QRONITON – Privacy Preserving Processing of Personal Data (P4D) to Manage the COVID-19 Pandemic and Future Crises

This collaborative, interdisciplinary project addresses the goal of privacy-preserving contact tracing, particularly in work environments, from a technical perspective including law by design and critical design approaches. The project aims to develop a technological framework that allows to identify and develop contact tracing approaches suitable for a range of use cases relevant for individuals that participate in work environments and in public life.

The project aims to identify cases in which additional technological means allow for improvements beyond existing digital tracing approaches such as the French and the German Corona Warning App. In particular, the project investigates possible contact tracing improvements by (1) deploying innovative solutions such as the QR-code-based solution QRONITON developed at TUM, (2) developing solutions that are based on existing infrastructure of modern buildings, such as RFID badges and electronic door opening systems, and (3) developing solutions that involve deployments of additional technologies, e.g. IoT devices. Furthermore, the project sets out to (4) evaluate and contrast user acceptance of different IT-based approaches toward contact tracing and, in particular, (5) describe privacy-issues and other factors that would hinder widespread implementation, as perceived by the applications’ users.

The project results are expected to show relevance beyond the contact tracing for COVID-19. We see important applications in the IoT domain, e.g. for enabling new, privacy-preserving applications.