2021

Vesanen, Teemu; Piira, Kalevi; Lavikka, Rita; Piippo, Jouko; Biström, Henri; Kannari, Lotta

This report focuses on the platform part of WP 2, Platforms and Connectivity in Smart Otaniemi. The connectivity part of the WP 2 has been reported in a separate report. Smart Otaniemi is an innovation ecosystem that connects experts, organisations, technologies and pilot projects. The project focuses on smart energy to promote sustainability and cost-effectiveness. The ecosystem is exploiting and experimenting with new technologies through pilots. In this ecosystem, connectivity and data platforms are one of the key enablers towards service chains across industries enabling large-scale use of renewable energy sources in energy systems, and reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The report describes how the concept of a data platform was further developed in WP 2: first by continuing the implementation of the existing VTT research platform to enable use case trials in Smart Otaniemi and then by starting the planning of a commercial platform. The report begins by discussing data markets in general and how to increase data utilisation in the built environment. After this, the report presents the current VTT research platform in detail, for example, the multiple sources of data collection, services on data and interfaces to other systems. Then, the report presents end-user applications of the VTT research platform. Finally, the report discusses current challenges in digital data sharing and reports requirements for a commercial data platform. The report finds that inter-organisational data sharing takes time and several challenges exist. For example, data sharing often necessitates the implementation of an API infrastructure, which incurs costs. Also, companies still lack use cases and capabilities for using and acquiring data. Lack of common rules for data sharing also slows down the development of success stories for data sharing. The report discusses ten requirements for a commercial platform: Platform owner, data ownership, data availability, data integrity, data’s metadata, data security, obedience to GDPR, data access control, varying performance requirements and data sharing contracts.