Data Spaces for Smart Cities

Project description

Smart cities increasingly rely on data exchange between municipalities, companies, and infrastructure providers. Today’s solutions often depend on centralized platforms, which create risks around trust, privacy, and data control. There is still no clear, practical model for identity management and fine-grained access control in a decentralized Data Space. The client therefore seeks clarity on how standards and tools can be combined to build a trustworthy environment.

The goal of this project is to give the client a clear understanding of how identity management, authorization, and verifiable credentials can be applied in a Data Space, supported by a working Proof of Concept based on the Inzicht Verlicht scenario.

Context

This project is part of Europe’s ambition to build decentralized Smart City Data Spaces. These spaces let organizations share data securely while staying in full control of their information. The background is the growing need for reliable digital infrastructure that avoids vendor lock-in and supports European privacy and security values. The goal is to research, design, and show how identity management, authorization, and verifiable credentials can make such a Data Space possible.

Results

• Research documents about dataspaces in smart cities, tools and access management standards that are likely to be used.
• Test plan, for implementation of our solution.
• A working Proof of Concept that is validated and tested for access management, policies and user attributes.
• Project research report, where all of our work is clearly documented for the client to be used in the future.

About the project group

Our group exists of 4 software students (Niels, Stijn, Lukas and Jasper) and 1 infrastructure student (Rik). We ended up together as a group through this project for the Advanced Cyber Security semester.