On the need of international cross-data space interworking: an EU-Japan case study

Abstract

Data spaces have emerged as pivotal elements promoting data-driven applications and driving the growth of the data economy. Opposite to traditional data exchange, where trustworthiness relies on a central entity acting as a data transactions’ moderator, the decentralization introduced by data spaces overcomes the barriers for a worldwide market of data economy, ensuring the self-sovereignty for data owners. However, existing solutions for the deployment of data spaces jeopardize their adoption, isolating the data economy in different regions. This article delves into cross-data space interworking between International Data Spaces (IDS) and Connector Architecture for Decentralized Data Exchange (CADDE) architectures as they are the references, in Europe and Japan, respectively, for the creation of this kind of data sharing ecosystems. The article describes a CO2 footprint assessment case study—the first of its kind as far as we know—enabling cross-domain data exchange between different data spaces and discusses the pilot results.