BuildingTrust

Problem statement

Cities and municipalities are facing a number of challenges today. These include the creation of new living space, the achievement of local authority climate targets, rising energy costs and new legislation which, for example, obliges cities to draw up heat plans. One major challenge here is that the building data required to solve the problem is only available in fragmented form in data silos of different players. Providing the building data is time-consuming, as it is held by various stakeholders, including owners, municipal offices, land registry offices, energy companies, property portals, banks and funding providers. With a data trustee for the building sector, these data silos could be broken up and new data products and services could be created that, for example, provide owners with targeted support when applying for funding for refurbishment measures. With suitable contractual and technical framework conditions, they can enable a smooth exchange of (anonymised and encrypted) data between organisations and citizens. This allows citizens to confidently share data with companies or state institutions and benefit from it. However, the use of these data intermediaries is not a foregone conclusion. The disclosure of data is often associated with concerns for stakeholders and legal issues for state institutions. Accordingly, a building data trustee must have a suitable technical, organisational and legal structure so that it can create a basis of trust as an independent intermediary and have the desired effect.

Goal(s)

The aim of the joint project "BuildingTrust" is to develop a modular data trustee for building data that motivates users to provide, maintain and exchange (personal) data in anonymised form. A self-determined data trustee is intended to generate added value for data providers and data recipients and create trust for sharing data. As part of the project, the use of data trustees is to be tested for various use cases, such as the creation of energy certificates, the donation of energy billing data or digital support for refurbishment applications.

The overarching question of the project is: What aspects motivate stakeholders in the building sector to provide, maintain and exchange anonymised data via a data trustee?

With "Colouring Dresden", the IOER is providing an experimental use case for data trustees in the context of citizen science. With Colouring Dresden, citizens can enter data on buildings via an interactive platform and contribute to research and the sustainable development of the building stock. It is hypothesised that the implementation of data trust models will help to increase citizens' trust in data donation, improve data quality and protect privacy, potentially enabling sustainable use of the collected data for urban development. Within the Citizen Science project, data trust models will be tested and analysed to what extent they facilitate the donation of data. In addition, data trust models should help to promote citizens' understanding of data trusteeship and acceptance of the value of their data.

Approach

The project is divided into the following phases in order to achieve the objectives: Firstly, the co-creative development of the energy tile and the data trust product will take place with various stakeholders from the energy industry, civil society, research and administration. The energy tile is then programmed and implemented. This is followed by a trial in a neighbourhood with accompanying campaigns to promote the use of the tile. The results are analysed before the project ends with a final workshop and a vote of thanks to the participants.

Results

As part of the project, a data trust model for "Colouring Dresden" will be co-creatively developed and tested. The code, data, documentation and publications created in this context will be made available via the IOER-FDZ Open Access. The research and development of incentive systems for the use of data trustee models is at the core of the project and is intended to minimise the barriers to the use of data trustees in the building context. By testing the data trustee models and abstracting the findings, the research network is expected to make a significant contribution to the theory and practice of data trustee models and citizen science.