Monetizing Data in International Data Spaces: Business Concepts and Technical Enablers

across supply chain partner have given rise to the emerging of the Data Spaces concepts. Data spaces
are decentralized data management infrastructures, which enable data management and data exchange
across different value chain partners who adhere to a common set of standards and approaches to
storing, sharing and managing data of their value chain. Several international organizations (e.g., the
International Data Spaces Associations (IDSA), the FIWARE foundation and the GAIA-X initiative)
have introduced the need of data spaces and defined the main technical and non-technical components
that comprise a data space. For instance, GAIA-X defines a data space as “a type of data relationship
between trusted partners who adhere to the same high standards and guidelines when it comes to
data storage and sharing”.
The development, deployment and operation of data spaces hinges on several technical/technological
and operational/governance building blocks, which span different areas and functionalities, including
for example users’ authentication and authorization data interoperability, data processing, data
analytics and more. Data spaces implementations come with specific implementation instances of
such building blocks, which facilitate the sovereign exchange of data assets across data spaces
participants. They also enable the use of the data assets in the scope of different applications.