Collaborating for Smarter, Competitive and Sustainable Tourism

The dynamic of digital transformation, adoption of cutting-edge technologies and proliferation of innovative business models, provide Montenegro with strategic opportunities to elevate its tourism sector through data-driven and AI-powered solutions. NCC Montenegro is initiating collaboration with local municipalities and tourist organizations, on Tourism 4.0 project initiatives to optimize visitor experiences, provide smart destination management and promote sustainable tourism.

By leveraging next-generation technologies such as IoT, Computer Vision, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and High-Performance Computing, NCC Montenegro in cooperation with high-tech SME and local municipality, is preparing project initiative on real-time analytics and predictive insights related to tourism dynamic and trends to provide multiple benefits for public authorities, tourist organizations, cultural institutions and local businesses.

By embracing new technologies, advanced data analytics and intelligent modelling key tourism policymakers and stakeholders can achieve multiple benefits. These benefits include data-driven decision making, proactive management of tourist destinations/attractions, efficient resource allocation and capacity planning, better protection/valorization of cultural heritage/sites, increased visitors satisfaction and engagement, tailored offers and targeted marketing by local business, as well as “a-year-round” enhanced tourism strategies. Creating a scalable and collaborative platform for smart tourism management ultimately contributes to attractiveness and competitiveness of the Montenegro tourist destinations.

EuroCC success story booklet 2024

The new Success Story Booklet for EuroCC 2024, created in collaboration by CASTIEL and the National Competence Centres (NCCs), is now available online!

The success stories in the EuroCC 2024 booklet span a diverse range of sectors, including:

  • IT and Software
  • Natural Sciences and Aeronautics
  • Environment, Energy, and Agriculture
  • Pharmacy and Medicine
  • Manufacturing and Engineering
  • Finance and Mobility
  • Public and Communication

These stories showcase achievements and innovations across multiple industries, highlighting the wide-reaching impact of EuroCC initiatives.

One of the featured success stories highlights the collaboration between NCC Montenegro and the Montenegrin company Fleka, showcased through the project “Personalized Banking Software Solutions.” This partnership shows how local innovation can create custom ML predictions for the banking sector and personalized financial-tech sector.

Discover inspiring success stories that highlight innovative achievements across Europe.

New academic paper on Montenegro’s HPC ecosystem development

A new academic paper ‘Sizing HPC Opportunities in Montenegro: Market Insights, Best Practices and Use Cases’ has been published in the scientific journal “Entrepreneurial Economy“.

The paper highlights the pivotal role of HPC in addressing critical societal, scientific, and industrial challenges, and explores its growing impact on businesses through data-driven decision-making, workflow optimization or innovative product design. The study underscores the importance of HPC infrastructure, Cloud services, and AI applications in driving digital transformation and enhancing the industry competitiveness of SMEs.
The research also identifies key challenges in Montenegro including a shortage of HPC expertise, low demand for critical HPC performance, and certain concerns related to data security and IPR. Despite these challenges, market research revealed HPC opportunities related to high Cloud adoption, innovative product development and favourable business prospects. The paper also describe activities of the HPC National Competence Centre Montenegro, established through the EuroCC project, related to established HPC and AI related academic programs and training portfolio, and productive industry collaborations, demonstrated through successful use cases in smart agriculture, precise weather forecasting, and FinTech.

By harnessing both national expertise and international supercomputing resources, the NCC Montenegro has effectively integrated HPC technologies into research and business practices, driving technology innovations and smart growth.

New model developed in the field of HPC technologies through the collaboration of DigitalSmart and NCC Montenegro

In collaboration with the National Competence Center Montenegro (NCC Montenegro), the University of Donja Gorica (UDG), and the University of Montenegro (UCG), the company DigitalSmart has successfully started the development of a new model utilizing advanced High Performance Computing (HPC) technologies. This partnership represents an important step towards applying HPC resources to solve complex problems and enhancing academic and industrial processes in Montenegro.

The new model is designed to optimize data processing, providing faster and more efficient solutions for research and development in the field of generative artificial intelligence. The use of HPC technologies in this context enables greater scalability and precision in the analysis and processing of large datasets.

The experiment has been successfully submitted through the Fortissimo call, paving the way for further validation and application of this model on an international level.

Virtual bootcamp “AI for Scientific Computing” successfully conducted by NCC Germany, Sweden, Austria and Montenegro

NCC Montenegro representative Luka Filipovic took an active part as a Teaching Assistant in the Nvidia and EuroCC2 supported bootcamp “AI for Scientific Computing”, successfully organized by NCCs Germany, Sweden, Austria and Montenegro, on June 25–26, 2024.

The Bootcamp offered a comprehensive introduction to deep neural networks, focusing on applications in scientific computing and physical systems defined by differential equations. The curriculum included advanced topics based on NVIDIA Modulus to develop and train the models in various areas. This online Bootcamp features guided instructions and support from cross-NCC teaching assistants to facilitate learning, supporting participants to build and enhance AI/DL models.

Two NCC-supported and AI-related research papers @SymOrg 2024 conference

Representatives from NCC Montenegro in joint efforts with young researchers from UDG, published two scientific papers at the SymOrg 2024 conference, organized by the Faculty of Organizational Science, University of Belgrade, at Zlatibor, Serbia on June 12-14, 2024. The conference, traditionally envisioned as a platform for knowledge innovation and empirical research, bringing together representatives from the scientific and professional community, was themed: ”Unlocking The Hidden Potential Of Organization Through Merging Of Humans And Digitals”, aiming to address the newfound need for balance in the era of AI.

Image source: SymOrg 2024 website

The scientific paper “Detection of Scoliosis” by Elvis Taruh, Enisa Trubljanin, and Dejan Babić explores the application of a deep learning model integrated with a web application to detect scoliosis using x-ray images. Utilizing a dataset of 198 x-ray images from Roboflow, the initial model performance was unsatisfactory, prompting manual annotation of 245 images, which significantly improved the model’s accuracy. YOLOv8, a state-of-the-art object detection algorithm, was used to train two models, demonstrating improved performance with manual annotations. The web application, built with Flask, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, provides a user-friendly interface for analyzing scoliosis detection results. The backend uses MySQL for data storage and management, facilitating efficient image processing, result display, and feedback from doctors. Evaluation metrics indicate that the second model, which underwent refined annotation and augmentation, performed better, avoiding overfitting and demonstrating higher precision. This approach enhances early scoliosis diagnosis and offers a scalable solution for other medical detection challenges, supporting healthcare providers with more accurate diagnostic tools and improving patient care.

Click on image to open SymOrg 2024 proceedings

In the paper “LLM Consistent Character Bias”, the authors Igor Culafic and Tomo Popovic investigate the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) for character imitation in media, education, and entertainment. Traditionally, LLMs have been used for tasks like web search and programming, but this study focuses on their application in mimicking specific characters from books. Using a dataset created from the Ciaphas Cain anthology of Warhammer 40k, the authors trained models using Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) methods. Three models of varying sizes (1.1B, 7B, and 10.7B parameters) were tested, with training conducted on a NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPU. The study found that the larger models (7B and 10.7B) performed well in maintaining character consistency, though they occasionally struggled with specific details and displayed unexpected behaviors like excessive emoji usage. The smallest model (1.1B), despite higher LoRA Rank parameters, was less effective and prone to errors such as repetitive responses and long rants. The authors conclude that LLMs can successfully imitate fictional characters given adequate data and training, suggesting future improvements could make them useful in various fields, including education and therapy. These models have the potential to enhance interactive experiences in theme parks, video games, and educational tools by providing authentic character interactions. However, they caution against using these models as replacements for human therapists due to their limitations and tendency for inaccuracies.

Click on image to open SymOrg 2024 proceedings

Both research papers were partly supported by the EuroCC2 project that is funded by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under Grant Agreement No 101101903.

IHMS precise weather forecast at VEGA HPC system

NCC Montenegro successfully submitted the proposal No. EHPC-BEN-2023B12-015 High-Resolution Weather Prediction Model for Montenegro, to the EuroHPC Benchmark Access Call, in cooperation with Institute of Hydrometeorology and Seismology of Montenegro (IHMS) on VEGA CPU for the period 15.01.-15.04.2024. The project aimed to leverage the EuroHPC resources to establish and benchmark precise weather forecast models in the complex topography of Montenegro, utilize these models to refine existing meteorological models, and ultimately enhance the accuracy of weather forecasts, particularly for severe weather events.

Simulations used the Weather Research and Forecasting Non-Hydrostatic Mesoscale Model (WRF-NMM) combining advanced numerical techniques with HPC, for studying atmospheric phenomena with high spatial and temporal resolution and providing accurate and efficient simulations of regional weather patterns. Key activities included installing and fine-tuning the model based on previous verification results, preparing input data, running and fine-tuning the model, and analyzing results in the context of weather prediction and parallel computing performance. WRF model is tested on complex Montenegrin terrain on resolutions 0.5km, 1km, 3km, and 5km. Application scalability was tested on up to 8 nodes, running up to 1024 tasks simultaneously. Simulations were executed for different timespans, but results/overall execution time was scaled to one day period to calculate application speedup and efficiency.

Vega HPC has significantly enhanced research capabilities, allowing to achieve results more quickly and with greater accuracy: scalability was successfully tested on 64-512 CPU cores and the model was successfully downscaled to the resolution of 0.5 km. The final report on granted EUROHPC JU Benchmark Access and effective utilization of the VEGA CPU system assigned is submitted.