Interoperability is key in digital twins where a plethora of Earth observation data sets, models and auxiliary data will be combined. In this webinar, we will be Introducing interoperability across the various steps from data collection to sharing of final products or applications. The Iliad digital twin of the ocean with its many components will be used as examples for the concepts, starting with examples from GAIA-X and seen from an industry data perspective.
Agenda
- Overview of interoperability concepts in the Iliad (Piotr Zaborowski, OGC)
- Interoperability in GAIA-X (Hauke Ernst – GAIA-X Germany/Airbus)
- Discovering and sharing industry data – an interoperability perspective (Matthew Whaley, HubOcean)
- Discussion
Interoperability and Iliad
Piotr Zaborowski (OGC) will present a short overview of interoperability concepts in Iliad in general. A special focus will be on links with the GAIA-X federated system as well as the implementation of GAIA-X by the Iliad project.
What is GAIA-X?
Gaia-X aims to create a federated open data infrastructure based on European values regarding data and cloud sovereignty. The mission of Gaia-X is to design and implement a data-sharing architecture that consists of common standards for data sharing, best practices, tools, and governance mechanisms. It also constitutes an EU-anchored federation of cloud infrastructure and data services, to which all 27 EU member states have committed themselves. Hauke Ernst (GAIA-X Germany, COOPERANTS) will introduce us to one of the GAIA-X projects from Germany and how they implement the interoperability pre- and post-publishing of the Architecture Document guiding document.
For the success of a Federated Ecosystem, it is of important that data, services and the underlying infrastructure can interact seamlessly with each other. Therefore, portability and interoperability are two key requirements for the success of Gaia-X as they are the cornerstones for a working platform and ensure a fully functional federated, multi-provider environment.
What do we mean by interoperability?
Interoperability is defined as the ability of several systems or services to exchange information and to use the exchanged information mutually. Portability refers to the enablement of data transfer and processing to increase the usefulness of data as a strategic resource. For services, portability implies that they can be migrated from one provider to another, while the migration should be possible without significant changes and adaptations and have an equivalent QoS (Quality of Service).
The Gaia-X Ecosystem includes a huge variety of Participants and Service Offerings. Therefore, interoperability needs to be ensured on different levels (Infrastructure as a Service [IaaS], Platform as a Service [PaaS], Software as a Service [Saas], data resources, and others) by means of Service Composition. Matthew Whaley (HubOcean) will introduce the interoperability perspective for industry data querying (discovery and sharing).
Regarding the interoperability of data, core elements to be identified in this endeavour are API specifications and best practices for semantic data descriptions. The use of semantic data interoperability is seen as a foundation to eventually create a clear mapping between domain-specific approaches based on a community process and open-source efforts.