Fostering interoperability in agricultural data spaces: A DIVINE use case

The establishment of a "Common European Agricultural Data Space" is among the European Commission’s key priorities within the agricultural domain, aligning with the directives set forth in the recent European Strategy for Data. A core objective includes the creation of a single data market in which anyone can circulate freely and utilize data within the EU and across domains, fostering benefits for all stakeholders. Various frameworks and methodologies have already been implemented to monitor both public and private agricultural data aiming to overcome challenges caused by the complexity of large-scale data management. However, a critical gap still exists in the form of insufficient tools, models, and even policies to facilitate the seamless, transparent, and secure interoperability of agricultural data infrastructures that largely remain siloed. Despite efforts to facilitate, significant challenges persist at all aspects of interoperability. From a technological perspective, the highly fragmented and heterogeneous nature of current systems, coupled with the absence of widely adopted standardized solutions, constitutes a major obstacle. The present paper describes the DIVINE approach and the models and protocols to facilitate technical interoperability in the agricultural sector and the respective results are to be integrated into the DIVINE Agriculture Data Spaces Ecosystem (ADSE), which will enable seamless and secure data exchange services across heterogeneous systems and formats with different data models.