Lorena Pocatilu - strategies for smart city knowledge platform and open data

Strategies for smart city

knowledge platform and open data

Lorena (BĂTĂGAN) POCATILU, PhD.

Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

[email protected]

Knowledge platform

Knowledge platform in data rich world is an important

step for development.

Knowledge platform offers :

access to a new information;

open data;

connecting the users;

internal and external collaboration;

innovation .

Friendly cities and knowledge platform

The majority of us live in cities now, and the global

percentage is growing fast.

In fact, it is estimated that one million people move into

the world’s cities each week.

In this case we’ll need to find new ways to manage

information and knowledge like knowledge platform, to

increase efficiency, to reduce expenses and to improve

quality of life.

It is evident that our cities need to be smarter or friendly

cities.

Friendly cities and knowledge platform

Knowledge platform

Innovation

Collaboration Transparency

Participation of users

Friendly cities and knowledge platform

Information is a most important resource. It is a so-called

"public good": consumption of information by one

individual does not reduce the availability of the

information for others.

This is why the benefit of information can extend far

beyond its initial purpose.

In this case the knowledge platform must to integrate

open data.

In the last years the trend is to use open data for mange

data of the core system of cities.

Implementation of open data

Implementing an open data strategy is not a simple task.

In addition to investing in the technology and operations

of open data sites, there are often barriers [3] to

successful implementation, such as:

cultures opposed to openness;

data quality problems;

and difficulties in developing appropriate models for charging for

open data .

Open data instruments

The instruments applied by countries to implement open

data policy can divided into four types:

a) education and training (Knowledge platforms, conference,

sessions, workshops),

b) voluntary approaches (Overall strategies and programmers,

General recommendations, Public voluntary schemes),

c) economic instruments (Competitions,Financing of open data

portals),

d) legislation and control (Public sector information law, Technical

standards, Monitoring).

Effects of open data and knowledge portal

Smart cities Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely

available to everyone or friendly to use and republish as

they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or

other mechanisms of control.

Open data offers the new possibilities to analyze and

visualize data from different sources.

Intelligent processing of data is essential for addressing

societal challenges.

Data can for example be used to enhance the

sustainability of national health care systems – essential

in a smart city.

Effects of open data

Data management is also essential for environmental

challenges.

Examples are the processing of energy consumption

patterns to improve energy efficiency or of pollution data

in traffic management.

Informed policy decisions in the areas of transport, land

use and climate change depend increasingly on analysis

of the available data.

Effects of open data

Scientific activities are increasingly undertaken through

global collaboration on the internet, using very large data

collections, huge computing resources and high-

performance visualization.

Open data solutions are essential for meeting the

challenges of the 21st century in scientific discovery and

learning.

Effects of open data

Public data are produced at all levels of government.

The conditions under which the data are made available

for commercial or non-commercial re-use have an effect

on competition and competitiveness [7].

Support for open data solutions

The European Commission has supported open data

through its funding programmes:

Linked Open Data (http://lod2.eu/);

OpenAIRE (http://www.openaire.eu/);

ISA Action on semantic interoperability

(http://www.semic.eu/).

Initiative for open data

Open Government Data Initiative (OGDI) [8] from

Microsoft is a cloud-based collection of open government

software assets that enables publicly available

government data to be easily accessible.

Using open standards and application programming

interfaces (API), developers and government agencies

can retrieve the data programmatically for use in new

and innovative online applications.

Initiative for open data

That solution can [8]:

Encourage citizens and communities to participate with

governments;

Enhance collaboration between government agencies and

private organizations;

Increase government transparency;

Provide unique insight into data trends and analysis.

Initiative for open data

OGDI promotes the use of this data by capturing and

publishing re-usable software assets, patterns, and

practices.

The data repository already holds over 60 different

government datasets that are readily available for use in

new applications, and is continuously updated with

additional government datasets.

Initiative for open data

OGDI data is hosted in Windows Azure.

It is accessible through open, standards-based web

services from a variety of development environments,

including Microsoft .NET, JavaScript, Adobe Flash, PHP,

Ruby, Python, and others.

Initiative for open data

IBM initiative is based on Real Web 2.0 Linking Open

Data (LOD) [2] , a community initiative for moving the

Web from the idea of separated documents to a wide

information space of data.

The key principles of LOD are that it is simple, readily

adaptable by Web developers, and complements many

other popular Web trends.

Learn how to make your data more widely used by

making its components easier to discover, more

valuable, and easier for people to reuse—in ways you

might not anticipate [2].

Initiative for open data

The IBM team in Helsinki was asked to help the City

develop strategies for [3]:

creating visualizations that can enable citizens make use of and

benefit from open data,

and define the components necessary to grow a sustainable,

repeatable platform, process and ecosystem to leverage the

principles of open data, turning data into information, information

into action, and action into change [3].

Initiative for open data

Data

Information

Action

Change

Initiative for open data

Key recommendations of IBM team [3] included:

expanding support for the open data community, managing and

measuring the balance between engagement models;

designing feedback mechanisms to support the evolution of the

open data ecosystem;

creating a social visualization web site, platform and API;

continuing to evolve the role of Helsinki Region Infoshare;

and seeking opportunities to use open data to drive internal

change.

Conclusions

‘’Cities generate a lot of useful data” [4] says Tuomo

Haukkovaara, General Manager of IBM Finland , and

all the city must work actively to make such data

open.

Moreover, the European Council stated in the Visby

Declaration (Presidency of the European Council, 2009)

that European Union (EU) member states should seek

to make data freely accessible in open machine -

readable formats and stimulate the reuse of public

sector information using open data.

Conclusions

Conclusions

Accordingly, the European Commission and the EU

member states committed themselves in the European

eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015 to “maximising

the value of re-use of public sector information (PSI),

by making raw data and documents available for re-use

in a wide variety of formats (including machine-readable

ones) and languages and by setting up PSI portals”

(European Commission, 2010).

Conclusions

Harry van Dorenmalen, Chairman of IBM Europe,

elaborates a report on how smart cities harness the

power of open data and mass collaboration to engage

citizens and solve city issues. By making the data

openly available – as so-called “open data” – new

business applications will evolve, providing services

that are derived from this public sector information [1].

Conclusions

All data that can be shared with the public should be

opened for public dissemination.

Data should be published in compliance with applicable

laws and regulations, and only after addressing issues of

security and privacy.

References

[1]You are hereHome Harry van Dorenmalen on Open Data for Smart Cities / PICNIC Festival 2011

http://www.engagetv.com/webcast_Harry-van-Dorenmalen-Open-Data-Smart-Cities-PICNIC-Festival-

2011

[2] Real Web 2.0: Linking open dataDiscover the community that sees Web 2.0 as a way to revolutionize

information on the Web http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-realweb5/

[3]Smarter Cities Challenge Helsinki Finlanda http://smartercitieschallenge.org/city_helsinki_finland.html

[4] Recommendations of the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge Programme completed

http://www.hel.fi/hki/Taske/en/news/report_of_exploitation_of_open_data_in_the_city_of_helsinki_is_pub

lished

[5] Open Data is Civic Capital:Best Practices for “Open Government Data”

http://razor.occams.info/pubdocs/opendataciviccapital.html

[6] Noor Huijboom, Tijs Van den Broek, Open data: an international comparison of strategies, European

Journal of ePractice, Nº 12 · March/April 2011 · ISSN: 1988-625X, www.epracticejournal.eu

[7] EUROPEAN COMMISSION Open data An engine for innovation, growth and transparent governance,

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/docs/pdfs/directive_proposal/2012/open_data.pdf

[8] What is the Open Government Data Initiative?

http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/opengovdata/default.aspx

Thank you!