Building Trust in data-driven research

TU Dresden implements broad consent for data use

At the TUD Dresden University of Technology, broad consent has been introduced for the first time outside the medical domain – marking an important milestone toward the sustainable and legally compliant use of personal data in scientific research.

This type of consent gives participants the option to agree to the scientific use of their participation data not only for an individual project, but for a defined research area –under strict ethical, legal and organizational framework conditions. This creates the basis for reusable, trustworthy databases in an increasingly data-driven scientific community.

Broad consent was was piloted in the app-based survey "Cities on the move", which served as the first real-world application beyond the medical context. Participants can record their daily mobility behavior via smartphone app until the end of July 2025 and thus support mobility research.

"If personal data collected in research is made available in the long term under high data protection standards, researchers gain the freedom to use this data to investigate new questions for the benefit of society. Broad consent is a key building block for this - even beyond medical applications. The fact that over 80 percent of participants in the current mobility study have given their consent shows a high level of trust in responsible research," explains Jens Syckor, Data Protection Officer at TU Dresden.

The development and implementation of the broad consent procedure were guided by an interdisciplinary team right from the start: In addition the university’s Information Security Unit (including the Data Protection Officer) and the Independent Trustee Office Medicine, partners included the Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing, the Service Center Research Data, the Chair of Civil Law, Intellectual Property, Media and Data Protection Law, aswell as the Chair of Mobility System Planning. The methodological approach draws on established practices from medical research.

The next step will be to integrate the developed solutions into routine research processes – creating long-term structures for secure, transparent, and future-proof research with personal data.

Use case in practice: securely recording mobility data

The broad consent model was first implemented as part of the smartphone-based study "Cities on the Move", an independent project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within a TUD Research Training Group at the Chair of Mobility System Planning. Thanks to the close cooperation in the BMFTR-funded project DDtrust-scale, this study could serve as a pilot application for the new data governance model. It not only yields valuable insights into mobility behavior, but also demonstrates how trustworthy research data infrastructures can be implemented in practice.

Information about the study: Study Cities on the Move

TUD partners in DDtrust-scale (for the application in the sub-project)

CIDS - Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Sciences
- Service Center Research Data (KSFD)
- Information Security and Data Protection (SCD)
- Center for Information Services and HPC (ZIH)
Institute of International Law, Intellectual Property and Technology Law
Chair of Mobility System Planning
- Independent Trustee Office Medicine 

Contact

Jens Syckor (Data Protection Officer of TUD)
+49 351 463-32839