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TRANSPORT-Transport 2025

Open Transport Data

Alternative title: Åpne Transportdata

Awarded: NOK 10.0 mill.

Open data is recognised as the new oil through its capability to facilitate innovation and value generation. European Directives (PSI, Inspire and ITS) state that public data, transport data included, must be available to the public. This has however not happened to the degree needed. Literature studies show that overall barriers are identified. The availability of open data is limited, and the users have problems finding and using the published data. There is a lack of knowledge on measures and solutions needed to overcome these barriers. The overall goal of the project is to establish such knowledge and thereby contributing to the opening of relevant transport data that it is easy to find, understand and use in new services and applications. Detailed information on barriers and needs is established trough - Work on travel planning and port call scenarios addressing needs for open data and the usability of existing open data. - Observations and experiences from a student project using open data from many sources in the development of a hiking planner. - Interview with a Hackathon organiser with experience in the publishing of open data. - Focus group with users of open data. - Interviews with users of open data. - Online survey for users of open data. The results show limited and random availability of open data and that there are many barriers to overcome. It is difficult to find and understand data and APIs, examples are needed, and the documentation and metadata must be improved. The access to data must be reliable, and licenses must support the use of data in commercial products and services. The project has established the OpenDataLab portal (http://opendatalab.no/) to disseminate knowledge and advices on how open data should be published and used. The portal is established based on knowledge gained from the studies mentioned above and from studies of and experiments with solutions that support data publishing and use, among others: - Catalogue service and data harvester prototypes for discovery of open data described using metadata (based on open source). - Plugins to the catalogue service supporting dataset annotation, data visualisation, feedback on data, search logs (to provide an overview of which data that are requested by users) and use of OpenAPI for standardised API descriptions. - Ontology for the transport domain supporting semantic search for data. - Prototype for semantic search engine prototypes using the ontology to support full text search to reduce the dependency of metadata. - Prototype for automated annotation of datasets, based on the otology. - Data processing prototypes based on the DataGraft, BigML and NodeRed (open source software). These tools can process and prepare (clean, transform, combine, etc.) stored data and real-time data streams. The prototypes are tested on traffic and traffic condition data from road transport, AIS-data from sea transport and data on public transport. The Norwegian Public Road Administration (NPRA) is updating their data portal https://dataut.vegvesen.no to a national access point (NAP) for transport data according to the ITS Directive. Requirements are defined and functionality tested, and the work is done in collaboration with European actors. NPRA has also established Web-based training in data sharing for their employees, and guidelines for data responsibilities. They have also contributed to hackathons. The Norwegian Coastal Directorate has done work on data collection from vessels and improvement of AIS data. They have also created a national a data warehouse for maritime data. The Municipality of Oslo has worked on APIs towards data from signalling systems and systems counting vehicles and bikes. They are also working on a new data management processes, and a new strategy addresses better use of data sources and requirements for access to data from new systems. A guide on open data is also established and will be used in new projects in 2019. Knowledge from the above activities is used within the organisations of the project participants, and experiences are shared within the project and externally, among others through presentations held and seminars/workshops organised by SINTEF, ITS Norway and URBALURBA. Information on the project is available on https://opentransportdata.wordpress.com/. Open source code is available on https://github.com/OpenTransportDataProject.

Prosjektet har bidratt til økt kunnskap og bevissthet rundt åpne data hos prosjektdeltakerne og andre. Det er bl.a. holdt flere foredrag om hva som gjør at data ikke publiseres, hva som gjør at åpne data ikke benyttes og hvordan åpne data bør brukes og publiseres. Alle dataeierne i prosjektet har ved prosjektslutt intern aktivitet på å åpne data, de har publisert data, og de har gjort tiltak for å fremme publisering av data (opplæring, strategier, definisjon av nye rutiner og prosesser, etc.). De vil også bruke egne åpne data internt i stedet for å hente data fra fagsystemer. Dette vil bidra til å øke kvaliteten på de åpne dataene. Prosjektet har også bidratt til fokus på åpne data generelt og inspirert til mer forskning på åpne data. Et nytt forskningsrådsprosjekt på åpne kommunale data og samskaping og næringsutvikling basert på slike data er igangsatt sammen med norske kommuner. Man har også fått finanansiert et nordisk prosjekt på nordisk samordning av transportdata.

Norwegian authorities aim to meet the European PSI and Inspire directives which state that public data in general must be available to the public, and the ITS Directive which addresses open transport data. The overall idea is that open data fuels the development of new and innovative ICT solutions for the transport sector. Thus, it is important to unlock the potential of open transport data. This has however not happened to the degree needed. The project has carried out literature studies showing that data users have problems using open data. There is however a lack of knowledge on the measures and solutions needed to overcome the barriers. The project aims to establish such knowledge and thereby contributing to the opening of relevant transport data that it is easy to find, understand and use in new services and applications. The project focuses on the needs of open data users and has identified success factors and barriers with respect to use of open data in system development. Such knowledge can support the establishment of tools that are useful to the data users, but the knowledge can also guide data owners on how to publish data that is easy to find, understand and use. Studies are carried out through work on system development scenarios where open data is needed, semi structured interviews, focus groups and survey. The results show limited and random availability of open data and that there are many barriers to overcome. The user must get better support to be able to efficiently finds and understand data and APIs. High quality metadata, documentation and examples must be provided, the access to data must be more reliable, and licenses must support the use of data in commercial products. To establish required knowledge, the project has established and tested a virtual lab with prototypes that can support users. A data catalogue prototype describes open datasets by means of metadata that are harvested from other catalogues. Plugins to the catalogue support dataset annotation, data visualisation, feedback on data, use of OpenAPI for standardised API descriptions, etc. A semantic search engine prototype for more easy identification of relevant dataset is also developed and demonstrated. It is based on an ontology for the transport domain and supports full text search in dataset descriptions. The intention is to support users that do not know the exact keywords to search for, but the documentation of the dataset must however be good. Data processing prototypes based on the DataGraft, BigML and NodeRed (open source software) are also tested. Such tools can process and prepare (clean, transform, combine, etc.) stored data and real-time data streams. The prototypes are tested on traffic and traffic condition data from road transport, AIS-data from sea transport and data on public transport. An agile approach is used in the development of the virtual lab. The project has created a portal where knowledge gained and lessons learned from the work described above are provided as advices to data publishers and data users (see http://opendatalab.no/).

Publications from Cristin

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Funding scheme:

TRANSPORT-Transport 2025