In the upcoming months the Interoperability Test Bed will be supporting innovation and conformance testing of digital identity wallets for air travel and mobility within the EU.

In December 2022, iLabs, an official partner of the Airport Technology Lab of the Rotterdam The Hague Innovation Airport, began discussions with the Interoperability Test Bed to collaborate on interoperability testing for sustainable, safe, and seamless air travel. The goal is to provide an open-source and standards-based online platform used for piloting, test events and hackathons. It shall be leveraged to facilitate the development of state-of-the-art biometrics and digital identity wallets, including wallet onboarding, selective disclosure of data, and verification of credentials. The underlying principle is ensuring travellers’ data privacy, placing people in control of their own data.

The overall project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), with iLabs supporting the Airport Technology Lab on three work packages for remote luggage check-in pilots (WP 2.4), multi-level knowledge co-creation (WP 3.1), and knowledge dissemination (WP 3.3). This work involves several collaborations within academia (TU Delft, MBORijnland) and the private sector (Bagchain, ATL partners).

In parallel to this work, iLabs has been supporting the OpenWallet Foundation, extending the concept of digital wallets used for air travel, for more general use cases. The goal here was the development of open source building blocks for safe, secure and interoperable digital identity wallets, while reaching out to stakeholders for feedback on what a Test Bed for identity wallets should support. Complementing this work, iLabs also analysed the European Digital Identity Wallet Architecture and Reference Framework using the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA), producing architecture models for its strategic and technical perspectives.

The collaboration with the Interoperability Test Bed began with a successful proof-of-concept completed in January 2023, implementing initial test scenarios linked to the use of digital wallets for airport check-in and baggage control. The Test Bed was used to simulate passengers as information providers, while testing wallet backend implementations as information receivers.

The proof-of-concept's initial test cases validate the exchanges made from airport check-in kiosks when passengers add boarding passes to their wallets or check in baggage items. Both normal and error flows are verified, ensuring that exchanged data is correct, sequences of actions are as expected, and the overall message conversation is consistent with each scenario's expectations.

In the coming months, iLabs will be extending the initial testing setup with further modules, test cases and conformance statements that increase the test coverage of air travel processes involving digital wallets. In addition, more general digital wallet use cases in tourism, mobility and aviation are also planned to be addressed such as the interoperability of Mobile Driving Licences (mDL). A first successful interoperability testing event on this was organised by iLabs in October 2021, which is planned to be followed up in June 2023 by a two-day hackathon event that will be supported this time by the Interoperability Test Bed.

The upcoming hackathon event, is not the first time the Test Bed is used to support such collaborative testing activities. In September 2022, it was successfully used in the eHealth domain to support IHE Europe’s latest Connectathon, whereas it will also be supporting the Once-Only Technical System (OOTS), starting with its first Projectathon during April 2023. If you are new to the Test Bed as a whole, general details can be found in its Joinup space with its value proposition being a good starting point for newcomers. Finally, if you are interested in receiving the Test Bed’s news, apart from subscribing to notifications, you may also follow the Interoperable Europe’s social media channels (Twitter, LinkedIn) for updates on the Test Bed and other interoperability solutions.