
Roi Rodríguez de Bernardo
Director of AI and Cloud Ecosystem Development
Huawei
Brussels, September 16, 2020. Ursula Von Der Leyen highlighted in the State of Union Speech that “Industry Data is worth its weight in gold when it comes to developing new products and services. But the reality is that 80% of industry data is collected but never used. That is pure waste. A true data economy, on the other hand, would be a powerful engine for innovation and new jobs. […] For this, we need collaborative data spaces – for example in the energy or healthcare sectors.” [1]
The value of the Data Economy in the EU27 is foreseen to grow from 2.4% of the EU GDP in 2018 to 5.8% by 2025, from €301 billion to €829 billion. And in this context the European Commission is driving a total investment of €4-€6 billion to be invested in total on the Common European Data Spaces, and a European federation of cloud infrastructure and services [2].
The Common European Data Spaces are already a reality articulated through Digital Europe R&D program that have funded through different calls the creation of the Data Spaces Support Center and different Data Spaces like the one for Energy, Mobility or Manufacturing. The Data Spaces Support Center is a Coordination and Support Action that is providing support to the creation of the different Sectorial Data Spaces. It is a consortium of more than 10 partners constituted around the Data Spaces Business Alliance that was formed by BDVA, FIWARE, Gaia-X and International Data Spaces Association (IDSA) to drive the Adoption of Data Spaces across Europe and beyond. [4]
What is a Data Space?
According to RISE, a Data Space is an ecosystem of organisations that are able to share data among each other more easily because of pre-made agreements that pertain to the technical, legal and business aspects of data sharing [5].
The data economy involves many players and as it is shown in figure 1 the Data Spaces must fulfill a need in which the data is distributed among those many players in a decentralized and dynamic data ecosystem.
Figure 1. From Data Exchange to Data Space. Source IDSA
The main components of a Data Space are [6]:
- Identity and Trust
- Sovereign Data Exchange
- Federated Catalogue
- Compliance
Boot—X, a Data Space functional prototype. Advanced Smart Service for trust in automotive supply chains
In this context, we, at Huawei decided to do an implementation of a useful Data Space following both Gaia-X and IDSA reference implementations, in collaboration with Fraunhoffer ISST and XLab.
Boot-X [7] project was inspired by a number of use cases from Catena-X project as well as the new supply chain act. Catena-X is a Data Ecosystem in the automotive sector involving the main players and projects in the area [8]. The supply chain act applies to companies with 3000+ workforce since January 2023 and later on it will apply to companies with 1000+ workforce. The supply chain act goal is to ensure better human rights protection in the whole Supply Chain. It is a hard problem that leads to: a) a new risk management process that covers the whole supply chain, b) needs the exchange of documents, c) needs for compliance to EU Standards and addressing Catena-X challenges. Therefore the Boot-X prototype aims at solving a real problem for the companies that have to fulfill with the Supply Chain Act [9].
In the following diagram is represented a simplified version of the whole automotive supply chain and the Boot-X Data Space.
Figure 2. Automotive Supply Chain simplified. Own elaboration
On the right side you see a Car Store and the Customer that would like to see that the car is compliance with the supply chain act. The car store get the car from a car Factory that assembled the parts of the car, that got the parts from different companies like the one that provided the seat Factory that at the same time received the parts from different factories. To meet the requirements of the Supply Chain they have to Exchange documents and so on, it is complex and doing it with legacy method is complicated. So we decided to implement it with a Data Space. In each step you need to share the Declaration of Principles. It is the first and most needed documents in the whole process.
Catena-X companies emphasized one important element of the supply chain, related to protect the Business relations of the companies in the supply chain. And is that each Company only get the information of the companies one step up and one step down, it is called the one up one down principle. Which means that you will only see the documents from the previous supplier and the Factory you are serving but not beyond. For example the Car Factory could see the documents from the Seat Factory but not the ones from the components of the seat.
We see three levels in the figure 2 diagram:
At the top level, we see the papers with the declarations of principles (signed by the CEO or so) are scanned and fed into the system as PDF files. In this step, the scanned file is supplemented with the data required for an automatic check of the document that takes place later. These are a few data fields that are present in the physically and need to entered by the person uploading the document to the system.
At the middle level, we see a section of a supply chain of an automotive supplier. The arrows between the individual boxes symbolize the relationship between these companies as suppliers and customers.
At the final end of the whole chain is the customer who, for example via a QR code, could validate the validity of the chain of documents live in the showroom, to ensure that the selected product has been manufactured in compliance with the standard. At the lowest level, we then see a symbolic representation of the Data Space. The Data Space makes it possible to pull the digitized documents in a chain that resembles the structure of the supply chain. By means of the Advanced Smart Service it is then possible to validate the chain as a whole in a process of backwards pulling, and hereby to prove to the customer that all (social) standards have been met during the production of the product.
Main Software Components
Figure 3. Boot-X Software Components
The main software components selected for the implementation were the following:
- Identity & Trust: Web DID Extension in the Eclipse Data Space Connector (EDC) and Keycloak. User Management
- Sovereign Data Exchange: Eclipse Data Space Conector (EDC). Compliance with EU laws. Where Fraunhoffer ISST is one of the major partners contributing with code.
- Federated Catalogue: Federated Catalogue Extension in the EDC
- Compliance: ELK Stack. Login, generating metrics of the compliance services, Business processes and procedures and how to get compliant with the Gaia-X framework.
In the actual implementation is included a web front end though it is also possible to connect it to existing web or mobile based frontends of the client.
Next Steps
Actually we are in the process of selecting and implementing the first real small pilots, involving 3-4 actors with the aim to have them up and running in the first semester of 2024. Next steps include the definition of large scale pilots involving dozens or hundreds of users to implement them in the framework of national or EU projects. If you are interested in collaborating with us in any of those forms you can just approach us.
References
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_20_1655
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/fs_20_283
[3] Programa Digital Europe R+D 2021-2027, Data Spaces Calls publicades fins ara: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-search?keywords=Data% 20Spaces&closed=true&programmePeriod=2021%20-%202027&frameworkProgramme=43152860&programmePart =
[4] https://dssc.eu/page/Endorsements
[6] Document de posició de Gaia-X i IDSA: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://internationaldataspaces.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/IDSA-Position-Paper-GAIA-X-and-IDS.pdf
[8] https://catena-x.net/en/about-us
[9] https://www.bmas.de/EN/Europe-and-the-World/International/Supply-Chain-Act/supply-chain-act.html