Is it necessary to buy these sensors and "connect" them to the platform in order to participate in the project? Are there any simpler options?
Many will benefit from this project, not just sensor owners:
Sensor owners
Are able to monetize their data and turn a sunk cost into a potential money maker and at least the opportunity to recoup some of their investments in IoT sensors. The key role of Sensor Owners in DataBroker DAO is to sell the data from their sensors on the platform.
Network operators
Gain scale and speed in the adoption of their network as connected telcos can present a win-back to their enterprise accounts, a clear USP. The key role of Network Operators in DataBroker DAO is to expose the gateway they operate to enable sensor owners to sell their data on the platform.
Sensor manufacturers
Can stop the "race to the bottom” for production and pull resources and capital out of manufacturing and allocate these to profitable SaaS offerings.
Smart city initiatives
Can limit the upfront cost of populating the town with sufficient sensors and turn the expense into an investment with a 2-3 year payback period and a continuous income stream after that.
Agricultural sector
In the Agricultural sector in Belgium today, 10% of farmers are "techie". They deploy sensors include for wind, temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, PH level in the soil. The platform will provide the possibility to recoup some of this cost.
Academics
Can get access to thousands of sensors and can buy data directly and more cheap on the marketplace, cutting out established data providers.
Data Buyers
Data Buyers are those stakeholders who will purchase data on the platform. The scope of this purchase could be to use the data in its raw form, for their own purposes, or to transform/enrich the raw data to be resold with added value via DataBroker DAO (see Data Processor below). The use of the data purchased by Data Buyers can be quite straightforward, for instance purchasing temperature and rainfall data provisioned by a neighboring office building to get accurate local readings, to the more complex, like purchasing data to train one’s AI.
Data Processors
Data Processors are those Data Buyers who purchase data with the explicit intention of enriching the data and either reselling it or handling it for their clients. The enrichment may take many forms and Data Processors can be categorized by the level of insight provided: • Simple data services are the most common. Data brokers collect data from multiple sources and offer it in collected and conditioned form — data which would otherwise be fragmented, conflicted, and sometimes unreliable. • Smart data services provide conditioned and calculated data, with analytical rules and calculations applied to derive further insight from the collected data and aid the decision making process. • Adaptive data services apply analysis to a customer’s request-specific data, combined with data in a context store. This is a more advanced form of service. It is estimated that there are more than 5,000 data processing companies worldwide relying on a vast array of open datasets, published by government agencies and non-governmental sources.
