Application
This free software application offers a map with all the trees in the city of Barcelona geolocated by GPS. The user can access in-depth information on the subject. For example, the program identifies the number of trees in each street, their condition and even the species.
The application's developer, Pedro López Cabanillas, has used datasets from Barcelona's open data portal (Open Data Barcelona) and states, in his blog, that it can be useful for botany students or "curious users". The Barcelona Trees application is now in its third beta version.
The program uses the framework Qt, C++ and QML languages, and can be built (using a suitable modern compiler) for the most common targets: Windows, macOS, Linux and Android operating systems.
Blog
When planning our vacations, we all look for the perfect destination that meets our expectations: beach, mountain, city... But once we have decided where to go, we still have to make many decisions: how am I going to organize my trip so that everything goes perfect? Luckily, we have hundreds of applications that make our lives much easier.
Nowadays you can use some apps to calculate the most suitable route to reach your destination or to decide where to fill up the car during the journey without damaging your pocket. You can also look for accommodation or restaurants with a good value for money, using your mobile. Or consult the cultural activities of the area, looking for activities aimed at the youngest members of the family. And, if you want to go to the beach, you can easily check the state of the sea, the wind or the temperature of the water without leaving the hotel.
All these applications, in addition to helping us organize our vacations in a simple way, have something in common: their functioning is based on open data from public administrations.
The fact that an increasing number of local administrations are opening their tourism data allows us to generate services that help to manage our trips in a more efficient way, integrating information that is sometimes difficult to find. As an example, Asturias or Aragón are promoting catalogues of specific datasets focused on this area.
Many of these applications have been designed by individuals and companies, reusing available open data, but others have been promoted by the public administrations. This is because tourism open data not only help visitors, but also have great advantages for municipalities.
Tourism is a fundamental economic activity for our country. During the first 5 months of 2018, Spain exceeded 28.6 million international tourists, representing an increase of 2% over the same period of the previous year. These tourists are a great source of economic income: just in May, the average expenditure per tourist was 1,009 euros, 1.8% more than in 2017. It is not surprising, therefore, that all city councils wants to promote their services and attract visitors.
Tourism applications based on open data can favor interaction between visitors and the local community, promoting local services and fostering economic growth. In addition, some applications even allow to collect information from users under their consent. The analysis of this anonymized information, combined with other data sets such as the total expenditure on trips of international tourists who participate in cultural activities or tourists housed by municipalities, allows knowing tourists behavior patterns and designing specific policies with the focus on innovation and intelligent management of tourist destinations.
Traditionally, the tourism sector has a great weight in Spain, but like all sectors, it has to keep renewing itself so as not to be left behind, integrating new elements that help improve the visitor's experience. Open data linked to the use of new technologies such as Big Data analysis and artificial intelligence are a good option - for example to make recommendations and customizations based on user behavior-. The ultimate goal is to provide a high quality global service that allows us to continue being leaders and receiving millions of visitors year after year.
Evento
A new edition of the Aporta Challenge is already underway. As the previous edition, new ideas and prototypes based on open data are sought to help improve the efficiency of a specific sector. In this case, the agri-food, forestry and rural sector have been chosen, due to its fundamental role in the creation of wealth and employment.
Why is the agri-food, forestry and rural sector important?
Currently, this sector is facing a series of challenges that affect all us and, ultimately, the future of humanity, such as climate change, food security, population growth or depopulation in rural areas. Generating a higher amount of food to support the whole population, in a safe way and respectful with the environment, looking for alternatives to the concentration of population into urban areas, driving the development of rural environment, as well as protecting and preserving the forests for future generations, are demanding and urgent tasks.
To these global problems, we must add the specific challenges of Spain. Depopulation, aging, desertification, digital divide, masculinization, deficit and dispersion of services ... are some of the concepts that usually come to mind when we think about the rural environment in our country.
A paradigm shift is necessary to face these challenges.
How can open data help to improve this situation?
The digital transformation can help to change the bases of agri-food operations, promoting the rural environment, in many different ways; for example, through the smart agriculture that combines technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence with public and private data management, to maximize crop yields, increase productivity and improve their sustainability. In this context, open data has a fundamental role.
What is Aporta Challenge 2019?
Aporta Challenge seeks to promote talent, technical competence and creativity in the reuse of open data, with the aim of devising solutions that help promote improvements in the agri-food, forestry and rural sector.
The ideas and prototypes presented must use at least one source of open data generated by Public Administrations, whether national or international, and published under an open license. These data sets may be combined with others from various sources, both public or private, and national or international.
The contest will be developed in 2 phases:
- Phase I: Ideas competition. Participants must provide a detailed description of an original idea that can be used to create or enrich a service, study, web or mobile application, which leads to improvements for the agri-food, forestry and rural sector. All the ideas will be evaluated according to criteria such as: their innovative character, their economic and social impact, and their contribution to improving the life quality of young people and women, two fundamental groups for the sector survival. After the evaluation process, the 10 best ideas will be selected and their authors will go to Phase II.
- Phase II: Prototype development and face-to-face exposition. During Phase II, the authors of the 10 selected ideas will elaborate a prototype that may consist of simulations, visualizations, videos or multimedia solutions. The 3 best prototypes will be selected according to criteria such as ease-of-use or technical quality.
During the following months, dissemination and follow-up will be carried out.
Who can participate?
The Aporta Challenge is aimed at individuals and legal entities of the European Union.
Those interested in participating must register in this form.
What are the prizes?
The three best prototypes presented will opt for three monetary prizes according to the following amounts:
- First prize: € 4,000
- Second prize: € 3,000
- Third prize: € 2,000
More information in the Challenge Aporta section and the Competitions Rules.
Evento
An increasing number of administrations are driving open data and its reuse through contests and hackathons. An example is Malaga City, which has just presented its I Open Data Reuse Contest.
The Data Portal of Malaga City has more than 1,800 available resources, grouped into 800 data sets, which follow the NTI classification. All of them have been published under a free use license, so that any citizen can analyse, reuse and redistribute data to generate a higher economic and social value.
With the aim of enhancing its use and boosting the generation of applications and value-added services, the city council has announced this contest, which has 4 categories:
- Best application for mobile devices
- Best web application
- Best chatbot
- Best analysis of historical data
This contest is one of the actions that the City Council is going to carry out in the framework of the II Open Administration Week, which will take place from March 11 to 17, 2019. The open Administration Week seeks to bring Public Administrations closer to the citizenship.
The call is open to any natural or legal person - except public administrations and those who have participated directly or indirectly in the call -. You only need a project that responds to any of the previous categories and meet the following requirements:
- The project must be original, that is, not submitted to any other contest.
- In addition, you must use at least one of the 800 data sets published in the Open Data Portal of Malaga City. The data set could be combined with other open or private data sources.
To help participants, a list has been created on YouTube with videos of interest. These videos show how to obtain information through an API or how to perform an analysis with Carto or Powerpivot.
Those interested in participating can submit their proposal until March 4, 2019 at 10:00 a.m. through this online form.
The winners will receive a cash prize of 500 euros per category. In addition, they will see how their work is promoted in the different official channels of the Malaga City Council and in the next DataBeers event, which will be held on March 27 during the GreenCities 2019 conference.
For more information, you can read the contest rules here.