A Reference Architecture for Enabling Interoperability and Data Sovereignty in the Agricultural Data Space

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• digital ecosystem
• reference architecture
• smart farming
• digital farming
• architecture drivers
• design decisions