Data stories

These days, companies can access massive amounts of data, leading to new and innovative services—mapping apps warn people about traffic jams and health tracking apps allow runners to compare themselves to their community. The risk is that powerful technology companies control so much data that they could leave other companies at a disadvantage. Distributing the benefits of data to other...

(Open) data and the green transition Since the start of 2020, Europe has faced several economic, social, and political difficulties, such as the COVID-19 crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These two events have short- and long-term impacts on, for example, the availability and prices of energy sources, food security, economic stability, the capacity of health care systems and defence...

At the EU Datathon 2021, ITER IDEA presented their project Wonder Wanderlust Women, a portal facilitating women’s mobility in Europe. Targeting young women, the platform helps users to search for education and work opportunities across countries. They can indicate their preferences (such as field of study, languages or budget), which are then matched with specific areas and regions in Europe...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine forced a significant part of the Ukrainian population to flee their country. Most of the refugees sought immediate shelter in neighbouring countries, but in time many reached friends and families in other EU Member States, where communities of Ukrainian origin were already established. Italy, for example, hosts one the largest Ukrainian communities in Europe, making...

Among the EU Member States, Italy hosts one of the largest communities of Ukrainian-born people. According to Eurostat data , at the end of 2020 there were 223 000 Ukrainian citizens holding a valid residence permit. Only Poland had more, with almost 500 000. The Eurostat figures show that Ukrainian citizenship is the third most represented nationality from non-EU citizens in terms of residence...

Have you ever wondered how similar different regions across Europe are? What a southern European urban region could have in common with a rural area in eastern Europe? EU Twinnings is a web application that allows the user to engage with European regions by exploring how similar they are. It’s a ‘virtual twinning’ platform that uses EU open data to calculate and visualise a similarity measure...

Using open data to understand politics Looking to attract readers, media fill their sites with polls, news articles and opinions about the latest political events. These include elections. The message brought by different media outlets can vary markedly and it can be hard to distinguish the ordinary from the extraordinary. Open data became a valuable tool to help put election outcomes into the...

Rising prices - the consumer’s view Inflation has become a news headline in Europe, with Eurostat reporting that the average increase in prices from last year was 8.1%. At the same time, consumers see price increases for some everyday items increasing by substantially more. Petrol prices in Germany, for example, have increased by more than 20% since last year. In the Netherlands, the price for...

The United Nations Refugee Agency estimated that around 10 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes since the Russian invasion of 24 February 2022. This figure represents almost a quarter of the total Ukrainian population of 44 million inhabitants. Many of those people fled to other regions of Ukraine, away from the fights, while over 5.7 million left the country entirely to seek...

Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is the practice of collecting and analysing information gathered from open sources to produce actionable intelligence. This intelligence can support, for example, national security, law enforcement and business intelligence. OSINT investigates open (source) data collected for one purpose and repurposes it to shed light on hidden topics. The whole concept of OSINT...