Content of NEWSLETTER #2 – February 2024

  • The lower layer of the RESILINK digital platform: the ODEP component
  • The RESILINK mobile application mockup
  • How the RESILINK team is preparing the large-scale evaluation program?
  • Why is an open API so important?
  • What are the next Newsletters?
  • How to subscribe to Newsletters, ask questions and provide feedback to Newsletters?

THE LOWER LAYER OF THE RESILINK DIGITAL PLATFORM: THE ODEP COMPONENT

The Orange Decentralized Exchange Place (ODEP) platform serves as a generic exchange place based on Blockchain technology. It facilitates the consolidation of sharing functionalities across diverse resource types. Through the integration of Blockchain, our platform enhances resource exchange accessibility via decentralized hosting, increases security through cryptographic mechanisms, offers flexibility with terms defined by ecosystem members, and notably reduces costs by eliminating fees imposed by a central authority. ODEP is implemented in three use cases with respect to Orange ecosystem :

  1. The energy exchange use case between domestic, commercial and tertiary buildings.
  2. The IoT data exchange between different actors of the ecosystem.
  3. The connectivity resource exchange between operators to enhance connectivity quality.

The adaptation of ODEP to each use case is done by a simple input parameterization: definition of the actors, the exchanged assets, the use interfaces, etc. This generic exchange place allows the exchange of material or immaterial assets, manages the sale or rental operations and allows the valuation of transactions through a given unit of account. To integrate such a generic exchange place to any use case, we firstly separate what could be as common treatments as part of our exchange place. We define specific aspects as recommended modules that should be undertaken by the dedicated business application. The main functionalities of ODEP allow:

  • The admin to configure different asset types that could be exchanged and manage ODEP participants.
  • The producer to declare what he has to offer as an asset and to make it available for sale and notify all matched requesters.
  • The consumer to declare what he needs as a request and to receive all matched offers ranked per price.
  • The regulator to establish a legal basis to regulate an asset, if it is subject to regulation, by attributing a “regulated” field that mentions that all legal aspects of the asset are verified.
  • The prosumer (producer and/or consumer) to supervise the delivery. All payments are automatically settled according to the delivery state.

Stakeholders could access the marketplace through a client application. For that, they should firstly authenticate and receive the access token that enables interactions with ODEP services. Those services are exposed as a Restful API and include all possible interactions with the exchange place. Restful API services call transactions in smart contracts which are installed and instantiated in the blockchain. As an intrinsic characteristic of this technology, all peers will have the same copy of the generated blocks. The exchange place smart contracts provide the business logic which orchestrates the process of offering, requesting, buying of assets, delivery supervision and payment adjustment.

A more detailed description of ODEP can be found in the ODEP slides presented during the RESILINK kick-off meeting in Oct. 2022. 

The RESILINK digital platform architecture where ODEP sits at the lowest layer is depicted below.

THE RESILINK MOBILE APPLICATION MOCKUP

RESILINK will develop a mobile application that will be the main interface to simply, quickly and intuitively interact with the RESILINK digital resource management platform. However, before implementing the mobile application User Interface (UI) several design thinking sessions and technical meetings have been organized to define user scenarios and define the main functionalities of a Figma mockup to be used in preliminary interviews with farmers.

On Nov. 11th, 2023, the RESILINK mobile app mockup has been finalized for partners to use it in an interactive manner during interviews with smallholders. Watch the mockup video from here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qS0Y1thRbCq7Q1BYYCVysyclVRX9PyG4/view?usp=drive_link 

A manual explaining how to use the mockup has been written. https://resilink.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/resilink-new-mockup-manual.pdf 

A document describing how to conduct the interviews with the mockup has been produced. https://resilink.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/RESILINK-How-to-organize-tests-of-the-mockup.pdf 

HOW THE RESILINK TEAM IS PREPARING THE LARGE-SCALE EVALUATION PROGRAM?

To prepare the large-scale evaluation program, the User Interface of the RESILINK mobile application must be validated and stabilized. The mockup has been used for interviews for these purposes. When possible, and when it was believed that smallholders could easily follow the mockup on a smartphone, the electronic version of the mockup was used. However, our partners also used the paper version in order to discuss with smallholders who felt easier to follow the various screens and functionalities.

Starting in March 2023, a series of workshops and interviews with questionnaires and then with the RESILINK mobile application mockup have been conducted by our Algerian, Egyptian and Moroccan research teams to ensure that proposed functionalities meet the farmers’ needs and expectations. It was a great source of information to prepare the piloting in Living-Lab mode. Congrats to UMCM (Algeria), ARC (Egypt), INRA & USMS (Morocco) for their hard work!

Finally, the stable version of the RESILINK mobile application will first be internally tested by partners. Then, feedback will be collected and another round of development will take into account these feedback and improve the various interfaces and functionalities. After that, the larger scale Living-Lab program will be able to start in Algeria, Egypt and Morocco! Finger crossed!

WHY IS AN OPEN API SO IMPORTANT? 

To answer this question, it is useful to go back to one of the main objectives of RESILINK: RESILINK wants to promote and implement a platform-of-platforms approach, capable of integrating existing or future platforms into comprehensive dashboards/portfolios.

For that purpose, an open API will be developed and made available for third-parties to benefit from the software building blocks in order to quickly develop other resource sharing applications that can all interoperate, thus extending the ecosystem because it is just impossible to have one single application fitting all needs.

WHAT ARE THE NEXT NEWSLETTERS?

We will release Newsletters every 4 months. The next Newsletters will highlight:

  • The prototype of the RESILINK mobile application
  • The launching of the Resilient Smallholder Initiative by 4 international projects
  •  and much more

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTERS, ASK QUESTIONS AND PROVIDE FEEDBACKS TO NEWSLETTERS?

You can subscribe to the RESILINK Newsletter using our mailchimp form.

You can ask questions and provide feedbacks for each Newsletter by using the Reply feature on our Post section. The Post associated to this NEWSLETTER#2 is: https://resilink.eu/this-is-resilink-newsletter-2