Project utilises global data
Sophisticated computers are mining vast amounts of data from the web, digital maps and satellite imagery to pick out trends in areas like demographics, transport and the environment.
The technology taps into an increasing trend to open up access to the vast amounts of data being collected every day by global information systems (GIS), including the EU’s Copernicus system to observe Earth using a family of Sentinel satellites.
Dr Jon Blower of the University of Reading, UK, said: “We are working with all kinds of data.
“Smart machines can then help us find the needle in the haystack or, for example, identify interesting trends in petabytes of satellite imagery.”
His project, MELODIES, has been funded by the EU to try to develop ways that these vast data stores can be interpreted and analysed. By using a technology called ‘linked data’ the project enables datasets to be connected and shared.
Blower added: “We want to show open data publishers that if they put the data out there, people will use it.”
Jesús Estrada from the SmartOpenData project, which created a way of linking up a number of different European environmental datasets, said: “Linked data is a framework of tools and practices for exposing, sharing and connecting information.
“The key idea is that each data provider wants to publish information and this information is easily understandable by others.”
The next step is to allow small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) to build on this and take advantage of the growing market.
Open data is projected to create 25,000 new jobs in the EU between 2016 and 2020, with market size growing from €55.3bn in 2016, to €75.7bn by 2020.
