STARS "Hack & Match" events are an integral part of the support services provided by the EU STARS project for small and medium-sized enterprises. The aim is to support SMEs from Europe's rail/mobility sector by introducing advanced technologies. This should contribute to improving their products, services, manufacturing processes and organisation and ultimately to an increase in innovation and competitiveness.

The main focus of the STARS "Hack & Match" event #5 is to develop and stimulate innovation and cooperation between more traditional and technology-savvy SMEs and solution providers on the topic of "Advanced Technologies for Resilience of Railway Supply Chains".

I-Trans hosted the project's 4th physical meeting, where Eleni Magklara, Project Advisor from EISMEA, visited the consortium in Valenciennes.

Blockchain technology started in 1991 to store and secure digital data. Blockchain is an open ledger that several parties can access at once.

The main components of blockchain technology are a digital ledger and a network of computers (« Mining nodes »). Each node has a copy of the digital ledger updated continuously based on the transactions. In blockchain technology, the transaction between any two users goes into this digital, decentralized ledger. One of its primary benefits is that the recorded information cannot be modified, as Blockchain is an immutable public digital ledger: each new record becomes – in fact – a block with a unique, identifying hash. Linking the blocks into a chain of records forms a blockchain.

All the transactions in blockchain technology are transparent, meaning that every node in the blockchain network is informed about every transaction and updated accordingly.

Blockchain helps in the verification and  traceability of multistep transactions needing verification and traceability.

This trust is built on blockchain’s enhanced security, greater transparency, and instant traceability. Beyond matters of trust, blockchain delivers even more business  benefits, including the cost savings from increased speed, efficiency, and automation. By greatly reducing paperwork and errors, blockchain significantly reduces overhead and transaction costs, and reduces or eliminates the need for third parties or middlemen to verify transactions.

The STARS project has been developed and coordinated by the DITECFER railway cluster from Italy, gathers 16 railway-related partners in Europe and has the support of 30 key European organisations. It is co-funded by the COSME programme of the EU.

The project aims at representing a booster in terms of production performances and innovation capabilities for SMEs thanks to the uptake of Advanced Technologies that can make such change possible.

Advanced Technologies have proved to give competitive advantages and will build the “Future Mobility.” In addition, several of the technologies will foster the future of the Railway & Multimodality industrial meta-ecosystem.

The European STARS project participants travelled to Italy to participate in the Blockchain Acceleration Event, a triple-day training and debate.

The conclusions of the session point to the fact that this new technology can bring very important  advances in transport cybersecurity and multimodal logistics. It also opens up great business opportunities for SMEs in all these areas.

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STARS4TRACE is the service designed for the STARS project which enables railway SMEs to exchange digital assets representing physical goods in a way which promotes a transparent and auditable business.