The International Data Spaces Information Model - An Ontology for Sovereign Exchange of Digital Content

Sebastian R. Bader, Jaroslav Pullmann, Christian Mader, Sebastian Tramp, Christoph Quix, Andreas W. Müller, Haydar Akyürek, Matthias Böckmann, Benedikt T. Imbusch, Johannes Lipp, Sandra Geisler, Christoph Lange

Abstract: The International Data Spaces initiative (IDS) is building an ecosystem to facilitate data exchange in a secure, trusted, and semantically interoperable way. It aims at providing a basis for smart services and cross-company business processes, while at the same time guaranteeing data owners’ sovereignty over their content. The IDS Information Model is an RDFS/OWL ontology defining the fundamental concepts for describing actors in a data space, their interactions, the resources exchanged by them, and data usage restrictions. After introducing the conceptual model and design of the ontology, we explain its implementation on top of standard ontologies as well as the process for its continuous evolution and quality assurance involving a community driven by industry and research organisations. We demonstrate tools that support generation, validation, and usage of instances of the ontology with the focus on data control and protection in a federated ecosystem.