PISTIS stands for Promoting and Incentivising Federated, Trusted, Fair Sharing and Trading of Interoperable Data Assets and aims to create incentives for companies and public institutions to share their data assets with each other – in a controlled secure and fair way. For this purpose, the 31 European project partners from eleven countries are developing a reference platform as an infrastructure for sharing, federated exchange and trading, and monetization of interoperable data sets. Fraunhofer FOKUS is leading and coordinating the project, which runs until June 2026.

“Data sharing still poses significant challenges for organizations,” explains project leader Yury Glikman of Fraunhofer FOKUS. “PISTIS lays the groundwork for trustworthy, fair, and reliable data exchange and trading across organizational and data space boundaries.”

PISTIS enables secure data transfer and will provide data-related services as a modular environment that participating organizations can use to complement their own services – together with other actors. Only the associated metadata will be found in global data catalogs to enable users to search for desired data. This creates an ecosystem of existing and new data spaces that eliminates data silos

Fraunhofer FOKUS is designing and developing the PISTIS data spaces and trusted data management services. In particular, it is responsible for the development of the data catalog. This catalog is based on PIVEAU, a software developed by Fraunhofer FOKUS for data preparation, integration, publication and cataloging. The goal is a PIVEAU-based data catalog, which the FOKUS team intends to prepare on the Gaia-X specification. Gaia-X is a project to build a high-performance, competitive, secure and trustworthy data infrastructure for Europe. Thanks to its open interfaces and standardized components, PISTIS is compatible with other data infrastructures such as Gaia-X.

“We are developing technologies for managing data assets that ensure interoperability and quality as well as data security. In doing so, we also take our cue from existing data infrastructure initiatives – after all, we don't want to create an isolated solution. With tools for valuing and monetizing data, we also want to offer data providers the opportunity to exploit the full potential of their data,” says Yury Glikman.

PISTIS will be tested under real-world conditions in three large-scale virtual demonstration hubs in the form of digital demo services: In the “Mobility and Urban Planning” demonstration hub in Athens, stakeholders from aviation, public transport and public administration will share their data – to improve processes for aircraft handling, passenger transfers or commuting between the city and the airport. In Spain, players from the energy sector are working to solve bottlenecks in distribution networks. In the “Automobility” demonstration hub in Germany and Austria, data-driven solutions and services will contribute to environmentally friendly and efficient transportation – from urban emission models to operational mobility management.