperability, it has been used to map
the work so far in WP 4 for the design and development of
the IT infrastructure in DEQ which is shown in Figure 2.
At the platform level for facilitating access, the Centralized
Data Management Platform (CDMP) has been developed
where Keycloak, an open-source identity and access man-
agement solution, has been used for enabling access. At
the application level, several standardized interfaces like
Rest APIs, have been used to allow for the use of data from
different systems by the different actors who have access
through the CDMP. For data suppliers who do not have
such standardized solutions for facilitating the use of their
data, a shared data builder application has been provided
for manually uploading data for use. Lastly, at the integra-
tion level, metadata has been used to enable the identifi-
cation of data and ETL Talend to enable the extraction,
transformation and loading of large datasets in order to
conduct analysis on the data. Power BI can also be utilized
as a tool to process and display the data as Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs) in dashboards.
As previously stated, in WP 5 of the project further
development is being conducted on a web-based LCA
tool for the industry, Plantsmith, where work so far has
been done in identifying and collecting relevant data for a
historical assessment, as well as developing and improving
models within the tool to estimate environmental perfor-
mance of products connected to the production process. As
much of the collected data refers to production and con-
sumption data, which is collected by other systems in the
quarries, the potential for increasing the automation of the
environmental assessments and gaining higher granularity
exists if the data reaches the desired level of interoperability.
Establishing the level of interoperability needed and pro-
viding guidance to reach this is part of the desired outputs
of the work package at the end of the project.
METHOD
To explore data interoperability further within the aggre-
gate industry context, an exploratory qualitive study has
been used. Six in-depth interviews have been conducted
in an ethnographic setting where the researchers have
also been part of the project and the work. Invitations to
interview were shared with seven of the partners who are
involved in the work package dedicated to the development
of the IQS. Five of the partners responded to participate in
interviews. A further invitation was sent and accepted as a
result of snowballing from the initial interviews. Interviews
have been chosen over focus groups to encourage the part-
ners, many of whom come from different industries, to
share their perspectives openly. The interviews were semi-
structured with questions chosen to gain insights on differ-
ent understandings of data interoperability, challenges for
achieving data integration in the aggregate industry, and
factors that could lead to success.
Figure 2. Tools utilized in the Data Lake design that enable data interoperability mapped to
the framework suggested by Wajid and Bhullar (2019)
from the different partners or services involved. After this,
there is the application tier which focuses on allowing use of
this information. Lastly, the integration tier, considered the
most complex stage of interoperability, focuses on enabling
analysis of the information available.
Considering the framework’s purpose for issue identi-
fication with data interoperability, it has been used to map
the work so far in WP 4 for the design and development of
the IT infrastructure in DEQ which is shown in Figure 2.
At the platform level for facilitating access, the Centralized
Data Management Platform (CDMP) has been developed
where Keycloak, an open-source identity and access man-
agement solution, has been used for enabling access. At
the application level, several standardized interfaces like
Rest APIs, have been used to allow for the use of data from
different systems by the different actors who have access
through the CDMP. For data suppliers who do not have
such standardized solutions for facilitating the use of their
data, a shared data builder application has been provided
for manually uploading data for use. Lastly, at the integra-
tion level, metadata has been used to enable the identifi-
cation of data and ETL Talend to enable the extraction,
transformation and loading of large datasets in order to
conduct analysis on the data. Power BI can also be utilized
as a tool to process and display the data as Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs) in dashboards.
As previously stated, in WP 5 of the project further
development is being conducted on a web-based LCA
tool for the industry, Plantsmith, where work so far has
been done in identifying and collecting relevant data for a
historical assessment, as well as developing and improving
models within the tool to estimate environmental perfor-
mance of products connected to the production process. As
much of the collected data refers to production and con-
sumption data, which is collected by other systems in the
quarries, the potential for increasing the automation of the
environmental assessments and gaining higher granularity
exists if the data reaches the desired level of interoperability.
Establishing the level of interoperability needed and pro-
viding guidance to reach this is part of the desired outputs
of the work package at the end of the project.
METHOD
To explore data interoperability further within the aggre-
gate industry context, an exploratory qualitive study has
been used. Six in-depth interviews have been conducted
in an ethnographic setting where the researchers have
also been part of the project and the work. Invitations to
interview were shared with seven of the partners who are
involved in the work package dedicated to the development
of the IQS. Five of the partners responded to participate in
interviews. A further invitation was sent and accepted as a
result of snowballing from the initial interviews. Interviews
have been chosen over focus groups to encourage the part-
ners, many of whom come from different industries, to
share their perspectives openly. The interviews were semi-
structured with questions chosen to gain insights on differ-
ent understandings of data interoperability, challenges for
achieving data integration in the aggregate industry, and
factors that could lead to success.
Figure 2. Tools utilized in the Data Lake design that enable data interoperability mapped to
the framework suggested by Wajid and Bhullar (2019)