COMET – Consumer Empowerment and Participation in the Smart Living Domain

Challenge and innovation

Users already record their data in a large number of applications and services in connection with smart living. They are currently primarily available to them and large manufacturers of smart living products and cannot be fully and responsibly exploited due to a lack of connectivity and trust regarding the use of their data. This monopolization of smart living data means that SMEs in Germany and Europe in particular are at a competitive disadvantage, as the lack of data makes it difficult for them to develop new AI-based services to solve pressing challenges such as the increasing demand for resources and energy. The COMET project aims to use the COMET Connect and COMET Personal Data Market modules to give users more control as data owners and thus also give companies access to high-quality data for AI-based innovations. COMET is intended to enable private end users to participate initially in the SmartLivingNEXT Dataspace and thus increase its attractiveness and scope.

With the help of COMET Connect, users can share data for the SmartLivingNEXT ecosystem (in whole or in part). COMET Connect ensures that the individual data formats of the manufacturer data are provided interoperably, thereby ensuring greater data availability. It is used to integrate a wide variety of applications and applications across manufacturer boundaries and thus represents the interface to users of various applications for the SmartLivingNEXT ecosystem.

In addition to integrating existing applications regardless of the manufacturer, COMET is also developing its own crowdsourcing app. It creates an innovative solution that enables users to provide their data in the area of smart living while maintaining transparency and control over its use. The app enables users to enter data from their home manually and make this data available to the data ecosystem on a voluntary basis. The combination of consumption data and self-reported data creates labeled data that is of great importance for the development of AI-based services.

The COMET Personal Data Market is a transparent and innovative solution in which users retain control over their own data and can decide for themselves with whom they want to share their data (data ownership). Through various services such as The Data Catalogue, a Consent Registry or a Data Quality Computation Service enable consumers to collect, manage and provide their data in a targeted manner. At the same time, the services ensure adequate quality and ease of processing for ecosystem participants.

Application and benefits

COMET Connect and the COMET Personal Data Market will be developed in close cooperation with the
ForeSightNEXT flagship project further developed and established. The basis for this is the
ForeSightNEXT flagship project can be used both technically and conceptually. First, the systems of the application partners are connected. It is already possible to connect the flagship project as well as the satellites and participating companies during the project phase. As part of the project, but also beyond its duration, COMET Connect and thus also the COMET Personal Data Market will be made available to other companies in the SmartLivingNEXT ecosystem, so that the overall goal of a more attractive data space can be pursued.

Before	Afterwards
Data from smart living manufacturers is not widely available to SMEs and cannot be used by service application developers.	The COMET Personal Data Market provides the interface to developers. This is used to provide data. Service applications (e.g. a consumption overview) can be developed.
Consumers have not yet received any added value for providing their data.	By developing intelligent services, consumers receive something in return for providing their data, in particular in the form of the statistics service to be developed.
No or little transparency for consumers.	The COMET Data Usage Analyzer enables traceable data release. The COMET Consent Registry ensures the data sovereignty of consumers.
Data in different formats makes reusability more difficult.	Data in the SmartLivingNEXT ecosystem is interoperable and can be used across manufacturers to develop services.
The smart living ecosystem still has little data to begin with.	COMET provides the SmartLivingNEXT ecosystem with data from real operations during the project. This provides impetus for the revitalization of the ecosystem.