Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DOME 4.0 (Digital Open Marketplace Ecosystem 4.0)
Berichtszeitraum: 2020-12-01 bis 2022-05-31
DOME 4.0 aims to be a robust semantic industrial data ecosystem, that turns heterogeneous datasets into accessible data via a single portal, facilitating their use across several industrial sectors to boost common intelligence. DOME 4.0 will deliver a multisided and secure marketplace, open to everyone, and that facilitates trusted transactions for data providers, data consumers and service providers. The DOME 4.0 ecosystem will provide a solution to information systems’ incompatibility and silo problems with the help of ontology-based semantic data interoperability and modern data processing technologies. Furthermore, the proposed semantic architecture of DOME 4.0 will be flexible, so that it can absorb emerging technology developments and the scale-up of the ecosystem to data, tools and services applicable to wider sectors of the European economy.
DOME 4.0 is unique in two ways. Primarily, it opens a wider market, and engages more stakeholders. The DOME 4.0 ecosystem will aggregate a critical mass that individual marketplaces have not been in a position to achieve by themselves. In parallel, the DOME 4.0 enables novel business models and adds value to the individual marketplaces, data repositories and platforms by complementing them with transparent and fair compensation schemes, thus improving their operations and effectiveness. Concretely, the DOME 4.0 goals are twofold. Firstly, to develop the core technology including platform, ontologies and interfaces with other marketplaces and data spaces. Secondly, to develop the services to connect the data providers with the data consumers to help demonstrate nine business-to-business (B2B) showcases in the materials and manufacturing domains.
DOME 4.0 is unique in two ways. Primarily, it opens a wider market, and engages more stakeholders. The DOME 4.0 ecosystem will aggregate a critical mass that individual marketplaces have not been in a position to achieve by themselves. In parallel, the DOME 4.0 enables novel business models and adds value to the individual marketplaces, data repositories and platforms by complementing them with transparent and fair compensation schemes, thus improving their operations and effectiveness. Concretely, the DOME 4.0 goals are twofold. Firstly, to develop the core technology including platform, ontologies and interfaces with other marketplaces and data spaces. Secondly, to develop the services to connect the data providers with the data consumers to help demonstrate nine business-to-business (B2B) showcases in the materials and manufacturing domains.
The overall architecture of DOME 4.0 has been designed together with the essential user stories template used to analyse the showcases. A lean agile development approach was used to include only the must-have design features in the first step, which helped to focus the developments on core technology and to deliver a running, publicly accessible prototype. Another unique aspect involves the web platform implementation based on semantic representation (e.g. EMMO), thus ensuring that ontologies are at the core of the development process.
DOME 4.0 is a particularly complex platform, involving several technical components that need to work together to achieve a common goal. By relying on agile development and adopting partial code implementations, the core back-end tools and services have been developed that form the backbone of the DOME 4.0 platform. This includes tools to assess the FAIRness of datasets (i.e. Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability), track the provenance of data, record transactions, and provide data analysis and manipulation tools (including links to external modelling tools) with a view to add value to the datasets that DOME 4.0 creates access to. A key piece of innovation has been our implementation of blockchain technology to explore features such as provenance and clearing house services. While this technology is still under review, it does open the door to certain use cases that would not be feasible otherwise. The development so far was driven principally by elucidating requirements from showcases and distilling these into actionable development items that are assigned to team members.
The semantic data exchange ontology in DOME 4.0 is driving the state of the art forward by introducing an ontology-based semantic description of datasets based on (and respecting) existing vocabularies such as DCAT/DCTERM to (a) reuse existing metadata, (b) respect methodologies currently used by communities and (c) propose an incremental semantic improvement to avoid alienating existing communities. This ontology combines semantic and syntactic description of datasets making use of mereology to describe the structure of the dataset and the semantic meaning of each section. An OntoCommons-ready ontology was developed in DOME 4.0 for the semantic description of datasets that can be aligned with EMMO, BFO and DOLCE top-level ontologies within the OntoCommons ecosystem.
Regarding the nine (9) B2B showcases, the main focus in the first 18 months of the project has been on collecting data requirements, meta data, data acquisition and curation as well as preliminary execution of these showcases without depending upon the technology readiness level (TRL) progression of the DOME 4.0 technical platform. Every showcase has been systematically categorised into data inputs and data outputs and the showcase owners have been consulted to populate this information, often in an iterative manner.
DOME 4.0 is a particularly complex platform, involving several technical components that need to work together to achieve a common goal. By relying on agile development and adopting partial code implementations, the core back-end tools and services have been developed that form the backbone of the DOME 4.0 platform. This includes tools to assess the FAIRness of datasets (i.e. Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability), track the provenance of data, record transactions, and provide data analysis and manipulation tools (including links to external modelling tools) with a view to add value to the datasets that DOME 4.0 creates access to. A key piece of innovation has been our implementation of blockchain technology to explore features such as provenance and clearing house services. While this technology is still under review, it does open the door to certain use cases that would not be feasible otherwise. The development so far was driven principally by elucidating requirements from showcases and distilling these into actionable development items that are assigned to team members.
The semantic data exchange ontology in DOME 4.0 is driving the state of the art forward by introducing an ontology-based semantic description of datasets based on (and respecting) existing vocabularies such as DCAT/DCTERM to (a) reuse existing metadata, (b) respect methodologies currently used by communities and (c) propose an incremental semantic improvement to avoid alienating existing communities. This ontology combines semantic and syntactic description of datasets making use of mereology to describe the structure of the dataset and the semantic meaning of each section. An OntoCommons-ready ontology was developed in DOME 4.0 for the semantic description of datasets that can be aligned with EMMO, BFO and DOLCE top-level ontologies within the OntoCommons ecosystem.
Regarding the nine (9) B2B showcases, the main focus in the first 18 months of the project has been on collecting data requirements, meta data, data acquisition and curation as well as preliminary execution of these showcases without depending upon the technology readiness level (TRL) progression of the DOME 4.0 technical platform. Every showcase has been systematically categorised into data inputs and data outputs and the showcase owners have been consulted to populate this information, often in an iterative manner.
One example of a step beyond the state-of-the-art, is the implementation of a software platform based on semantic knowledge representation using ontologies, for example, EMMO, which is first-of-its-kind.
Regarding the potential impact, the cooperation with non-DOME 4.0 initiatives was focused on engaging with OntoCommons CSA, DG-RTD and DG-CNECT projects as well as other relevant initiatieves. Regular online meetings have been conducted with OntoCommons; and DOME 4.0 participated in workshops organised by the OntoCommons CSA.Throughout the discussions with other initiatives, other technical, dissemination and cooperation opportunities were identified, and as and when appropriate, further next steps were planned for. DOME 4.0 has also been represented in more than a dozen dissemination events organised by these relevant initiatives.
Regarding communication and dissemination, the project website and social media communication channels have been set up and gaining attraction already. Two newsletters have been sent out, and one peer-review scientific article and five conference proceedings have been published.
Finally, in terms of business exploitation, B2B showcases were targeted first and business canvases have been developed via one-to-one discussions and project-wide workshops. The partners’ plans are diverse, which is expected given the varied nature of their activities ranging from Academia to RTOs, and businesses of different sizes. Despite this diversity, commonalities have been found between all the showcases, and a sustainability plan was built, to be further elaborated with specifics of showcases once the plan takes shape. Through the disussions, potential value of the DOME 4.0 for these showcases and the value of showcases for DOME 4.0 is also elaborated, and will be covered in business architecture and sustainability plans for the project which is currently ongoing.
Regarding the potential impact, the cooperation with non-DOME 4.0 initiatives was focused on engaging with OntoCommons CSA, DG-RTD and DG-CNECT projects as well as other relevant initiatieves. Regular online meetings have been conducted with OntoCommons; and DOME 4.0 participated in workshops organised by the OntoCommons CSA.Throughout the discussions with other initiatives, other technical, dissemination and cooperation opportunities were identified, and as and when appropriate, further next steps were planned for. DOME 4.0 has also been represented in more than a dozen dissemination events organised by these relevant initiatives.
Regarding communication and dissemination, the project website and social media communication channels have been set up and gaining attraction already. Two newsletters have been sent out, and one peer-review scientific article and five conference proceedings have been published.
Finally, in terms of business exploitation, B2B showcases were targeted first and business canvases have been developed via one-to-one discussions and project-wide workshops. The partners’ plans are diverse, which is expected given the varied nature of their activities ranging from Academia to RTOs, and businesses of different sizes. Despite this diversity, commonalities have been found between all the showcases, and a sustainability plan was built, to be further elaborated with specifics of showcases once the plan takes shape. Through the disussions, potential value of the DOME 4.0 for these showcases and the value of showcases for DOME 4.0 is also elaborated, and will be covered in business architecture and sustainability plans for the project which is currently ongoing.