SOCIETY

Data spaces as a key enabling technology for industry 4.0: the common european data space for cultural heritage and its security architecture

  • 1 University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Croatia

Abstract

The Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage (CHDS), operational since 2023 and coordinated by the Europeana Foundation, represents the most mature and forward-thinking sectoral data space within the EU’s Data Strategy. Hosting over 59 million digitised items, it demonstrates a federated, sovereignty-preserving architecture with an exceptionally advanced security posture designed for 2030 threats already in 2025: zero-trust from day one, post-quantum-ready hybrid cryptography, large-scale privacy-by-design using differential privacy and synthetic data, immutable provenance via Merkle-tree logging, and AI-driven anomaly detection tailored to cultural patterns. This paper shows that CHDS far outperforms most current Industry 4.0 data spaces in AI maturity, cyber-resilience, and responsible data governance. Its production-grade multilingual AI pipelines, federated learning framework, and reusable micro-services offer a directly transferable blueprint for manufacturing, predictive maintenance, digital twins, and secure supply-chain collaboration. Already ranked #1 in AI maturity among all 14 European data spaces by the European Commission (2025), CHDS provides industrial stakeholders with battle-tested solutions they no longer need to develop from scratch, accelerating the creation of trustworthy, future-proof Industry 4.0 ecosystems.

Keywords

References

  1. Europeana Foundation, “Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage – Annual Report 2023-2024,” Europeana PRO, 2024.
  2. Europeana Foundation, “Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage – Annual Report 2022-2023,” Europeana PRO, 2023.
  3. Europeana Foundation, “The Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage,” 2024.
  4. European Commission, “A European strategy for data,” COM(2020) 66 final, Feb. 2020.
  5. European Commission, “Implementation of the 2021 Recommendation on a common European data space for cultural heritage – Progress Report 2021-2023,” Publications Office of the EU, 2024.
  6. Europeana Foundation, “Europeana Business Plan 2024,” Europeana PRO, 2024.
  7. Europeana Foundation, “FAQs – Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage,” Europeana PRO, 2024.
  8. Directive (EU) 2022/2555 (NIS2 Directive), OJ L 333, 27 Dec. 2022.
  9. Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), OJ L 119, 4 May 2016.
  10. Regulation (EU) 2019/881 (EU Cybersecurity Act), OJ L 151, 7 Jun. 2019.
  11. 5Dculture Consortium, “Deploying and demonstrating a 3D cultural heritage reuse space,” Europeana PRO, 2024.
  12. EUreka3D Project, “High-quality 3D dataset production for Europe’s data space for cultural heritage,” 2024.
  13. International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) Consortium, “IIIF and Europeana integration,” 2024.
  14. L. Monostori et al., “Cyber-physical systems in the context of Industry 4.0,” Inf. Syst. Frontiers, vol. 24, pp. 123–145, 2022.
  15. M. Deng et al., “From BIM to digital twins: A systematic review,” J. Inf. Technol. Constr., vol. 26, pp. 58–79, 2021.
  16. European Commission, “European Digital Identity (eIDAS 2.0) and Verifiable Credentials in the Cultural Heritage Cloud,” 2024.
  17. Europeana Foundation & ENISA, “Post-Quantum Cryptography Readiness Roadmap for the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage,” Internal working document, referenced in Annual Report 2023-2024 annex, 2024.
  18. Europeana Tech Task Force on Provenance, “Merkle-Tree Provenance Logging Specification for Europeana,” 2023.
  19. Cultural Heritage Cloud CSIRT, “Threat Intelligence Sharing Framework,” 2024.
  20. Europeana Foundation, “Anomaly Detection and Behavioural Analytics in the Data Space – Technical Report,” 2024.
  21. Cloud Ferro & Consortium, “EUCS-High Certification Report for the European Cultural Heritage Cloud Infrastructure,” 2024.
  22. IDSA & Europeana Foundation, “Federated Learning Reference Architecture for Data Spaces,” Joint White Paper, November 2024.
  23. European Commission, “Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage: 2025 Report,” Publications Office of the EU, 2025

Article full text

Download PDF