A Data Space, Not a Data Silo: How FEDORA Rethinks Mobility Data Sharing
The FEDORA Data Space was developed as part of FEDORA Deliverable D3.1 – Integrated Cross-Sectoral Data Space.
Sharing mobility data across organisations has traditionally meant one of two unsatisfying choices: pool everything into a single central repository and lose control over it, or keep everything locked in separate silos and lose the ability to collaborate. Neither works well for a sector like mobility, where traffic authorities, transport operators, research institutes and cities all hold pieces of the puzzle — but none of them wants to hand their data over to someone else’s server.
The FEDORA Data Space is built around a different idea: a “data space.” Rather than a central database, it’s an interoperable framework — common governance rules, shared standards, and a set of enabling services — that lets organisations exchange data directly with each other while each one keeps full control, or sovereignty, over its own data. Data physically stays with its owner until a trusted partner requests it and agrees to the owner’s usage terms; nothing is copied into a central pool by default.
Architecturally, FEDORA’s Data Space follows the International Data Spaces Reference Architecture Model (IDS-RAM), chosen for its mature, connector-based approach to secure exchange and its growing adoption across other European mobility data space initiatives. In practice, this means every participating organisation runs its own “Dataspace Connector” — a piece of software that handles publishing data offers, negotiating access, and transferring data securely and directly to another participant’s connector. No central authority ever sits in the middle of an actual data transfer.
Interaction of Data Space with other FEDORA Spaces. The Data Space provides input data for the Network Management Services Space and Simulation Space.
Around this core, FEDORA adds four components that work together: a Public Catalogue so anyone can discover what data exists without needing to know who holds it; a Smart Data Contracts Module, a blockchain-based ledger that records every data transaction in a tamper-proof, verifiable way; and a Mobility Data Harmonisation, Enrichment and Synthetisation Engine, which transforms raw, inconsistent datasets from different sources into a common, higher-quality format. Only the catalogue is centrally hosted — everything involving the actual movement of data is deliberately decentralised, once per participant.
The result is a system designed around seven concrete objectives:
- a public entry point for discovery,
- secure and encrypted data transfer,
- common data formats,
- interoperability with other data spaces,
- robust identity and access management,
- machine-readable contracts with full traceability,
- built-in data quality improvement.
The FEDORA Data Space is currently being rolled out across FEDORA’s project partners, ahead of a wider pilot phase across six European demonstration sites — from Vienna to Nicosia — each testing how the data space performs in real, operational conditions.
It’s infrastructure most people will never see directly — but it’s what will let a transport authority in one country responsibly share real, useful mobility data with a research team in another, without either side losing control of what they own