ERA Factsheets: Unlocking railway data
The European Union Agency for Railways (ERA)
[https://www.era.europa.eu/] has taken significant steps towards its
mission of fostering a sustainable and safe railway system without
frontiers. At a dedicated press briefing yesterday, ERA announced the
official launch of the ERA Railway Factsheets
[https://www.era.europa.eu/content/era-railway-factsheets], an
intuitive tool providing railway statistics and insights from several
sources in an accessible format. Importantly, ERA presented its
fundamental work on linked data and the ERA knowledge graph
[https://www.era.europa.eu/domains/registers/era-knowlege-graph_en], a
data architecture that reduces fragmentation and enables efficiency
gains for the entire European railway sector.

The ERA Factsheets
[https://www.era.europa.eu/content/era-railway-factsheets] offer a
comprehensive overview of the rail sector across European countries
with one-click access. Covering aspects such as transport statistics,
railway organisations, rolling stock, infrastructure, safety, market
structure, and the legal framework, the tool unlocks data from ERA and
other organisations, providing a broad and accurate representation of
the European railway landscape. The factsheets are set to be
regularly updated, reflecting the commitment to ensure that the
information remains current and relevant over time.

Whereas ERA Factsheets
[https://www.era.europa.eu/content/era-railway-factsheets] bring
fragmented data together, ERA’s linked data project changes the
fundamentals on how railway data is defined and shared. Today, railway
data is typically kept in isolated and incompatible databases. Linked
data is central to ERA's strategic plan to overcome challenges such as
data gaps, unaligned definitions, and accessibility barriers. It sets
the foundation for more efficient data sharing between railway actors
across Europe and novel applications.

Explore the ERA Railway Factsheets
[https://www.era.europa.eu/content/era-railway-factsheets] and provide
feedback at factsheets@era.europa.eu to contribute to the continuous
improvement of this pivotal tool.

To discover more about the ERA's work on linked open data, read our
data story on a use case of the ERA knowledge graph
[https://data.europa.eu/en/publications/datastories/linking-data-route-compatibility-check].

For more news and events, follow us on Twitter
[https://twitter.com/EU_opendata], Facebook
[https://www.facebook.com/data.europa.eu] and LinkedIn
[https://www.linkedin.com/company/publications-office-of-the-european-union/],
or subscribe to our newsletter
[https://data.europa.eu/en/newsletter].

Publication Date/Time
2023-12-07T07:00:00+00:00
New intuitive tool addressing fragmentation within the European
railway data landscape