AMIGDALA – Toon van Harmelen

As he prepares to retire this summer, AMIGDALA Project TNO partner Toon van Harmelen reflects on the journey so far, sharing his views on the project’s key achievements, the importance of collaboration, and the role AMIGDALA can play in supporting a more competitive, resilient and sustainable European industry.

In this interview, he looks back on the lessons learned and the impact he hopes the project will deliver in its final year and beyond.

Looking back, what do you consider the most important achievement of the AMIGDALA project?

The stakeholder driven development of input scenarios and understandable output presentation in the form of Key Performance Indicators in an interactive decision support tool are to me key for making impact with AMIGDALA. This stakeholder driven approach also meant that we had to readjust our original project goals since the situation of the EU process industry has drastically changed over the last years we have been executing the project. We are putting more emphasis on competitiveness and resilience next to climate change, circularity and sustainability in general.

What aspect of the project are you most proud to have contributed to?

I am the proudest of the integration of 10 models at three geographical scales (world regions, EU Member States and local regions) and for four different domains, being economy, energy, materials and environment. This impressive model suite, using different softwares and model approaches, is run in series for all scenarios in a coordinated effort of 10 experts at 4 institutes over Europe. It takes weeks to complete but provides consistent scenario analysis for the different domains and scales.

What advice would you give to younger researchers and project managers entering collaborative EU projects?

I would say, focus on the people! Project impact is always made by and for people. In AMIGDALA, we have researchers that are very much oriented at collaboration. And we have project managers that know about the content but also about our clients and stakeholders. This is key to make a project successful.

If you could describe your experience in AMIGDALA in one sentence, what would it be?

A warm, inspiring and highly important journey, which I hope will find its destiny in EU policy and industry, to make it more competitive, resilient and sustainable.