Decentralized digital vehicle identities in the highly networked traffic environment
Data-centric solutions for future mobility
Digitalization is creating new developments at a rapid pace – also and especially in the field of mobility. Particular attention is being paid to the safety, reliability and availability of the systems. “GAIA-X 4 Future Mobility” provides the framework for six projects so far that focus on data-centric applications.
The common goal is to develop applications in which close networking of users, service providers, manufacturers and suppliers is particularly important. The individual projects deal with, among other things, intelligent transport infrastructure, the product life cycle or digital twins in connection with automated driving.
“The increasing digitalization of all areas of society opens up completely new opportunities for us. With the construction of GAIA-X, Europe is creating a high-performance and competitive, secure and trustworthy data infrastructure,” says Prof. Dr.-Ing. Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla, Chair of the DLR Executive Board.
“DLR is committed to the field of mobility. The experience gained from 30 years of mobility research, as well as the interdisciplinary approach with the close integration of aerospace, energy and transport research and, in particular, digitalization, create ideal conditions for this.”
Innovative and forward-looking vehicle and mobility technologies, especially automation and networking, are highly dependent on secure, reliable and at the same time flexible data and service structures. Safety-critical systems in particular place high demands on the sovereignty, availability and real-time capability of the underlying digital infrastructure. A comprehensive system that meets this requirement at all times is critical for the introduction of new, digital mobility concepts.
A holistic, transparent system architecture for the exchange of information between providers and customers of mobility applications in road traffic while complying with data protection-relevant aspects is not available today.
Decentralized solutions and the development of essential technology components for this, such as new digital identity concepts in particular, are indispensable because they can prevent closed ecosystems with lock-in effects and high windfall profits by monopolistic platform intermediaries. At the same time, mobility services can be developed on this basis while guaranteeing high data protection and security requirements.
In addition to the technological implementation of decentralized, digital identities in road traffic, the focus of the GAIA-X 4 moveID project is on non-discriminatory access to digital services in a closely networked, European infrastructure with preservation of autonomy with regard to private data and improvement of security and trustworthiness in a future Internet of Things (IoT). This is based on decentralized, platform-independent technologies, such as distributed ledger technologies (DLT), self-sovereign identity (SSI) and decentralized data marketplaces. The use of DLT will enable the GAIA-X framework in its tasks of decentralized data processing, data sovereignty, interoperability both in terms of technical and semantic standards and support future mobility applications. The threatening business models of hyperscalers entering the European market, dominated by asymmetric data and information flows, can thus also be countered with a technology based on European values.
Implementation
The overall goal of moveID is to create a data and service ecosystem in which automated and networked road users are connected to an intelligent transport infrastructure and interact according to the design principles of Gaia-X for mutual added value. As a technical basis for this, the mobility data space of Gaia-X will be made SSI-ready[1] by moveID. This means a completely new, secure and decentralized approach, which on the one hand takes into account the heterogeneity of vehicles and infrastructure and on the other hand challenges the centralistic data hegemony of international internet corporations. The three core objectives of the project are:
Expanding the V2X ecosystem to include decentralised, digital identities.
Enhancing the vehicle as a data hub in exchange with transport infrastructure and the cloud
Embedding in a holistic, Gaia-X compliant concept for the establishment of an interoperable, decentralized mobility data system
