Documentación
A spatial data or geographical data is that which has a geographical reference associated with it, either directly, through coordinates, or indirectly, such as a postal code. Thanks to these geographical references it is possible to locate its exact location on a map. The European Union includes spatial data among the datasets that can be considered of high value, due to their "considerable benefits for society, the environment and the economy, in particular due to their suitability for the creation of value-added services, applications and new jobs". There are many examples of the potential for re-use of this type of data. For example, the data provided by the Copernicus Earth Observation system has been used to create tools for monitoring areas susceptible to fire or to help stop drug trafficking. It is therefore important that spatial data is created in a way that facilitates its availability, access, interoperability and application.
A large amount of the open data managed by public administrations can be geo-referenced, thus maximising its value. To help public administrations publish this type of information in open format, this "Practical Guide to the Publication of Spatial Data" has been produced within the framework of the Aporta Initiative. It has been developed by Carlos de la Fuente García, an expert in open data, with the collaboration of the National Centre for Geographic Information (National Geographic Institute), as well as contributions and suggestions from a large number of experts in the field.
Who is the guide for?
The guide is primarily aimed at Open Data developers whose goal is to publish spatial data sets. It is preferable that the reader be familiar with basic knowledge about the fundamental elements that make up geospatial information, spatial context metadata and geographic web services.
What can I find in the guide?
The guide begins with a section that addresses the essential concepts needed to understand the nature of spatial data. This section includes explanations of the visual representation of geographic information, as well as details of the tools required for spatial data analysis and transformation, and the recommended formats and metadata. There are specific sections on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the role of geographic web services and Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) in facilitating access to and management of geographic data sets and services is discussed.
It then compiles a set of guidelines to facilitate the efficient publication of spatial data on the Internet, taking into account the international standards of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The guidelines detailed in this guide are:
Finally, a series of references, specifications, formats, standards and tools of direct application for the publication of Spatial Data are included.
The following elements are also included throughout the guide: references to the European INSPIRE Directive as a catalyst for sharing geographic resources in Europe and guidelines for describing spatial information derived from the Open Data metadata standards, DCAT and GeoDCAT-AP.
Other materials of interest
Although the primary scope of this document is oriented towards the publication of spatial data, it should not be forgotten that the application of all good practices linked to data quality in general is essential for their effective re-use. In this sense, it is advisable to complement this guide with the reading and application of other guides that provide guidance on the application of guidelines to ensure the publication of structured quality data, such as the Practical Guide for the publication of tabular data in CSV files and or using APIs.
You can download the Practical Guide for the Publication of Spatial Data from the following links:
Documentación
An application programming interface or API is a mechanism that allows communication and information exchange between systems. Open data platforms, such as datos.gob.es, have this type of tool to interact with the information system and consult the data without the need for knowledge of the internal structure or the technology used in its development. Thanks to the APIs, reusers can more easily access the information they need automatically, and it is possible to adjust the download exclusively to the data required.
More and more organizations are betting on this type of mechanism, especially to publish data with a high frequency of update as the data in real time. The European Directive on Open Data and Re-use of Public Sector Information refers to the need for this type of mechanism for the publication of dynamic and high-value data. It is common to use APIs to access meteorological data, public transport data or data produced by urban monitoring sensors, although it should be noted that APIs are suitable for consuming all types of data.
With the aim of helping those open data portals that do not have an API yet, datos.gob.es has prepared a guide with the main guidelines to follow when defining and implementing this data access mechanism. The guide has been prepared by Carlos de la Fuente, expert in Information Technology and Open Data, and has been supported by a multidisciplinary group of experts from both the public administration and the field of reuse, with experience in international projects.
What can the reader find in this guide?
The guide begins with a first section dedicated to understanding what APIS are and what their value is. It explains how they work and how they are implemented. For those who want to learn more, we recommend the training unit ”Buenas prácticas en el diseño de APIs y Linked Data” (only available in Spanish).
The guide then focuses on the guidelines for designing and implementing APIs. Among other aspects, it addresses how to use URIs to identify resources or how to avoid service interruptions.
The guide ends with a series of more specific sections focusing on the implementation of APIs in Open Data catalogues, for access to linked data and to geographic web services.
What are the main improvements and updates in the 2025 release?
The guide has been revised in 2025 to update the content with new links and examples, as well as to expand the content on FIWARE with a practical focus and to go into more detail in the OpenAPI section.
A new volume in the collection
This guide is part of a collection of documents produced by the Aporta Initiative to help data publishers to facilitate access and encourage the use of published information. Specifically, the collection seeks to raise awareness of the best formats for reuse, and to provide a series of clear and simple guidelines that agencies can follow when opening their datasets, thus ensuring their quality.
The "Practical Guide to Publishing Open Data using APIs" is the second document in the series, which began in March with the publication of a first volume dedicated to the publication of tabular data in CSV files. In the coming months we will continue publishing content in our effort to facilitate the opening of data and its reuse.
Documentación
Nowadays we have more and more sources of data at our fingertips. According to the European Data Portal, the impact of the open data market could reach up to EUR 334 billion and generate around 2 million jobs by 2025 ('The Economic Impact of Open Data: Opportunities for value creation in Europe. (2020)).
Paradoxically, however, even though data is more accessible than ever before, the possibilities for reusing it are still rather limited. Potential users of such data often face multiple barriers to access and use. There are many facets where quality problems may exist that hinder the re-use of data: poorly descriptive and standardised metadata, choice of licence, choice of format, inappropriate use of formats or deficiencies in the data itself. There are many initiatives that try to measure the quality of datasets based on their metadata: date and frequency of update, licence, formats used, etc., as is the case, for example, in the Metadata Quality Scorecard on the European Data Portal or in the quality dimension of the Open Data Maturity Index.
But these analyses are insufficient since most of the time quality deficiencies can only be identified after the re-use process has started. The work involved in the cleansing and preparation processes thus becomes a major burden that is in many cases unbearable for the open data user. This leads to frustration and loss of interest on the part of the reusing sector in the data offered by public bodies, affecting the credibility of the publishing institutions and considerably lowering the expectations of return and generation of value from the reuse of open data.
These potential problems can be tackled as they have been found to be largely due to the publisher not knowing how to express the data correctly in the chosen format.
For all these reasons, and with the aim of contributing to the improvement of the quality of open data, at datos.gob.es we have decided to create a collection of guides aimed at guiding publishers in the appropriate use of the most commonly used formats and means of access to open data in the field of open data.
The collection of guides starts here with a focus on the CSV format. The choice of this format is based on its popularity in the field of open data, its simplicity and its lightness in expressing data in tabular form. It is the most common format in open data catalogues; specifically, in datos.gob.es it represents 20% of the distributions coexisting with other formats such as XLS or XLSX that could also be expressed as CSV. Moreover, it is a format that we can call hybrid because it combines the ease of automated processing with the possibility of being scanned directly by people with a simple text editor.
This guide covers the basic features of this type of format and a compendium of guidelines for publishing correctly in tabular data, especially in CSV. The guidelines are accompanied by suggestions for free tools that stand out for their ease of working with CSV files and the extra functionality they provide. In addition, a summary of the guidelines in the guide is also available in the form of a Cheet Sheet for ease of use and reference.
What are the main new features of the 2025 update?
The guide has been revised in 2025 to incorporate new sections on common errors and solutions, validation of data types with practical code examples, advanced handling of date fields, and extending the toolbox with tools such as Rainbow CSV and OpenRefine, as well as improved guidelines for optimising data import/export and the handling of large volumes of data.
Blog
Most likely, most of us will know, or at least have heard of blockchain technology, because of its relationship with the most popular cryptocurrency nowadays - Bitcoin. However, blockchain is not a technology born solely to sustain this new digital economy, but like many other blockchain technologies its main purpose is storing and managing data chains in a decentralized and distributed way.
Blockchain has a number of features that that will make it a useful technology in several fields of application: privacy, (quasi) anonymity, integrity, trust distribution, transparency, security, sustainability and Open Source. While it is clear that its most widespread application so far is in the field of finance, and more specifically cryptocurrencies, it can also be very useful for many other areas, both within and outside of governments, particularly everything related to personal identificationor the protection of personal data through the decentralization of privacy.
Regarding the improvement of governments, blockchain can contribute in very diverse areas such as the provision of public services, the authenticity of public registers, the management of public sector data, the fight against corruption or the guarantees in the voting processes among others. There are also dozens of examples of entrepreneurs applying this technology to innovate in such important fields such as health or agriculture.
In short, blockchain is a technology with the potential to transform our political systems and at the same time enable relevant social changes. But, as happens also with any other disruptive technology and still in the maturation phase, not all are advantages and we will also find some disadvantages and limitations to be overcome, such as scalability problems, the high computational cost and interconnection that support the operations, the environmental impact associated with that cost, the excessive centralization of each chain or the high complexity of the cryptographic processes.
On the other hand, even though blockchain has quickly become a trendy technology and despite the apparent simplicity of the underlying concept, it remains at the same time one of the most cryptic and misunderstood technologies as regards its potential beneficiaries. Therefore, in order for these decentralized data management technologies to become popular in the near future, it will also be necessary to face another type of entry barriers of a more structural nature related to the need for more training, an improvement in usability, greater capacity for institutional adaptation or the development of the necessary regulatory changes to support it.
Noticia
We live in a connected world, where we all carry a mobile device that allows us to capture our environment and share it with whoever we want through social networks or different tools. This allows us to maintain contact with our loved ones even if we are thousands of kilometers away, but ... What if we also take advantage of this circumstance to enrich scientific research? We would be talking about what is known as citizen science.
Citizen science seeks "general public engagement in scientific research activities when citizens actively contribute to science either with their intellectual effort or surrounding knowledge or with their tools and resources". This definition is taken from the Green Paper on Citizen Science, developed in the framework of the European project Socientize (FP7), and explain us some of the keys to citizen science. In particular, citizen science is:
- Participatory: Citizens of all types can collaborate in different ways, through the collection of information, or by making their experience and knowledge available to the research. This mixture of profiles creates a perfect atmosphere for innovation and new discoveries.
- Volunteer: Given that participation is often altruistic, citizen science projects need to be aligned with the demands and interests of society. For this reason, projects that awaken the social conscience of citizens (for example, those related to environmentalism) are common.
- Efficient: Thanks to the technological advances that we mentioned at the beginning, samples of the environment can be captured with greater ubiquity and immediacy. In addition, it facilitates the interconnection, and with it the cooperation, of companies, researchers and civil society. All this generate cost reduction and agile results.
- Open: The data, metadata and publications generated during the investigation are published in open and accessible formats. This fact makes information easier to reuse and facilitate the repetition of research investigations to ensure its accuracy and soundness.
In short, this type of initiative seeks to generate a more democratic science that responds to the interests of all those involved, but above all, responds to the interest of citizens. And that generates information that can be reused in favour of society. Let's see some examples:
- Mosquito Alert: This project seeks to fight against the tiger mosquito and the yellow fever mosquito, species that transmit diseases such as Zika, Dengue or Chikungunya. In this case, citizen participation consists in sending photographs of insects observed in the environment that are likely to belong to these species. A team of professionals analyzes the images to validate the findings. The data generated allows to monitor and make predictions about their behavior, which helps control their expansion. All this information is shared openly through GBIF España.
- Sponsor a rock: With the objective of favoring the conservation of the Spanish geological heritage, the participants in this project commit to visit, at least once a year, the place of geological interest that they have sponsored. They will have to warn of any action or threat that they observe (anomalies, aggressions, pillaging of minerals or fossils ...). The information will help enrich the Spanish Inventory of Places of Geological Interest.
- RitmeNatura.cat: The project consists of following the seasonal changes in plants and animals: when flowering is, the appearance of new insects, the changes in bird migration ... The objective is to control the effects of the climate change. The results can be downloaded in this link.
- Identification of near-Earth asteroids: Participants in the project will help identify asteroids using astronomical images. The Minor Planet Center (organism of the International Astronomical Union responsible for the minor bodies of the Solar System) will evaluate the data to improve the orbits of these objects and estimate more accurately the probability of a possible impact with the Earth. You can see some of the results here.
- Arturo: An area where citizen science can bring great advantages is in the training of artificial intelligences. This is the case of Arturo, an automatic learning algorithm designed to determine which the most optimal urban conditions are. To do this, collaborators must answer a questionnaire where they will choose the images that best fit their concept of a habitable environment. The objective is to help technicians and administrations to generate environments aligned with the needs of citizens. The data generated and the model used can be downloaded at the following link.
If you are interested in knowing more projects of this type, you can visit the Spanish Citizen Science webpage whose objective is to increase knowledge and vision about citizen science. It includes the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology and the Ibercivis Foundation. A quick look at the projects section will let you know what kind of activities are being carried out. Maybe you find one of your interest...