Data products as economic assets – conclusion of the “EVAREST” research project
The consortium of industry and research in the EVAREST project investigated the generation and utilization of data products in the food industry through smart services. The results on information and software technology, business management, as well as legal findings and demonstrators will be presented on April 29, 2022, at the Forum Digitale Technologien in Berlin.
The EVAREST research project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK) as part of the “Smart Data Economy” program, will end after more than three years on April 30, 2022. As part of a closing event on April 29, the consortium partners will show their results at the Forum Digitale Technologien in Berlin. All interested parties are cordially invited to attend the hybrid event. In addition to exciting input lectures, individual demonstrators and results will be presented during a tour. A panel with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Maaß (DFKI GmbH), Peter Kraemer (acatech), Dr. Harald Schöning (Software AG), and Moritz Bahlsen (Lorenz Snack World) on the topic of data ecosystems in production will round off the event.
The initial situation
Despite the random collection of large amounts of data in food production, data is primarily used locally by companies. The cross-location and cross-manufacturer economic exploitation of data, which enables high monetary potentials and efficiency gains, is only partially implemented on a high aggregation level. The legal basis for data ownership and security mechanisms to protect against data misuse by third parties are lacking. In addition, companies are often unclear about the added value they can generate by participating in the data economy. Thus, much of the potential value of data remains untapped.
The goal of the EVAREST research project was to develop and exploit data products as an economic asset in the food production ecosystem through a hybrid data marketplace for the secure trading of data and algorithms. Users from the food production industry should thus be enabled to answer business-critical questions through participation in a data marketplace and the development of new business models. The data marketplace is characterized by a legally compliant and sovereign data infrastructure as well as the self-description of data and services. In parallel, economic and legal usage concepts were developed.
The results
The project developed the EVAREST data marketplace, which enables the semi-automated generation of higher-value data products through decentralized artificial intelligence services. The decentrally organized global data market via IoT platforms realizes the efficient distribution of the achieved added value by trading data products and services among data producers and users through electronic contracts.
For this purpose, reference contracts for data trading were specified from a legal perspective and transferred into electronic contracts. In addition, pricing approaches for different data products in different use cases of a data economy in food production were developed.
The core of the EVAREST data platform is the technical eContract Broker. This broker represents a trusted third party and enables sovereign, contract-based trading, sharing, and data processing. Here, electronic contracts guarantee ownership and control of data assets, execution of defined data analysis tasks based on AI models, and sharing of results according to contractual commitments.
In addition, the consortium partners developed a DIN SPEC on business model development for a data ecosystem in food production. The standard includes a design approach for specifying business models in data ecosystems, as well as for developing and building data ecosystems.
The research consortium of the project “Evarest”
The German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology funds the Evarest project with 2.3 million euros through the “Smart Data Economy” technology program. As part of the project, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence DFKI (consortium leader) and Saarland University are working together with Software AG, the Research Institute for Rationalization (FIR) at RWTH Aachen University, Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft AMI, as well as chocolate manufacturer Lindt & Sprüngli AG and associated partners Deutsches Institut für Lebensmitteltechnik (DIL) and Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Ernährungsindustrie e.V. (BVE).
More information about the EVAREST project (in German): https://www.evarest.de
Registration for the event: https://forms.office.com/r/cuXLrAKkrx
EVAREST will be on display at Hannover Messe 2022, May 30-June 2, at the Saarland joint booth, Hall 2, B28.