The adoption of a new product, service or process by an end user is highly conditioned on the level of trust she or he grants to it. Serving as a true lever, the concept of trust is very important for the economy (for example, within conformity assessment activities) but is also crucial in the context of research and innovation. Although these activities do not primarily target end users, the consideration of trust remains necessary in order achieve reliable and high-quality results.

In the framework of the National Standardization Strategy 2020-2030, ILNAS and University of Luxembourg – through the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) – decided to explore the problematics of trustworthiness related to the domains of the PhD students involved in the research program  « Technical Standardisation for Trustworthy ICT, Aerospace, and Construction » (2021-2024).

The outcomes of these activities have been published in a new white paper « Trustworthiness in ICT, Aerospace, and Construction applications – Scientific Research and Technical Standardization » which provides a global view of the support brought by standards to trustworthiness concerns faced by the three PhD students in the context of the research program, and covering respectively the three key sectors: Information and Communication Technologies, Construction and Aerospace.

The document is structured in three parts. The first chapter concentrates on the tight links existing between trustworthiness, research and standardization. A definition of trustworthiness is also given in this section, based on the technical specification ISO/IEC TS 5723:2022 – Trustworthiness – Vocabulary which presents the trustworthiness concept via its inherent characteristics and defines each of them.

The standardization landscape at international, European and national level is depicted in the second chapter, which additionally introduces the technical committees related to the related application fields.

Then, the third chapter presents the outcomes of the research activities conducted on the main topic of trustworthiness, and covers specifically three use cases:

• Trustworthiness in problematics related to satellite image mosaic creation ;
• Trustworthiness in the context of Building Information Modeling (BIM) ;
• Trustworthiness in the frame of nanosatellites swarms using Federated Learning.

A common approach has been followed in order to tackle the subject in an efficient and directed way, especially by linking technical elements of each scenario to the different trustworthiness characteristics, as listed in the second chapter. As a consequence, a list of standards has been issued for each link in order to contribute to their strengthening.

Finally, the conclusion and outlook chapter provides a summary of the outcomes of the activities executed.

The white paper « Trustworthiness in ICT, Aerospace, and Construction applications – Scientific Research and Technical Standardization » is online available at this link. If you have any question or remarks, you can contact ILNAS via normalisation@ilnas.etat.lu.