"Processing and analysis of digital traces of market entities"

The TRACE project, a research cooperation between the VLBA department and Volkswagen AG, researches the discipline of data science with a special focus on analytical methods for combining independent market data.

The main objective of the project is to develop a data-based view of the business environment and markets. For example data sources on procurement and financial markets should be explored to achieve this goal. The explored data sources will be used to conceptualize data-centric market entities and market models. The explored data sources are checked for semantic, structural and technical heterogeneity.

To overcome the challenges of semantic, structural and technical heterogeneity, concepts, methods, techniques and procedures of data science should be used. For example, record linkage methods that identify records that represent the same real world object. Within the scope of the project, a system with algorithms is to be conceived, prototyped and evaluated that enables a data-based view of the company environment and markets.

Approach:

- Identification of relevant data sources on procurement and financial markets

- Development of a data portfolio that reflects market conditions

- Conception of an analytical procedure to connect relevant data sets

- Technical realization and demonstration of the developed concept

- Evaluation step to evaluate the quality of the developed process