The AD4DG project illuminates the path towards the future Data Space for the Green Deal

You have probably heard of the Green Deal; the strategy with which the European Union aims to turn the continent into the first climate-neutral area in the world by 2030. The Union has been concerned for years about one of the many aspects of this initiative: having large amounts of data that allow quantitative evaluation and progress towards the objectives of this Pact. Now, thanks to the European project AD4GD (All Data for Green Deal), those responsible for the European Digital Agenda have a series of recommendations on how to share this data in a harmonised, interoperable way, with metadata and following methods that facilitate data exchange and governance protocols. Do you want to know more about it?

Today, the unstoppable advance of open science is making very valuable information on climate, biodiversity and pollution available to everyone . This increase in open data encourages both science and public bodies and companies to be more willing to collaborate. But there is another undeniable truth, there is data that cannot be opened, either because it is linked to privacy regulations, because it could be misused or because it has very restrictive intellectual property. This would be the case of sensitive information such as the exact position of protected species or the location of a network of urban sensors on the balconies of private homes. This data can be essential for locating and protecting biodiversity centers and protecting them or for deciding which streets are most polluted and prohibiting traffic, but it cannot be made open with the usual technologies.

Just because data cannot be opened to everyone, doesn't mean it can't be shared with certain people or institutions. Hundreds of gigabytes of data are transferred daily between researchers, governments and companies via a multitude of platforms as diverse as a USB stick or WeTransfer. However, there is currently no single method to do this that is completely secure, reliable, automated and easy to use.

The Data Space for the Green Deal aspires to precisely this: to create a European-based environment where public entities, research centers and companies can share environmental data with a select group of participants with security , traceability and transparency to advance the objectives of the Green Deal.

The AD4GD (All Data for Green Deal) project has been contributing to this initiative for three years under the leadership of Joan Masó, a researcher at CREAF. The project has developed key pieces for this data space and has demonstrated how to apply them in three pilot cases. In one, to learn about the quality and availability of water in small lakes in Berlin. On the other hand, to improve how the connectivity of terrestrial habitats in Catalonia is assessed. In a third, to determine how the use of low-cost sensors can contribute to better measuring air quality in cities.

With all the accumulated experience, AD4GD has allied with three more Horizon Europe projects (B-Cubed, USAGE and FAIRiCUBE), within the framework of the EuroGEO Action Group for the Data Space for the Green Deal , to jointly distill what aspects the European Commission and the European SAGE project, which is in charge of the construction, must consider to do it successfully.

All these ideas have been expressed in the form of recommendations in a collaborative policy brief aimed primarily at the Directorate-General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology of the European Commission , which is responsible for the Digital Agenda in Europe.

Its main concerns explore five fundamental pillars: data harmonization, its semantic interoperability, the importance of metadata in the entire process, methods that facilitate data exchange, and governance protocols.

• Data harmonization : This refers to encouraging data of such disparate natures as citizen observation and satellite imagery to coexist on the same platform. For this reason, they suggest promoting the use of existing international standards, extending them to new realities and opting for the use of conversion tools.
• Semantic interoperability : or what is the same, that the data is easily understandable by people and machines who see them for the first time. The objective is to avoid confusion derived from the ambiguity or absence of description of the scientific variables. For this reason, they propose to avoid individual solutions and reuse well-defined concepts grouped in stable vocabularies but that can be adapted following agreed and transparent instructions. This prevents a variable such as habitat connectivity from meaning something different between two research groups, institutions or countries and that it can be analyzed more easily.
• Metadata : if taking care of the quality of the data is complicated, curating the information that describes, explains and puts it in context requires even more effort. The projects ask, on the one hand, that this be recognized economically and, on the other hand, they recommend that this curation be done using formats adapted to the needs of those who use them.
• Data exchange : This is the heart of a data space. The projects advocate leaving no one behind and warn of the challenges of bringing together open science and protected, commercial and sensitive data under one roof. Their suggestion is to use federated, standardized and GDPR-compliant technologies at all times.
• Governance : none of this can be sustained without a participatory governance framework, inclusive of all parties and prioritizing the general interest and progress towards the sustainability goals of the European Green Deal.

You can read all the details of this policy brief on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/15649164