The Potential of Linked Open Data in Smart Flanders

SMART CITIES THE POTENTIAL OF LINKED OPEN DATA IN SMART FLANDERS

Data is the driving force behind many smart city applications and services. But to truly unlock the potential of smart city data, we need to make it used and useful. Everyone can play a part in this, from start-ups to corporations, to citizens, to governments and other organizations.

STRONGER TOGETHER: BEYOND THEORY: SHARED DATA TO TACKLE TOWARDS A COMMON APPROACH COMMON URBAN CHALLENGES

The Smart Flanders program – launched in January 2017 by The Smart Flanders program is more than a theoretical the Flemish Government – aims to accelerate smart city framework. The team also implements this open data vision innovation in Flanders by stimulating cooperation between in a number of pilot projects. Each pilot project originates different cities and stakeholders. With imec’s support, it from a real need or problem commonly experienced in city brings together the 13 Flemish center cities and the Flemish life. Community Commission in Brussels to establish a common approach towards Linked Open Data. The first pilot tackles a problem we have all faced: finding parking space. The pilot publishes data on the occupancy The result is an Open Data Charter, which was publicly of off-street parking garages in real-time across four launched in spring 2018 and presents the strategic and technical Flemish cities. The second data pilot publishes (wheelchair) principles that the cities put forward collaboratively. The idea accessibility information about buildings from various is to create an ecosystem that stimulates data sharing, by sources as Linked Open Data, so it can easily be reused in providing a standardized set of minimum requirements. Any all kinds of applications. And the third data pilot, which was dataset published according to these technical requirements launched in 2019, focuses on monitoring crowds in the city, can be accessed, queried and reused by different partners e.g. for applications related to shopping, tourism, mobility, without the need for any shared hardware. Any smart city local economy, cultural events and so on. This pilot aims to innovator can thus access the data and use it to develop and develop a common approach to measure and monitor urban fine-tune their smart city application. activity in Flemish cities, while safeguarding the privacy of citizens. More information on these pilots can be found on THE NEXT STEP: PUTTING SMART CITY https://smart.flanders.be/piloten/. APPLICATIONS TO THE TEST

With these pilot projects, Smart Flanders aims to set the Smart Flanders is closely linked to another imec project, i.e. example for other smart city projects built on the potential City of Things – a joint initiative of imec, the City of Antwerp of Linked Open Data. Every new open dataset can be linked and the Flemish Region. City of Things aims to transform to our data, thus building a ‘Flemish Knowledge graph’ that Antwerp into a large-scale, realistic testbed for smart city can be queried in an interoperable way. For instance, Mobility innovation. City of Things collaborates with the Smart as a Service (MaaS) projects can reuse and combine all this Flanders program to ensure that whenever data is published data for route planning. With the openplanner.team, we by the testbed, it is done according to the Smart Flanders demonstrate the potential of a route planner that takes into principles. account your individual needs, by downloading the right Open Data on the fly. LOOKING FOR PARTNERS SPECIALIZED IN SMART CITY DATA

The Smart Flanders team is interested in collaborating with organizations that gather and publish smart city data. We can help you publish these datasets as part of the Flemish Knowledge Graph. Of course, we are also looking for partners willing to integrate this data into their own services.

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