The roadmap ensures and guides the development of the ecosystem in distinct phases, each with a primary theme. The three phases, as depicted in Fig. 1, are described below.
Phase I: Establish an Innovation Ecosystem
This phase establishes the ecosystem (governance, i-Spaces, education, enablers) and demonstrate the value of existing technology in high-impact sectors (Lighthouses, technical projects). This phase is focused on laying the foundations necessary to establish a sustainable European data innovation ecosystem.
The key activities of Phase I included:
- Establishing a European network of i-Spaces for cross-sectorial and cross-lingual data integration, experimentation and incubation
- Demonstrating big data value solutions via large-scale pilot projects in domains of strategic importance for EU industry, using existing technologies or very near-to-market technologies.
- Tackling the main technology challenges of the data economy by improving the technology, methods, standards and processes for big data value
- Advancing state-of-the-art in privacy-preserving big data technologies and exploring the societal and ethical implications
- Establishing key ecosystem enablers, including support and coordination structures for industry skills and benchmarking.
Phase II: Disruptive Big Data Value
This phase pioneers disruptive new forms of big data value solutions (Lighthouses and technical projects) in high-impact domains of importance for EU industry, addressing emerging challenges of the data economy. Building on the foundations established in Phase I, the second phase had a primary focus on Research and Innovation (R&I) activities to deliver the next generation of big data value solutions. The key activities of Phase II included:
- Supporting the emergence of the data economy with a particular focus on accelerating the progress of SMEs, start-ups and entrepreneurs, as well as best practices and standardisation.
- Pioneering disruptive new forms of big data value solutions with the Cloud, HPC or IoT technologies via large-scale pilot projects in emerging domains of importance for EU industry using advanced platforms, tools and testbeds
- Tackling the next generation of big data research and innovation challenges for extreme-scale analytics
- Addressing ecosystem roadblocks and inhibitors to the take-up of big data value platforms for data ecosystem viability, including platforms for personal and industrial data
- Providing (continuing) support, facilitating networking and cooperation among ecosystem actors and projects, and promoting community building among BDV, Cloud, HPC and IoT activities.
Phase III: Long-Term Ecosystem Enablers
Develop long-term ecosystem enablers to maximise sustainability for economic and societal benefit, including the establishment of data platforms. While the sustainability of the ecosystem has been considered from the start of the PPP, the third phase had a specific focus on activities that could ensure long-term self-sustainability. The key activities of Phase III included:
- Sowing the seeds for long-term ecosystems enablers to ensure self-sustainability
- Creating innovation projects within a federation of i-Spaces (European Digital Innovation Hubs for Big Data) to validate and incubate innovative big data value solutions and business models
- Ensuring continued support for technology outputs of PPP (Lighthouse projects, R&I, CSA), including non-technical aspects (training and Open Source Community, Technology Foundation)
- Establishing a Foundation for European Innovation Spaces with a charter to continue collaborative innovation activity, in line with the concept of European Digital Innovation Hub for Big Data
- Liaising with private funding (including Venture Capital) to accelerate entry into the market and socio-economic impacts, including the provision of ancillary services to develop investment-ready proposals and support scaling for BDV PPP start-ups and SMEs to reach the market
- Tackling the necessary strategy and planning for the BDV ecosystem until 2030, including the identification of new stakeholders, emerging usage domains, technology, business and policy roadmapping activity.
Excerpt from: Zillner S. et al. (2021) A Roadmap to Drive Adoption of Data Ecosystems. In: Curry E., Metzger A., Zillner S., Pazzaglia JC., García Robles A. (eds) The Elements of Big Data Value. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68176-0_3