September 6, 2024
One solution for sharing data between different organizations is to establish a data trustee: a a neutral, trustworthy data intermediary between data providers and data recipients. Der Datentreuhänder kümmert sich um Themen wie Datenaufbereitung, Datensicherheit, Datenservices und die Datensouveränität und schafft somit einen Datenmehrwert für datengebende und datennehmende Organisationen. Doch wie sieht eine solche Lösung konkret aus und welche Vorteile bietet sie?
We are addressing this question in the BuildingTrust (BuTuGe) research project, which we are working on together with the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (Fraunhofer ISST), TU Dortmund University and the Institute for Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IöR) in Dresden. Specifically, it is about the conception and prototypical implementation of a building data trustee. A data trustee mediates data between data providers and data recipients and acts as an intermediary for data processing and security. It represents an independent trusted authority, comparable to a notary, and must not have any vested interest in the data. It is usually an institution that manages and mediates the data via a decentralized technical solution. Bundesdruckerei GmbH, for example, mediates pseudonymized health data between patients and medical research institutions via its data trustee platform.
A data trustee in the building sector can facilitate access to consolidated and up-to-date information, improve decision-making processes and increase efficiency for all stakeholders in the building sector. This in turn contributes to the achievement of climate targets, the creation of living space and the management of energy challenges.
Requirements for a data trustee
The first step of the project was to understand which building data was already available to stakeholders, which was still missing and how this could be brought together on a platform. In addition, initial prototype data products were generated. To this end, interviews were conducted with stakeholders such as owners, tenants, local authorities (e.g. building authorities), municipal companies (e.g. municipal utilities), companies and, in the future, banks and insurance companies in order to identify their requirements for a building data trustee. The initial findings were that there is a fundamental need for such a trustee, but that it must have certain characteristics in order to be used across the board.
There should always be an incentive for stakeholders to share data, which means that every data donor should also be a data recipient and every person or organization that donates data should also receive data required for their individual needs in return. To this end, the project developed a taxonomy that links existing and desired datasets from the building sector with potential data donors and data recipients. Furthermore, it was defined that there should be a digital building file, comparable to the patient file in the healthcare sector, in which the characteristics and properties of buildings are clearly recorded in a database.
What does the digital building file make possible?
Based on the information from the building file, so-called data products can be developed and successively complete the building data trustee. The following data products were identified during interviews, workshops and scientific research and would be technically feasible:
- Energy monitoring, whereby the aggregation of data from municipal heat planning enables monitoring of consumption for tenants as well as optimized and efficient planning for municipal utilities and planning offices
- An aggregator of building data to collect building criteria such as typology, year of construction, condition, need for renovation, type of building and many more for easy analysis of the building stock for planning authorities
- A funding finder that enables owners to quickly and easily find suitable funding programs for their individual building needs
Building on the general building file, many other data products can be developed, such as a pipe database, a refurbishment broker, a building materials register or an overview of past operating costs. The number of possible data products seems unlimited.
However, in order to not just stick to the concept, but also to initiate concrete technical development, the project is currently pushing ahead with the development of two testbeds. The first is the further development of the existing citizen science platform Colouring Dresdena tool that enables citizens to map criteria for buildings in their city themselves. This tool is to be further developed with a focus on the area of energy. In addition, the already developed prototype of a digital energy certificate from the predecessor project KomDaTis will be further developed. This should be quick and easy to apply for digitally in the future. In addition to these two specific technical developments, the DKSR is in discussions with municipal utilities to implement a digital solution for municipal heat planning.
The project will run until end of October 2025. Bis dahin sollen die Datenprodukte weiter ausdefiniert, die Entwicklung der Prototypen weiter vorangetrieben und darunterliegende Betriebs- und Geschäftsmodelle weiter vorangebracht werden. Sollten Sie am Projekt interessiert sein oder Fragen dazu haben, wenden Sie sich gerne direkt an unsere Kollegen David Hick oder Jonas Merbeth.