The digital transformation strongly affects the agricultural domain. Still, there is a lot of potential for optimization in many work and business processes. In the current agricultural digital ecosystem, numerous isolated, often non-interoperable solutions exist. In this chapter, we motivate the need and added value of an “Agricultural Data Space” (ADS for short). We outline an ADS concept, which resulted mainly from the Fraunhofer lighthouse project “Cognitive Agriculture” (COGNAC) and describe the necessary prerequisites and technical solution approaches. Complemented by the possibilities of a transparent and open marketplace for data, digital products, and software services, such a data space would address many of the existing obstacles to widespread acceptance and take-up of digital technologies. Overall, an ADS as part of an extended digital ecosystem will significantly advance digitalization in agriculture. In the end, we provide application scenarios for which an agricultural data space can add value.
Agriculture is one of the major sectors of the global economy and also a software-intensive domain. The digital landscape of agriculture is composed of multiple digital ecosystems, which together constitute an agricultural domain ecosystem, also referred to as the “Agricultural Data Space’’ (ADS). As the domain is so huge, there are several sub-domains and specialized solutions, and each of them poses challenges to interoperability. Additionally, farmers have increasing concerns about data sovereignty. In the context of the research project COGNAC, we elicited architecture drivers for interoperability and data sovereignty in agriculture and designed a reference architecture of a platform that aims to address these qualities in the ADS. In this paper, we present the solution concepts and design decisions that characterize the reference architecture. Early prototypes have been developed and made available to support the validation of the concept.
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