Outcome of EDP's Webinar: Open Data in Smart Cities
Publication Date/Time
2018-12-05T09:00:00+00:00
Country
Czechia, Finland
Open Data is crucial to realise Smart Cities initiatives in Europe
OPEN DATA IN SMART CITIES

On 8 November the European Data Portal
[http://europeandataportal.eu/en/] (EDP) hosted the Webinar "_Open
Data in Smart Cities_
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWRxmFRYBSQyUe6GFOOrxFA/videos?disable_polymer=1]"
to discuss initiatives across Europe. Open Data is crucial to
realising Smart Cities. Open Data allows people to harness the data's
full potential and create solution that address issues such as getting
information on an event or finding a parking space. This is one of the
reasons why the EDP is actively supporting EU Member States and
communities to publish their data and promotes the re-use of data to
increase impact.

Data in Smart Cities, and the concept of a Smart City itself, can be
perceived differently because of the breadth of the terms and how many
sectors it covers. Moreover, these concepts can be interpreted
differently depending on a person's background and knowledge on the
subject, making it difficult to discuss. For example, data. Though
there is a consensus that data is a pre-requisite for a Smart City,
there are ongoing discussions on how to make data available and how
government bodies, businesses, academia and citizens can exploit the
value of the data.

The Webinar had three keynote speakers to elaborate on this subject:

 	* Tanja Lahti, Project Manager at City of Helsinki
[https://www.hel.fi/helsinki/en] focusing on regional data services.
 	* Tuukka Haastrup, Software Engineering Manager at Helsinki Region
Transport [https://www.hsl.fi/en/] (HSL).
 	* Benedikt Kotmel, the Head of the Data Platform at Operátor ICT
[https://operatorict.cz/en/] in Prague.

The keynote speakers discussed specific examples of Open Data in Smart
City initiatives in Helsinki and Prague and elaborated on topics such
as community engagement, business and government collaboration,
Mobility as a Service and the types of data needed for a Smart City.

 

URBAN OPEN DATA IN HELSINKI 

Helsinki aims to become the most functional city in the world by
utilising urban Open Data in their 2017 - 2021 strategy
[https://www.hel.fi/helsinki/en/administration/strategy/strategy/].
Key drivers to accomplish this strategy are utilising open urban data
and active community engagement between the City of Helsinki and
communities in Helsinki. Currently, there is a strong mandate to
continue with urban data work and to have a more collaborative
communication model that increases efficiency for consumers to find
services and to assist in the decision-making process of citizens and
government bodies.

There is an abundance of data in cities, ranging from day care and
education, air quality, public transport to parking. A key player in
providing and utilising these datasets are municipalities. In the City
of Helsinki, the municipality has approximately 900 different API
systems that accumulate vast amounts of data that is then processed,
analysed and translated into services for their citizens.

For example, in the City of Helsinki Tanja Lahti and her team created
the Helsinki Region Infoshare [http://www.hri.fi/], an Open Data
service that helps people find urban data in Helsinki and in the
neighbouring cities Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen. This service
provides Open Data catalogues with informative articles on data
[https://hri.fi/en_gb/category/news/] use and events in Finland and
support on how to exploit, share and re-use Open Data. Several
stakeholders in Helsinki are utilising this database to organise and
promote public events in Helsinki
[https://www.myhelsinki.fi/en/see-and-do/events] and to deliver
information as urban data to provide value for the region.

Moreover, the City of Helsinki is regularly providing a platform for
open dialogue between the municipality and community in Helsinki once
a month called 'Helsinki Loves Developers'
[https://hri.fi/en_gb/support/how-to-use-data/helsinki-loves-developers/].
This initiative started so people can actively discuss and market
urban data to stimulate interest in the topic and generate impact.
Every meeting has a different focus with topics ranging from culture
and leisure data and how to promote the flow of data in Helsinki.

The City of Helsinki is continuously updating their database and
dataset to provide current, if not real time, Open Data and are
continuously exploiting data to innovate and create impact in the
city.

 

OPEN MOBILITY AS A SERVICE IN HELSINKI 

The Helsinki Regional Transport Authority (HSL) publishes their data
as Open Data through platforms such as digitransit
[http://www.digitransit.fi/], Reittiopas [https://reittiopas.hsl.fi/]
and their HSL mobile application [https://www.hsl.fi/en/app]. These
platforms use HSL's Open Data, open API's and open source codes to
create a journey planner for customers and to provide them with
information on the best available route.

Currently, HSL promoting Open Mobility as a Service, otherwise known
as OpenMaaS. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a concept that aims to
provide suitable alternative modes of transport and reduce the need
for cars by improving seamless public transport infrastructure and
integrating bike and car sharing services, such as taxi-car sharing.
OpenMaaS is an open interface that includes journey planner services
from platforms such as Reittiopas and HSL's mobile application with
the aim of lowering the barrier to new businesses. For example, a
customer can buy a ticket from HSL's mobile application and sell them
through OpenMaaS API [https://sales-api.hsl.fi/].

HSL is continuing to explore other methods to increase the awareness,
use and re-use of Open Data in Helsinki by developing new technical
features, ticket types and payment options.

 

INTEGRATING OPEN DATA TO REALISE SMART PRAGUE

Operátor ICT is focusing on integrating Open Data into different
public sector services in Prague and to promote Open Data re-use to
make the city smarter by increasing awareness on its potential impact
on society and industry.

One example of how Open Data is used to make Prague smarter is the
platform Cisco Kinetic for Cities
[https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/industries/smart-connected-communities/kinetic-for-cities.html#~stickynav=1].
This service assists users in building a 'smart city framework' by
improving operational effectiveness and in reducing risks by giving a
unified view on different aspects such as the environment, pollution,
parking spaces, street lights, Wi-Fi locations and USB charging. On
this service, users can, for example, see each individual light post
in the city, know if the light is on or off and how long that lamp has
been operating.

Operátor ICT works with the data provided by the platform Cisco
Kinetic for Cities and published the datasets on their data platform
Golemio [https://smartprague.eu/projects/golemio-data-platform/]. This
website shares datasets that can solve a person that is living or
visiting Prague's problem, such as locations for parking spaces and
information about public transportation. The website also serves as a
platform for experts to find datasets that they can analyse and
process to gain additional insights or create websites, applications
or prediction models for the city.

Prague is now focusing on Smart City standardisation and promotes the
re-usability of data to find more smart solutions.

 

WHAT NOW?

As stated, Open Data is crucial to realising Smart Cities because it
can provide insights and address problems that people are facing in
their daily lives.

However, there are several barriers. First, a strong mandate or
support and interest from city councils, industries and communities is
needed to support progress. There needs to be an increase in awareness
about the value of Open Data, how it works and how it can be
implemented to impact cities and society. Moreover, collaboration and
on-going dialogue between different institutions and actors is pivotal
to aid innovation as well as to create and sustain impact.

 

Thank you to our participants and guest speakers Tanja Lahti, Tuukka
Haastrup and Benedikt Kotmel for joining the EDP's "_Open Data in
Smart Cities"_ Webinar! Discussions in the Webinar and in its uptake
show there is high interest in this subject, therefore there will
further research on Open Data and Smart Cities.

Share your experiences and ideas about Open Data in Smart Cities with
the EDP via mail [/en/feedback/form?type=4], Twitter
[http://twitter.com/EU_DataPortal], Facebook
[http://www.facebook.com/EuropeanDataPortal] or LinkedIn
[https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8428984].
