Smart Cities data space community gathers at Data Spaces Symposium, The Hague, 21-23 March
Data Spaces for Smart & Sustainable Cities and Communities (DS4SCC) shared its progress at Data Space Symposium, The Hague.
The Data Spaces Symposium held on March 21 and 22, 2023, was attended by over 700 participants from all over Europe. Focused on data spaces and how to participate in Europe’s largest community on data spaces, the symposium covered a wide range of topics related to data spaces, including Smart Cities, Smart Agrifood, Smart Energy, and Smart Manufacturing.
The event also featured a day-long conference on March 22, organised by the EU-funded Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC). The event focused on success stories and impact, and various tracks on data spaces, including the business, legal, technical, and organizational views. DS4SSCC partners Sophie Meszaros (OASC), Clara Pezuela (FIWARE), Justine Gangneux (Eurocities) and Giacomo Lozzi (ENoLL) attended the conference. Ms Mezsaros also presented DS4SSCC at the Mobility, Tourism, Smart cities session.
During the first plenary session, the demo of the Data Spaces Support Platform was presented, together with the supporting tools provided by the Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC). Boris Otto, coordinator of the DSSC project, highlighted the need for a community when using open-source technology. He also emphasized that stakeholders should be in the driver's seat to create use cases because they have the intrinsic motivation and sense of urgency to create what really generates impact. Anja Burmann (Health-X) discussed the interaction between companies and the importance of working on improving data maturity. Michael Schäfer (Mobility Data Space) highlighted the need for interoperability and business cases to utilize the data.
The symposium also discussed business cases enabled by data ecosystems that utilize data space technology. The EU data strategy launched in 2020 was referenced, and the importance of standardization and connecting stakeholders based on common data needs was exemplified.
Several EU-funded projects sharing their activities and ambitions in the Smart Cities, Mobility, and Tourism session, stressed the importance of maintaining an open dialogue between these data spaces both from a thematic and technical point of view. Mobility, tourism and smart cities are closely interconnected: what happens or is decided in one sector necessarily influences the impacts on the others. By breaking down data silos and promoting collaboration between stakeholders from different sectors and domains, cross-domain data spaces can drive innovation and support the development of new solutions to complex problems.
For example, cross-domain data spaces could be used to combine hotel reservation data with airport passenger data to gain insights into travel patterns and demand for accommodations, or integrate airport passenger data with public transportation data to optimize transportation routes and schedules on days with high passenger volume. Therefore, the use cases and governance models of the different projects shall talk and align to each other. From a technical point of view, the various catalogs of specifications, technical building blocks and inventories have common elements that can be integrated. During the session, there was also reflection on the mechanisms and incentives for involving as many players as possible in the use of data spaces, in particular as regards small and medium enterprises.
The Symposium provided a large platform for experts, researchers, developers, founders, and passionate attendees to come together and discuss the latest trends and developments in the area. Covering a wide range of topics related to data spaces, the expert speakers provided valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities of utilizing data space technology.