In the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s decentralized organization, research data frequently exist in the individual information silos of the institutes. There is often no exchange of data between institutes because a requesting institute has no transparency about the existence of related data and a potential provider institute wants to protect its data.
The Fraunhofer Data Space project aims to promote the exchange of data within the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft while improving transparency regarding the institutes’ existing datasets. Here the main focus is on “hot research data”, meaning data that are still being generated or used. These are considered particularly sensitive. A corresponding infrastructure is being created to adequately address the identified obstacles.
We are driving the requirements analysis for the infrastructure and the development of the platform in this project. While the requirements are being defined through expert interviews, we count on two components conceived primarily at Fraunhofer ISST for software development: The International Data Spaces technology and the DIVA data catalog. The Fraunhofer Data Space links these components with each other and adapts them for the concrete use case.
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is getting a tool to find and share research data. A trusted environment is being created with the ability to attach concrete usage policies and restrictions to shared data. Thus the data space will serve as the central point of contact for consistent and standardized research data management in the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.
Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering