Spinning off the ERTICO’s focus on Urban Mobility and Clean & Eco-Mobility, the MaaS Alliance integrates different forms of transport and mobility-related services into a single, comprehensive, and on-demand mobility service. Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) offers end-users the added value of accessing mobility through a single application and a single payment channel. Recently, one of the third Working Groups of the MaaS Alliance published a White Paper on Mobility Data Spaces and MaaS. In its previous publication (MaaS Market Playbook), the MaaS Alliance advocate for ‘advanced data sharing models and incentive schemes’, which naturally lead to Mobility Data Spaces. Mobility Data Spaces can be seen as the potential answer to support the development of fair and trusted data-sharing models and incentives. In the long run, they should enable the roll-out of sustainable MaaS and the development of the market with potential solutions to the challenges of setting up MaaS services:
- Interoperability of systems (data, protocols, connectivity);
- Agreements of implementation (governance, legal);
- Terms of business (financial, subsidies).
The core objectives of Mobility Data Spaces are to support the uptake and wider usage of shared mobility means (intermodal or multimodal) by establishing a trusted technical environment for data usage between multiple stakeholders. Their minimal mandatory features are; Access to the data; Sharing the data between two parties; Adding value to the data.
The data exchange and trust setting are created via a set of APIs that provide authentication and authorisation. First, the API caller initiates a connection through a Connector API with the Data Space. Then, the connection with the actual API provider, also with Connector API.
Datasets within the same Mobility Data Space should also be expressed in any data standard that is relevant to the parties sharing and working on these datasets. The MaaS Alliance recommends ensuring that data standards are interoperable and mapped toward more aligned data models for better consistency. The best practice is to set and use reference semantics such as Transmodel as the widest data model for mobility.
Access the MaaS Alliance’s White Paper here.
The MaaS Alliance is a public-private partnership working to establish the foundations for building a common approach to MaaS and unlocking the economies of scale needed to support the successful implementation and uptake of MaaS globally. The MaaS Alliance’s vision is to facilitate an open MaaS ecosystem that benefits users, societies, and the environment. To reach this goal, the Alliance brings together stakeholders from all sectors to enable the successful deployment of MaaS around the world.
