Privacy Policy

BUDOVA ("Building Ukrainian Domain-Specific, Open Voice & Text Archives") is a research project operated by KNUCA AI Lab at Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture (KNUCA). This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, and protect personal data in connection with our research activities and website.

This policy complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Law of Ukraine "On Personal Data Protection" (No. 2297-VI), and the Law of Ukraine "On Information".

The data controller for personal data processing is:

Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture (KNUCA)
31 Povitryanykh Syl Ave., Kyiv, 03037, Ukraine
Contact: dolhopolov_sy@knuba.edu.ua

Research Participants:

• Voice recordings (speech data from construction-domain discussions)
• Demographic information (age group, gender, professional role)
• Dialect and regional affiliation
• Informed consent records

Website Visitors:

• Technical data (browser type, device type, IP address)
• Usage data (pages visited, interaction patterns)

We do not collect financial information, government identification numbers, or sensitive personal data beyond what is described above.

We process personal data on the following legal grounds:

• Explicit consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR) — for research participants who provide informed consent before data collection
• Legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR) — for website analytics and improving our services
• Legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c) GDPR) — to comply with applicable laws and regulations

Processing is also conducted in accordance with Article 7 of the Law of Ukraine "On Personal Data Protection", which requires the data subject's consent for processing personal data.

We use personal data exclusively for the following purposes:

• Developing open Ukrainian language datasets for AI research
• Training and evaluating automatic speech recognition (ASR) and named entity recognition (NER) models
• Publishing anonymized datasets under the CC-BY 4.0 license
• Scientific publications and conference presentations
• Improving our website and research infrastructure

Currently implemented — what every recording goes through today:

• Pseudonymous speaker IDs — each contributor receives a stable SPK-NNN identifier; no real name appears in the dataset.
• Per-contributor consent gate — speech uploads are blocked until the contributor accepts the CC-BY 4.0 release dialog; consent can be withdrawn at any time.
• Region tag is dialect origin, not location — the region field describes the speaker’s dialect, never where the recording was made.

Roadmap — planned, not yet implemented:

• Voice conversion (x-vector) and pitch shifting so the voice itself is non-identifiable
• Automated PII detection in transcriptions (names, addresses, phone numbers, license plates)
• Manual reviewer pass to verify anonymization on a sample of releases

Until the roadmap items ship, contributors should be aware that audio retains identifiable voice characteristics. Published datasets remove direct identifiers but are not currently voice-anonymized.

Anonymized datasets are published on:

• Hugging Face — primary dataset repository
• Zenodo — archival repository with DOI
• GitHub — code and processing pipelines

We share research data with project partners: Microsoft AI for Good Lab, EPFL (Switzerland), and ETH Zürich (Switzerland). All data sharing is governed by data processing agreements that comply with GDPR requirements.

We do not sell personal data to third parties.

Data may be transferred to countries outside Ukraine and the EU/EEA as part of our research collaboration. We ensure adequate protection through:

• Standard contractual clauses (SCCs) approved by the European Commission
• EU adequacy decisions where applicable (Switzerland)
• Compliance with Chapter V of GDPR

• Research data — retained for the project duration (24 months) plus 5 years for scientific reproducibility, as required by research funding agreements
• Anonymized datasets — retained indefinitely as open research resources
• Website analytics data — retained for 12 months
• Consent records — retained for 7 years after the end of the research project

Under GDPR (Articles 15–22) and Ukrainian data protection law, you have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of your personal data
• Rectification — correct inaccurate or incomplete data
• Erasure — request deletion of your data ("right to be forgotten")
• Restriction — limit how we process your data
• Portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format
• Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interest
• Withdraw consent — withdraw your consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at dolhopolov_sy@knuba.edu.ua. We will respond within 30 days.

We do not knowingly collect personal data from individuals under 18 years of age. Research participation requires participants to be at least 21 years of age, as specified in our participant recruitment criteria.

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect personal data:

• End-to-end encryption for data in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256)
• Role-based access control with minimum privilege principle
• Regular security audits and vulnerability assessments
• Data storage within EU and Ukrainian jurisdictions
• Alignment with ISO 27001 information security principles

Our website uses only essential cookies required for basic functionality (language preference). We do not use advertising, tracking, or third-party analytics cookies.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated by posting the updated policy on our website with a new effective date. We encourage you to review this page periodically.

For questions or requests regarding this Privacy Policy:

KNUCA AI Lab
31 Povitryanykh Syl Ave., Kyiv, 03037, Ukraine
Email: dolhopolov_sy@knuba.edu.ua

Supervisory Authority:
Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsman)
21/8 Instytutska St., Kyiv, 01008, Ukraine
www.ombudsman.gov.ua