DER Teaching staff participate in Sustainable Stone by Portugal RRP Mobilizing Agenda, in which consortium, besides  Técnico Lisboa and CERENA, is composed by 13 other R&D entities from the Portuguese system, 2 association from the sector (Assimagra and Cluster Mineral Resources), 22 natural stone companies, 9 technological companies and 2 interface public entities. 

From DER/CERENA, the project is leaded by Prof. Gustavo Paneiro who considers that “this consortium, leaded by Solanci, shows that the nacional natural stone sector joined in the path of digitalization and sustainability” and that “with the approval of this project from Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), the national natural stone industry will have a unique opportunity”. 

Also “this is a very strong signal of the mining industry to the Portuguese society that there is a serious concern for changing the public opinion on this industrial activity that is so important for the national economy, with the application of the technological industry state of art over digitalization and a solid response to the economical, societal and environmental challenges”. 

In this Agenda, the main role of DER is in digitalization, with the use of deep learning techniques to forecast visual characteristics of natural stone products. According to Prof. Gustavo Paneiro, “project ai4Stone (one of the associated projects of this Agenda) will allow raw-material valorization from updated techniques, as for the natural resource optimization with the reduction of waste volumes that are usually stored at the surface, resulting in very high negative environmental impacts”. 

The Sustainable Stone by Portugal Agenda counts also with the participation of other departments of Técnico Lisboa, namely the Department of Mechanical Engineering (DEM), Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Earth Resources (DECivil), Department of Chemical Engineering (DEQ) and IDMEC as a Tecnico’s associated R&D unit.