Data is a key strategic asset in the framework of the European Strategy for Sustainable and Smart Mobility. Leveraging it will support priorities such as improving road safety, promoting alternative or complementary modes to private cars, mitigating the negative externalities of transport as well as boosting advanced and personalised mobility services based on digitalisation, such as demand-responsive transport or the application of algorithms based on artificial intelligence. To move towards this vision, it is essential to prioritise greater availability and accessibility to data, and to promote trusted environments for secure data sharing.

With this in mind, the European Commission’s European Data Strategy backs the nascent concept of data spaces that complement a new generation of regulation that will facilitate these goals. Mobility data spaces have the potential to positively disrupt the mobility sector towards a more efficient, sustainable and safe transport system. But what is a data space? Will more local public and private sector actors buy into this vision? And will mobility data spaces live up to the hype? This article addresses these questions and provides a set of key recommendations for cities and businesses to assess the application of data spaces for their respective needs.

What is a data space?

A data space is a federated data and service ecosystem enabling the voluntary, sovereign and secure sharing of data between different entities, such as industry, SMEs and public administrations. The concept applies to various sectors, such as manufacturing, energy, tourism, health, and, of course, mobility and logistics.

Why join a mobility data space?

Data providers and consumers participate in the data space because of mutual benefits, such as unlocking innovative data-driven services, cost savings, and efficiency gains in a value chain or working towards a common strategic goal such as decarbonisation or sustainable mobility.

What’s so special about data spaces?

However, what differentiates a data space from today’s data-sharing approaches is realised based on a decentralised infrastructure following common governance, organisational, regulatory, and technical mechanisms. The result facilitates the search, access, controlled sharing and reuse of the data offered to support the data-driven services that generate added value for all participants while lowering the risks associated with inter-organisational data sharing.

As such, data spaces form an essential pillar of the EU’s European Data Strategy, complementing new regulations such as the Data Governance Act and Data Act to evolve the ideal data economy in line with core European values around data, such as clear ownership, privacy, and security.

Are data spaces technically different to conventional data-sharing solutions?

From a technical point of view, the data space model is an evolution of conventional data sharing and integrated solutions.

Unlike conventional models that rely on a centralised data platform to facilitate data sharing, a data space has a more decentralised and federated infrastructure. Participants can communicate directly with each other without relying on a central node as an intermediary for all data provision and consumption. This ensures that data never leaves the provider’s domain unless for a specific use that is in accordance with a pre-defined usage policy.

This direct communication is made possible using standardised techniques and solutions, where the various participants in the data space can connect with each other through interoperable components. In addition, within the data space infrastructure, supporting actors are included to facilitate governance and ensure the trust and security of data exchange through intermediary components that are independent of any participant. Finally, this federated and fully decentralised model allows connections to be established between different mobility data spaces to build what is known as an “ecosystem of ecosystems”. This is one of the key ambitions of the common European mobility data space, which Factual directly contributes to through the deployEMDS project.

What are the key principles of mobility data spaces?

• Interoperability and Decentralised Structure – a federated data ecosystem ensures that data remains with its respective owner. The reduction of centralised structures lowers system costs and improves scalability. By utilising common data specifications, formats, and metadata standards, interoperability and effective cataloguing are enabled.
• Trust through Identification and Provenance – every participant within a data space is clearly identified. Identification establishes trust, while data provenance ensures clarity and transparency regarding its origins. Retaining data at the provider’s side contributes to higher quality compared to systems reliant on centralised pooling of data.
• Discoverability and Accessibility – data catalogues facilitate the discoverability of data held by participants within the data space. Data can be accessed and exchanged on a peer-to-peer basis, eliminating the need to pass through a central structure.
• Data Sovereignty – decentralisation and identification are key enablers of data sovereignty. Data providers retain control over which data is available, who can access it, and under what conditions. These conditions may vary depending on the identity and type of data consumer. Furthermore, data usage protocols ensure adherence to the conditions set by the data provider.

How is compliance with the mobility data spaces principles ensured?

To ensure compliance with these principles, data space design is a framework of several building blocks, covering both the technical aspects and the business, governance, and legal aspects. The latest iteration of this common framework at the time of the report publication is the work done by the Data Space Support Centre (DSSC), as seen in the diagram below.

Can we measure the value of mobility data spaces?

The European vision of data spaces is a nascent concept, including its application to the mobility sector. Only broad forecasts of their value potential can be made on a microeconomic (business benefits) and macroeconomic scale (national and European mobility sectors). Furthermore, the impact and return on investment (ROI) of implementing and participating in a mobility data space will vary significantly depending on the use case, participating actors, integration of legacy systems, etc.

As the first generations of pilots of European mobility data spaces are deployed, it will be easier to assess real use cases, refine their offer and operation, and measure their respective impact on cities and businesses. The next article delves into the commercial challenges in more detail and presents strategies to overcome these.

What’s a use case?

A use case connects two or more actors for a data-sharing scenario that is mutually beneficial (business and/or strategic) under specific conditions, following the decentralised approach and properties presented in the previous section.

What’s in it for you? The value proposition of mobility data spaces

Generally, the value proposition of mobility data spaces and its use cases can be summarised into the following categories of incentives:

• Cost savings and operational gains: participation in the data space leads to optimised operational and efficiency costs for the participating entity. For example, a public transport provider connecting with analytics services or other operators for multimodal integration scenarios. This also applies to logistics and supply chain cases, where pooling data in certain scenarios can provide streamlined operations across the value chain. According to the survey results collected in this study, this ranks highly among the common incentives across SMEs, large enterprises, the public sector and RTOs.
• Enable new services and innovation: participants, e.g., a service provider or niche solution startup, leverage the improved availability and governance of data exchange to create new services and solutions not previously available. This is especially valued by SMEs and the private sector, but also RTOs as reflected in this study led by Factual. Innovation value ranks higher than monetary value across all stakeholder groups, pointing to the potential of new mobility and digital services derived from the increased access to high-quality data but also the difficulty in calculating the monetary value of data.
• Strategic challenge: Participants in the data space share a common government-driven strategic challenge, such as stimulating the deployment of more sustainable mobility services or better monitoring of related metrics (e.g., the EC’s Urban Mobility Indicators (UMI) or something similar in objective).
• Regulatory compliance: to support participants in data spaces to use established governance tools and standards to ensure compliance with the regulatory framework. It is relevant for both a National Access Point (Intelligent Transport Systems Directive) and a service provider (Data Act). The survey results show that all stakeholder groups consistently rank regulatory compliance and meeting strategic goals as one of the most important incentives, second only to innovation value.
• Establish a marketplace of services: participants, for example, data and MaaS service providers, connect to a data ecosystem to deliver their value in a more efficient, cost-effective and automated way.

The above will be relevant in different degrees depending on the specific actor of the mobility data space. Still, when contrasted with the investment and costs needed, they are underlying factors that make up the incentives for setting up, operating and participating in a data space.

The role of cities in driving mobility data spaces

In the context of urban mobility, cities and municipalities play a central role in their public-private ecosystem of mobility services.

A priority for cities is improving the accessibility, safety, energy efficiency, and environmental sustainability of their transport systems. They need better visibility and information on their respective mobility systems to achieve this.

Mobility data spaces and digital twins: synergies and benefits for cities

By implementing and operating mobility data spaces, cities can benefit from increased access to higher-quality data from a wider range of sources. This complements the development of advanced digital twins of ‘smart cities’ with the capability to run predictive models and algorithms based on different scenarios that could impact the urban mobility system.

For example, the potential impact of a planned construction and maintenance project on a busy central road could be modelled prior in the digital twin to optimise the duration, work schedule and scale of the activity which in turn optimises budget and costs. Furthermore, during and upon completion of such a project, data can be channelled and updated through the data space to refine the digital twin and predictive models following a circular data flow that drives continuous improvement in the accuracy of digital infrastructures of cities.

The interfaces of a data space connect the simulated world of the digital twin with the data sources and data-consuming services of the real world.

Beyond this, an effective mobility data space brings structure and transparency in understanding mobility service users’ behaviour and needs. This forms the foundation for more efficient mobility models such as Mobility as a Service (MaaS) and smart logistics, which have so far seen their progress inhibited by fragmented data sharing between value chain actors in the mobility sector. The role of mobility data spaces in these mobility value chains is discussed in the next section on market analysis.

The direct value to cities is difficult to measure because it cannot be attributed to a mobility data space alone, rather its enabling value in complementing digital twins, and improving mobility services (including new innovative services) and supporting infrastructure, as shown in the graphic below. This argument is also echoed by the EC’s Preparatory Action for a Data Space for Smart and Sustainable Cities and Communities (DS4SSCC) launched in October 2022 and the Data Space Support Centre (DSSC).

The Flanders case: a leading example of data spaces and digital twins

Flanders is one of the leading examples in Europe taking a joint approach to regional digitalisation through data spaces and digital twins.

Key regional examples include the Digital Urban European Twins (DUET) and the Flemish Smart data space, which are linked to the Flemish government’s ambition to position Flanders as a European reference in smart cities and digitalisation.

The DUET project in Flanders is especially relevant to this report as it is one of the digital twin pilots that focuses on smart mobility and its impact on the environment (air quality, noise levels, etc.), with integration of real-time Linked Data Event Streams (LDES) to enrich the digital twin with new data sources. Such an approach supports city planners in decision-making and long-term policy development that is more effective and reliable. Flanders and its local ecosystem of stakeholders are continuously evolving digital twins in the cities of Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Mechelen, Leuven and Roeselare.

Mobility data space recommendations for cities and regions

In cities, an effective mobility data space brings structure and transparency in understanding the behaviour and needs of citizens. This data forms the foundation for more efficient mobility models such as Mobility as a Service (MaaS) and smart logistics. These have so far seen their progress inhibited by fragmented data sharing between value chain actors in the mobility sector. Below are some pointers for cities to accelerate the deployment of mobility use cases and data spaces:

• Integrate mobility data spaces with advanced digital twins of the city to maximise the potential impact of both technologies. Data spaces connect real-world data sources (input), digital twins, and a market of mobility solutions and services (output). Mobility, logistics and infrastructure data can be channelled and updated through the data space to refine the digital twin and predictive models continually. This circular data flow will continuously improve the accuracy of cities’ digital infrastructures, streamline the planning and execution of urban mobility projects, and maximise the positive impact on citizens.

 

• Define the roles and responsibilities of the municipality departments, PTAs and PTOs in implementing mobility data spaces and use cases. Each city will have a unique combination of private and publicly owned transport services. Therefore, the public sector should lead the mapping of the stakeholders involved in creating a city mobility data space ecosystem and governance framework. This exercise can help identify the public-private partnerships needed to ensure an active role from the private sector and define which entities are best positioned to act as neutral agents in the governance of mobility data spaces.

 

• Invest in bottom-up regional and city efforts to evolve existing data exchange assets and help local private and public sector stakeholders understand the transformative nature of data spaces (e.g. data usage control, new governance models and traceability in the value chain), including use case co-design, demonstrator development and more. Another key part of this is to support the integration of complementary mobility and logistics data exchanges that already exist as commercial offerings, re-focusing existing assets into European standards instead of a costly green-field approach. A pragmatic transition to data spaces is an iterative evolution of these existing exchanges to the more decentralised approach from which the benefits of data spaces are derived. Such activity can complement continued investment by the EC in programmes such as the Digital Europe Programme to advance the European Mobility Data Space.

These actions (and more), can enable cities to take the lead in identifying use cases that can have the greatest impact on citizens and look to incentivise private sector participation. At the same time, they can help evolve existing data exchange initiatives towards the common European mobility data space vision.

Mobility data spaces are a concept backed by the European Union that has the potential to disrupt the mobility and logistics sector positively and lead to a more efficient, sustainable, and safe transport system. If you’re interested in data spaces, check out our offering to support you along your data space journey.