Engaging Stakeholders for Designing a FAIR Energy Data Management Tool: The Horizon 2020 EnerMaps Project

Energy transition deals with and starts from data and information, which are relevant for decision making and strategy implementation. Several stakeholders who deal with planning, energy management, and policy-making processes need findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) data to solve professional issues. The Horizon 2020 (H2020) EnerMaps project contributes to providing FAIR data management. It aims to improve data availability, data quality, and data management for industry (especially renewable technology industry), energy planners, energy utilities, energy managers, energy consultants, public administration officers operating in the energy sector, policy decision makers, and social innovation experts. We apply a flow of methods to engage stakeholders for designing and operating a data management tool in the energy field—the EnerMaps Data Management Tool (EDMT). The methodologies applied include: stakeholder analysis, social network investigation, and semi-structured interviews to assemble user stories and needs. Far from being obvious, this type of analysis is capable of addressing the needs and challenges in the data sector, proposing an innovative tool. In this case, the main issues emerging are data quality (inclusive data normalization), the acquisition of datasets, and the deep understanding of data tools operation. In contrast, concerning the user needs inquiry, a number of topics emerge, such as the need to access datasets related to energy consumption and production, and several software-related needs, such as the possibility of normalizing and harmonizing the data.