Sharing Data Without Losing Control: Exploring Use Cases Across Fisheries, Agriculture and Infrastructure

On 28 May 2026, dotSPACE, together with the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA), Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (I&W), held the first workshop on data and cloud sovereignty in practice at CometLab on NL Space Campus in Noordwijk.

The workshop brought together around 30 participants from government, research, industry, technology organisations, and companies working across Earth observation, AI, digital twins, data spaces and critical infrastructure.

About the Open Data Space Lab

The Open Data Space Lab (ODL) is a sovereign data space environment facilitated by dotSPACE, developed in collaboration with the NVWA and RWS. It is built on GAIA-X principles, a European framework that establishes rules for trusted, interoperable data sharing. ODL allows organisations to share access to data, algorithms and services while retaining full control over their own data. Rather than transferring raw datasets, ODL enables algorithms to travel to where the data is stored, with only the outputs being shared. This approach is particularly relevant for sectors handling sensitive operational or regulatory data.

The workshop included presentations on the GAIA-X framework, the ODL technical architecture, onboarding approaches, and the implications of the AI Act and Data Act for organisations working with shared data infrastructure. The afternoon was organised around three working groups, each built around a specific operational challenge.

Fisheries monitoring

From January 2028, Dutch law will require fisheries to be monitored using onboard video cameras. The data generated — covering vessel activity, species identification and catch composition — is privacy-sensitive and voluminous, making centralised storage and transfer impractical and legally complex.

NVWA currently has limited capacity to process this data at scale using human observers alone. The working group explored how AI models could be deployed directly on vessel servers, analysing footage locally and returning only classification outputs to regulators, rather than raw video. This compute-to-data approach is one of the core capabilities ODL is designed to support.

The group also discussed broader integration challenges: how fisheries monitoring systems can connect with AIS vessel tracking and GNSS positioning data, how the AI Act affects the deployment of automated classification systems in a regulatory context, and what governance structures would allow regulators, vessel operators and technology providers to collaborate without compromising data control.

Potato brown rot and flood detection

Potato brown rot, caused by the bacterium Ralstonia Solanacearum, is a regulated quarantine disease present in Dutch surface water. It spreads primarily through contact between crops and contaminated water, making flooding events a significant risk. The Netherlands processes around 20,000 samples of seed and ware potatoes annually, alongside 1,300 surface water samples.

When large-scale flooding occurs, NVWA needs to determine which fields were affected in order to apply official measures. The current process relies on inspections by official inspectors and drawings submitted by growers, which are then manually digitised. The boundaries drawn are often approximate, and establishing whether flooding on a specific field came from ditch water or rainwater can be difficult after the fact.

The working group explored whether satellite data could be used to identify flooded field areas more precisely, both in the immediate aftermath of a flooding event and retrospectively, for cases where brown rot is discovered in a seed potato lot, and a flooding event is suspected as the source. Questions included how far back satellite archives could reliably support this kind of analysis, and how the approach could extend to storm and tornado events that spread contaminated water across plots.

Beyond the technical questions, the discussion surfaced a deeper challenge. Farmers, trade houses, NVWA and quality control organisations such as NAC all hold relevant data, but currently have no shared infrastructure for combining it. Previous attempts to build joint monitoring tools were led by commercial companies, which created conflicts of interest and eroded trust. The group discussed what a neutral, sovereign platform could look like, combining satellite observations, field sampling data and explainable machine learning models, governed in a way that all parties in the value chain could trust.

Environmental and infrastructure monitoring

The third working group, led by Rijkswaterstaat, covered a broader set of monitoring applications, including dike management, cooling water discharge monitoring and the use of trees as environmental sensors. These use cases share a common challenge: large amounts of data are generated across distributed infrastructure, often by different organisations with different systems, and combining them into a coherent operational picture requires both technical interoperability and clear governance.

The group used a structured canvas to map potential applications, identify the technical building blocks available and surface the gaps that remain. Discussions touched on signed data and transmission protocols, AI-assisted filtering, integration of AI with GIS systems for tracking vessel and infrastructure movement, power consumption constraints relevant to onboard or remote deployments, and off-grid infrastructure approaches currently being explored by the Dutch Navy.

A recurring theme was that the project definition itself needed more work before technical implementation could proceed. EU regulations govern many of these applications, but they cascade through multiple layers of interpretation before reaching operational decisions, and internal alignment between ministries and agencies is a prerequisite for effective implementation.

Sharing the Discussion

Key observations from the workshop were also presented during the NL Space Campus Network & Drinks event on 28 May.

Read more: Open Data Space Lab, Defence Events, Young Professionals and New Connections at Network & Drinks

Next steps

A follow-up workshop is planned for after the summer. Details will be announced on the Groundstation.space events calendar. To stay informed about upcoming workshops and developments, we invite you to subscribe to our newsletter.