Green Deal Data Space Press Release

Addressing climate change and its impacts is only possible with a multidisciplinary approach. Data providers from several disciplines must be empowered to easily and openly share their data in an interoperable and sovereign way. To address this, a newly EU Funded project has officially kicked off in the past months with the aim to deliver a roadmap for implementing and deploying the Green Deal Data Space, an infrastructure that will allow data providers and initiatives to easily share data in an interoperable and sovereign way to tackle the transformational change sought by the European Green Deal across different thematic, including energy, transport, food, preserving nature to protect our livelihoods and health, climate change and environmental challenges (air, soil and water pollution, preservation of biodiversity, deforestation).  

The context: 

Climate change and other environmental challenges are existential threats to Europe and the world. The European Green Deal aims to transform Europe into a modern, climate-neutral continent and competitive economy empowered to tackle these challenges.  

With the launch of the Common European Data Spaces, the European Data Strategy aims to create a Single Market for data, where data can flow within the EU and across sectors for the benefit of the citizens and our planet.   

The GREAT project, funded by the Digital Europe Programme, will establish the Green Deal Data Space Foundation and its Community of Practice which builds on the European Green Deal and the EU’s Strategy for Data.  

GREAT builds on five pillars:  

GREAT will bring together a community of data providers, users and intermediaries from different sectors, who will participate in all phases, from the co-design to the implementation of the project activities. 

In the first stage, the project will define an expandable core set of high-priority datasets for the first implementation phase of the data ecosystem federation. 

In the next phase, it will develop the technical blueprint of the Green Deal Data Space reference architecture. Such architecture will provide an interoperable, secure data-sharing environment allowing seamless discovery and use of available data. GREAT will propose an open and inclusive multi-stakeholder governance scheme and the Roadmap for future implementation of the Green Deal Data Space.  

“The design of the Green Deal Data Space framework incorporates the five pillars of Community, Minimum Viable Dataset, Blueprint, Governance and Roadmap which will all be driven by concrete examples of innovative use of data in the support of the Green Deal implementation in the form of use cases” – commented the project coordinator Richard Stevens, from IDC.   

“The incorporation of the five above mentioned pillars for the Green Deal Data Space framework and also the use cases will help to address three important actions: the 2030 biodiversity strategy, the zero pollution action plan and the climate change adaption strategy” – mentioned Marta Gutierrez from EGI.  

GREAT will identify, prioritise and analyse pertinent Reference Use Cases from flagship pan-European initiatives (EMODNet, Destination Earth, Copernicus programme). These will define goals, stakeholders, business models and supporting governance schemes, key services and data resources, established best practices addressing technical, policy and legal requirements, level of maturity and data readiness, and development and operational costs. The GDDS and the Minimum Viable GDDS will incorporate all the dimensions to meet the requirements of use cases. 

GREAT Use Cases will be involved in responding to the questionnaires and short interviews with the consortium, and in return, they will receive experts’ feedback on data governance, will be promoted through GREAT communication channels, be a part of the pan-European network, and will shape the future Green Deal Data Space. 

Join our community of practice and become a use case by filling out this form.  

About GREAT Project

GREAT builds on the strengths of a consortium of 11 partners & 3 affiliated entities with direct links to +1000 stakeholders & +100 initiatives operating at national & international level.  

(reposted from the original press release)