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Secure Environment for Effortless Data Exchange

Author: Matthias Gaul

Oct 02, 2024 Safety on the road

As one of around 190 partners to date, DEKRA is among the participants in the Mobility Data Space – a new sharing community designed to enable networking, data trading, and collaboration in a dynamic mobility ecosystem.

Be it real-time traffic data for predicting and visualizing hazardous areas to improve road safety, data on fuel or energy consumption and CO2 emissions of vehicles for sustainable fleet management, driving behavior data for fair pricing of car insurance policies, information on the current occupancy of parking spaces or car sharing offers, data on publicly accessible charging infrastructure in Germany, and so much more: The already extensive catalog of the so-called Mobility Data Space (MDS) knows virtually no limits when it comes to digital information from various sectors of the mobility industry.
The MDS is funded by the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport Affairs and is part of the European cloud initiative Gaia-X, a project aimed at building a high-performance, competitive, secure, and trustworthy data infrastructure for Europe. The MDS’s declared goal is to connect data providers with the people who need it to develop new business models, thus fostering cross-sector collaboration between transportation companies, the automotive industry, mobility service providers, and local authorities. Data is indeed the raw material for the future of mobility, but experience shows that much of it remains untapped, often due to a lack of usage concepts or uncertainties about secure data exchange. The MDS aims to close these gaps.
Diverse data resources
The MDS catalog currently comprises around 230 data sets. One of the most important individual offerings is undoubtedly the connection to the so-called Mobilithek, a national access point for mobility data according to the European directive for the implementation of intelligent transport systems in road traffic and its interfaces with other modes of transport. The Mobilithek already offers over 9,000 data sets from authorities, infrastructure operators, public and private mobility providers, and research institutions. The range spans from real-time traffic information, timetable data, and locations of rental vehicles to geographic, weather, and climate data.
So far, the MDS lists around 190 participants, including companies such as BMW, Bridgestone, Deutsche Bahn, Hella Gutmann Solutions, IBM Germany, Mercedes-Benz, Vodafone, and many more. In addition, numerous cities and transit authorities, insurers like HUK-Coburg, and institutions such as ADAC, Deutsche Automobil Treuhand, Autobahn GmbH des Bundes, the Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems, and others have joined.
High complexity in data exchange
DEKRA is also part of the sharing community. One of the primary objectives is the active exchange of data with other participants. “In addition to providing location data, services, and opening hours, use cases include digital appointment booking and the DEKRA battery test with accompanying manufacturer description and functionality data,” explains Sascha Dohmke, Head of Institutional Relationships at DEKRA’s Service Division Vehicles. As part of its sustainability strategy, the expert organization also plans to obtain vehicle data from manufacturers via the MDS to more accurately assess the fuel and energy consumption and CO2 emissions of its own fleet. “In the medium term, we also want to offer easy-to-implement interfaces for orders and results, thereby creating comprehensive solutions for a wide range of services,” adds Sascha Dohmke. This is relevant both in the context of authorities as well as in terms of requirements and inspection data for vehicle testing and the provision of result data to customers.
According to the DEKRA expert, the expected high complexity in data exchange in the mobility sector poses numerous challenges. Sascha Dohmke considers a powerful and secure identity management system, the highest possible standardization of data transmission, data certification, and an intermediary that manages approvals, billing, and usage restrictions, to be indispensable. All of these challenges need to be addressed promptly.

Mobility Data Space

Mobility Data Space
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