Demografía

Today, transparency, innovation and economic development are key to the progress of public institutions. In this context, the Cabildo of Tenerife has undertaken an ambitious open data project that goes beyond the mere publication of information. The aim of this strategy is to ffacilitate access to information, encourage the reuse of data and generate social and economic value for the island.

Through its open data portal, the Cabildo not only promotes transparency and accountability, but also drives innovation in areas as diverse as tourism, transport and the rural environment.

Scope and objectives of the project

The open data portal of the Cabildo de Tenerife publishes datasets of the entire public sector of the island, including all the local councils of the island. In particular, this includes municipalities with less than 20,000 inhabitants, as established in Law 8/2015 on Island Councils. The main objectives of this project are:

• Strengthen the internal and external culture of data use.
• Increase transparency and accountability through data.
• Generate wealth in society through the reuse of information.

In this website you can find open datasets on tourism, transport, culture and leisure and rural environment, among others. In order to offer this information the Cabildo of Tenerife benefits from the collaboration of various bodies such as:

• Transportes Interurbanos de Tenerife (TITSA)
• Tenerife Island Water Board (CIATF)
• Metropolitan of Tenerife
• SINPROMI (Insular Society for the Promotion of People with Disabilities)
• ITER (Technological Institute of Renewable Energies)
• IASS (Insular Institute for Social and Socio-sanitary Care)
• Agrocabildo

Most downloaded and significant datasets

Some of the portal's most downloaded and significant datasets include:

• Network of weather stations, with updates every 10 minutes.
• Influx of recreational areas, such as Punta Teno and Barranco de Masca, with information on the number of vehicles and people, and the itineraries of trails or routes on the island.
• Indicators of economic development and tourist occupancy, including the number of tourists accommodated by category and area.
• Prices of fruit and vegetable products in Mercatenerife.
• Public transport Origin Destination Matrix, which shows the relationships between the places of origin and destination of journeys made on the island.

The Cabildo's open data project is clearly oriented towards compliance with the Technical Interoperability Standard (NTI) for the Reuse of Information Resources and the DCAT-AP model, areas in which it continues to make progress.

Use cases and applications to incentivise reuse

Beyond publishing open datasets, the Cabildo de Tenerife actively promotes their use through the development of use cases and applications. Examples of this work include:

• Development of a urban development plan in the municipality of Santiago del Teide through the reuse of various datasets.
• Project on meteorological data forecasting.
• Tourist places and traffic scorecards. Specifically:
  
  • On tourism: tourist accommodation places by municipality and type, and the occupancy rate by type of accommodation from 1978 to 2023.
  • About traffic: dashboard from Power BI showing the average daily traffic intensity at a station on the island for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023.

On the other hand, in order to promote the reuse of the data on its portal, the Cabildo of Tenerife organises various activities, such as the I Ideas Reuse Competition, in which 25 proposals were received. This competition will be followed by a second edition that will reward the development of applications.

In addition, there are talks and webinars, such as the one organised in collaboration with the Chair of Big Data, Open Data and Blockchain of the University of La Laguna on how to use open data from Tenerife to drive innovation , which you can see again here.

Next steps AI and community building

In order to measure the impact of open data, the Cabildo de Tenerife uses tools such as Google Analytics which allows the analysis of user interaction with the available data. The next big step, as reported by the organisation, will be to implement a virtual assistant with generative AI that will allow:

• Analysing data with natural language.
• Discover trends and correlations.
• Bringing information closer to any citizen.

In parallel, the Cabildo of Tenerife will also continue working on new avenues of collaboration with the island's municipalities and other entities, with the aim of expanding the amount and variety of open data available to citizens.

From datos.gob.es, we encourage development and research professionals, students and citizens to explore, reuse and create value with Tenerife's data.

Visit datos.tenerife.es

Data on older people can play a crucial role in promoting healthy ageing, assisting the development and maintenance of the physical and mental capacities that enable well-being in old age. This open data can be used for the development of policies to better respond to the needs of older people, such as the promotion of home care services or the creation of more accessible and safer urban spaces. They can also be used by researchers to analyse patterns and trends in your health, or by companies and developers devising solutions to improve your quality of life.  Also, such open data enables older people and their families to access relevant information about their health and well-being, empowering them to make informed choices and actively participate in their care. And these are just a few examples of possible uses!

In this article, we are going to explain two projects, linked to the Barcelona Open Data Initiative, which seek to promote the provision of data on the elderly to the public, with the aim of promoting its reuse and achieving benefits such as those mentioned above.

Ranking 50 datasets on healthy ageing

A few months ago, the Barcelona Open Data Initiative, with the support of the Diputació de Barcelona, launched a call through their social networks to identify the fifty best datasets on wellbeing and healthy ageing of older people. Through this collaborative action, to which various users have contributed, a ranking has been drawn up and is now available.

Here are some examples of datasets and the thematic categories to which they belong. All of them are suitable for re-use and offer information of great social value.

• Data related to public support, such as public support for elderly care or home help services..
• Data on services and resources available, such as services for dependent persons (day centre for older people and residence for older people), the inclusive community action resources or the active ageing workshops..
• Data related to aspects about their social situation , such as active older people, loneliness in older people or the gender digital divide.
• Data related to survey and statistics, such as the survey of users of the Telecare Service, lthe statistics on social services for the elderly or the ageing evolution of the population over 65 years of age from 2024-1975.
• Data from studies on the subject, such as the study on the accessibility of public buildings or the study on the satisfaction of users of the Meals on Wheels service..

These are just a few examples, but you can consult the complete list on the website of Iniciativa Open Data Barcelona.

 Open Data Barcelona Initiative has also created in previous years compilations of materials and rankings of datasets on other topics of social interest, such as climate change or municipalities with friendly public spaces..

Data Observatory x Seniors

Barcelona Open Data Initiative and the Democratic Union of Pensioners and Retirees of Spain, with support from the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030, also presented a few months ago the first Data website of the Data Observatory x Seniors. Its aim is to facilitate the analysis of healthy ageing in Spain, strategic decision-making and public intervention in rural and urban environments, in order to promote the autonomy, dignity and adaptability of older people.

At the moment, you can find it on this website:

• A database where data sets from various sources, such as the National Statistics Institute (INE) or the Ministry of the Interior, arecollected.
• A space where data is displayed in a simple way through interactive graphics, aimed at both private citizens interested in the subject and professionals who want to plan, organise or propose some kind of related service. The visualisations focus on the intervention of older people in the world of associations, segmented by urban and rural municipalities, as well as their involvement in other forms of participation and leisure activities that promote social interaction and well-being in general.

The idea is that the portal will also include training tools and options.

These two projects highlight examples of categories of data and tools that can be made available to citizens in order to understand how older people live and act, with the aim of improving their quality of life. A goal to which we must all contribute, as highlighted by the World Health Organisation with its Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-2030) initiative. In the face of demographic change and the ageing of the population that we are experiencing, it is necessary to join forces to ensure that we can all enjoy an old age with the maximum possible well-being.

The Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Administration has launched a grant for the development of Data Spaces for Intelligent Urban Infrastructures (EDINT). This project envisages the creation of a multi-sectoral data space that will bring together all the information collected by local authorities. The project will be carried out through the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) and will receive a subsidy of 13 million euros, as stated in the Official State Gazette published on Wednesday 16 October.

A single point of access to smart urban infrastructure data

Thanks to this action, it will be possible to finance, develop and manage a multisectoral data space that will bring together all the information collected by the different Spanish municipalities in an aggregated and centralized manner. It should be recalled that data spaces enable the voluntary sharing of information in an environment of sovereignty, trust and security, established through integrated governance, organisational, regulatory and technical mechanisms.

EDINT will act as a single neutral point of access to smart city information, enabling companies, researchers and administrations to access information without the need to visit the data infrastructure of each municipality, increasing agility and reducing costs. In addition, it will allow connection with other sectoral data spaces.

The sharing of this data will help to accelerate technological innovation processes in smart city products and services. Businesses and organisations will also be able to use the data for the improvement of processes and efficiency of their activities.

The Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) will implement the project.

The EDINT project will be articulated through the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces.The FEMP reaches more than 95% of the Spanish population, which gives it a deep and close knowledge of the needs and challenges of data management in Spanish municipalities and provinces.

Among the actions to be carried out are:

• Development and implementation of the data infrastructure and platform, which will store data from existing Smart City systems.
• Incorporation of local entities and companies interested in accessing the data space.
• Development of three use cases on the data space, focusing on the following areas: "smart mobility", "managed cities and territories" and "mapping the economic and social activity of cities and territories".
• Definition of the governance schemes that will regulate the operation of the project, guaranteeing the interoperability of the data, as well as the management of the complex network of stakeholders (companies, academic institutions and governmental organisations).
• Setting up Centres of Excellence and Data Offices, with physical workspaces. These centres will be responsible for the collection of lessons learned and the development of new use cases.

It is a ongoing and sustainable long-term project that will be open to the participation of new actors, be they data providers or data consumers, at any time.

A project aligned with Europe

This assistance is part of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, funded by the European Union-Next Generation EU. The creation of data spaces is envisaged in the European Data Strategy, as a mechanism to establish a common data market to ensure the European Union's leadership in the global data economy. In particular, it aims to achieve the free flow of information for the benefit of businesses, researchers and public administrations.

Moreover, data spaces are a key area of the Digital Spain 2026 Agenda, which is driving, among other issues, the acceleration of the digitalisation processes of the productive fabric. To this end, sectoral and data-intensive digitalisation projects are being developed, especially in strategic economic sectors for the country, such as agri-food, mobility, health, tourism, industry, commerce and energy.

The launch of the EDINT project joins other previously launched initiatives such as funding and development grants for use cases and data space demonstrators, which encourage the promotion of public-private sectoral innovation ecosystems.

Sharing data under conditions of sovereignty, control and security not only allows local governments to improve efficiency and decision-making, but also drives the creation of creative solutions to various urban challenges, such as optimising traffic or improving public services. In this sense, actions such as the Data Spaces for Smart Urban Infrastructures represent a step forward in achieving smarter, more sustainable and efficient cities for all citizens.

Citizen science is consolidating itself as one of the most relevant sources of most relevant sources of reference in contemporary research contemporary research. This is recognised by the Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), which defines citizen science as a methodology and a means for the promotion of scientific culture in which science and citizen participation strategies converge.

We talked some time ago about the importance importance of citizen science in society in society. Today, citizen science projects have not only increased in number, diversity and complexity, but have also driven a significant process of reflection on how citizens can actively contribute to the generation of data and knowledge.

To reach this point, programmes such as Horizon 2020, which explicitly recognised citizen participation in science, have played a key role. More specifically, the chapter "Science with and for society"gave an important boost to this type of initiatives in Europe and also in Spain. In fact, as a result of Spanish participation in this programme, as well as in parallel initiatives, Spanish projects have been increasing in size and connections with international initiatives.

This growing interest in citizen science also translates into concrete policies. An example of this is the current Spanish Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation (EECTI), for the period 2021-2027, which includes "the social and economic responsibility of R&D&I through the incorporation of citizen science" which includes "the social and economic responsibility of I through the incorporation of citizen science".

In short, we commented some time agoin short, citizen science initiatives seek to encourage a more democratic sciencethat responds to the interests of all citizens and generates information that can be reused for the benefit of society. Here are some examples of citizen science projects that help collect data whose reuse can have a positive impact on society:

AtmOOs Academic Project: Education and citizen science on air pollution and mobility.

In this programme, Thigis developed a citizen science pilot on mobility and the environment with pupils from a school in Barcelona's Eixample district. This project, which is already replicable in other schoolsconsists of collecting data on student mobility patterns in order to analyse issues related to sustainability.

On the website of AtmOOs Academic you can visualise the results of all the editions that have been carried out annually since the 2017-2018 academic year and show information on the vehicles used by students to go to class or the emissions generated according to school stage.

WildINTEL: Research project on life monitoring in Huelva

The University of Huelva and the State Agency for Scientific Research (CSIC) are collaborating to build a wildlife monitoring system to obtain essential biodiversity variables. To do this, remote data capture photo-trapping cameras and artificial intelligence are used.

The wildINTEL project project focuses on the development of a monitoring system that is scalable and replicable, thus facilitating the efficient collection and management of biodiversity data. This system will incorporate innovative technologies to provide accurate and objective demographic estimates of populations and communities.

Through this project which started in December 2023 and will continue until December 2026, it is expected to provide tools and products to improve the management of biodiversity not only in the province of Huelva but throughout Europe.

IncluScience-Me: Citizen science in the classroom to promote scientific culture and biodiversity conservation.

This citizen science project combining education and biodiversity arises from the need to address scientific research in schools. To do this, students take on the role of a researcher to tackle a real challenge: to track and identify the mammals that live in their immediate environment to help update a distribution map and, therefore, their conservation.

IncluScience-Me was born at the University of Cordoba and, specifically, in the Research Group on Education and Biodiversity Management (Gesbio), and has been made possible thanks to the participation of the University of Castilla-La Mancha and the Research Institute for Hunting Resources of Ciudad Real (IREC), with the collaboration of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology - Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

The Memory of the Herd: Documentary corpus of pastoral life.

This citizen science project which has been active since July 2023, aims to gather knowledge and experiences from sheperds and retired shepherds about herd management and livestock farming.

The entity responsible for the programme is the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social, although the Museu Etnogràfic de Ripoll, Institució Milà i Fontanals-CSIC, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Universitat Rovira i Virgili also collaborate.

Through the programme, it helps to interpret the archaeological record and contributes to the preservation of knowledge of pastoral practice. In addition, it values the experience and knowledge of older people, a work that contributes to ending the negative connotation of "old age" in a society that gives priority to "youth", i.e., that they are no longer considered passive subjects but active social subjects.

Plastic Pirates Spain: Study of plastic pollution in European rivers.

It is a citizen science project which has been carried out over the last year with young people between 12 and 18 years of age in the communities of Castilla y León and Catalonia aims to contribute to generating scientific evidence and environmental awareness about plastic waste in rivers.

To this end, groups of young people from different educational centres, associations and youth groups have taken part in sampling campaigns to collect data on the presence of waste and rubbish, mainly plastics and microplastics in riverbanks and water.

In Spain, this project has been coordinated by the BETA Technology Centre of the University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia together with the University of Burgos and the Oxygen Foundation. You can access more information on their website.

Here are some examples of citizen science projects. You can find out more at the Observatory of Citizen Science in Spain an initiative that brings together a wide range of educational resources, reports and other interesting information on citizen science and its impact in Spain. do you know of any other projects? Send it to us at dinamizacion@datos.gob.es and we can publicise it through our dissemination channels.

The year 2023 was undoubtedly the year of artificial intelligence. This has brought data, and therefore open data, back to the forefront, as it is the raw material that fuels this technology, which is key to value creation in our increasingly digital economy.

Perhaps that is why 2023 has also left us a number of new developments in terms of the drive to open data, many of which could lead to the creation of significant economic and social value through re-use. One of these developments is the  obligation for public sector bodies to open in the first half of 2024 a number of high-value datasets, already specified in a regulation that was published in the last few days of 2022 in order to implement the provisions of open data directive (2019). Specifically, there are six high-value thematic categories: geospatial, earth observation and environmental, meteorology, statistics, companies and company ownership and mobility.

In order to comply with this obligation and with the rest of the obligations set out in Directive 2019/1024, in 2023, Spain has amended the Law 37/2007 on the re-use of public sector information has been amended in Spain in 2023. This amendment emphasises the duty to encourage the openness of high-value data published under an open data attribution licence (CC BY 4.0 or equivalent), in machine-readable format and accompanied by metadata describing the characteristics of the datasets.

The European Statistical System and the National Statistical Plan 2021-2024

Of the six thematic categories, number four, Statistics, is dedicated to statistical datasets, characterised by their broad definition and specification. It is based on the European Statistical System which ensures that European statistics produced in all Member States are reliable, following common criteria and definitions and treating data in an appropriate way, so that they are always comparable between EU countries. Specifically, the regulation defines 21 statistical datasets as high-value  (it actually includes 22, but one of them is redundant as it is broken down into three components: population, fertility and mortality).

The National Statistical Institute] is part of the European Statistical System and is in charge of the production of the harmonised national statistics that Eurostat then compiles and analyses to provide comparable figures, so that Community policies can be defined, implemented and analysed.

In Spain, the National Statistical Plan is the main instrument that organises the statistical activity of the General State Administration, the backbone of statistics for state purposes. The current plan was published at the end of 2020, covering the 2021-2024 period.

The National Statistical Plan 2021-2024 includes new strategic lines such as the use of new sources of information, including, for example, Big Data and massive databases. It also promotes new production models, such as experimental statistics, and incorporates a special focus on the inclusion of gender, disability, age and nationality perspectives, as well as improvements in real estate market information, especially on rentals.

High-value statistical datasets

In these strategic lines, the plan does not yet contain any mention of high-value datasets. However, as the plan is developed and implemented through specific annual programmes detailing the statistical operations to be carried out, their objectives, the bodies involved, and the budget appropriations statistical operations to be carried out, their objectives, the bodies involved and the budget appropriations needed to finance them, it is possible to get an idea of which of these statistical operations are aligned with the 21 categories of high value Ssatistical datasets regulation.

The following table shows the possible equivalences:

 En definitiva, parece que la mayor parte de las variables clave que el reglamento europeo ha previsto para los conjuntos estadísticos de alto valor están ya produciéndose de acuerdo con el plan estadístico nacional vigente. El plan estadístico nacional, que sucederá al actualmente vigente, comenzará en 2025 y a buen seguro se publicará a lo largo de este 2024. Este año veremos en Europa un intenso trabajo para cumplir con las obligaciones del reglamento, ya que, además, la Comisión Europea ha publicado recientemente el informe "Identification of data themes for the extensions of public sector High-Value Datasets" donde se incluyen siete nuevas categorías que se estudia considerar como datos de alto valor y que previsiblemente acabarán siendo incluidas en el reglamento.

All in all, it seems that most of the key variables that the European regulation has foreseen for high value statistical datasets are already being produced according to the existing national statistical plan. The national statistical plan, which will succeed the current one, will start in 2025 and will most likely be published in the course of 2024. This year will see intense work in Europe to comply with the obligations of the regulation, as the European Commission has also recently published the report "Identification of data themes for the extensions of public sector High-Value Datasets" which includes seven new categories that are being considered as high-value datasets and are expected to be included in the regulation and which will foreseeably end up being included in the regulation.

After months of new developments, the pace of advances in artificial intelligence does not seem to be slowing down - quite the contrary. A few weeks ago, when reviewing the latest developments in this field on the occasion of the 2023 deadline, video generation from text instructions was considered to be still in its infancy. However, just a few weeks later, we have seen the announcement of SORA. With this tool, it seems that the possibility to generate realistic videos, up to one minute long, from textual descriptions is here.

Every day, the tools we have access to become more sophisticated and we are constantly amazed by their ability to perform tasks that once seemed exclusive to the human mind. We have quickly become accustomed to generating text and images from written instructions and have incorporated these tools into our daily lives to enhance and improve the way we do our jobs. With each new development, pushing the boundaries a little further than we imagined, the possibilities seem endless.

Advances in Artificial Intelligence, powered by open data and other technologies such as those associated with the Web3, are helping to rethink the future of virtually every field of our activity: from solutions to address the challenges of climate change, to artistic creation, be it music, literature or painting[6], to medical diagnosis, agriculture or the generation of trust to drive the creation of social and economic value.

In this article we will review the developments that impact on a field where, in the coming years, interesting advances are likely to be made thanks to the combination of artificial intelligence and open data. We are talking about the design and planning of smarter, more sustainable and liveable cities for all their inhabitants.

Urban Planning and Management

Urban planning and management is complicated because countless complex interactions need to be anticipated, analysed and resolved. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect major breakthroughs from the analysis of the data that cities increasingly open up on mobility, energy consumption, climatology and pollution, planning and land use, etc. New techniques and tools provided by generative artificial intelligence combined, for example, with intelligent agents will allow a deeper interpretation and simulation of urban dynamics.

In this sense, this new combination of technologies could be used for example to design more efficient, sustainable and liveable cities, anticipating the future needs of the population and dynamically adapting to changes in real time. Thus, new smart urban models would be used to optimise everything from traffic flow to resource allocation by simulating behaviour through intelligent agents.

Figure 1: Images generated by Urbanistai.com

 

Urbanist.ai is one of the first examples of an advanced urban analytics platform, based on generative artificial intelligence, that aims to transform the way urban planning tasks are currently conceived.  The services it currently provides already allow the participatory transformation of urban spaces from images, but its ambition goes further and it plans to incorporate new techniques that redefine the way cities are planned. There is even a version of UrbanistAI designed to introduce children to the world of urban planning.

Going one step further, the generation of 3D city models is something that tools such as InfiniCity have already made available to users. Although there are still many challenges to be overcome, the results are promising. These technologies could make it substantially cheaper to generate digital twins on which to run simulations that anticipate problems before they are built.

Available data

However, as with other developments based on Generative AI, these issues would not be possible without data, and especially not without open data.  All new developments in AI use a combination of private and public data in their training, but in few cases is the training dataset known with certainty, as it is not made public. Data can come from a wide variety of sources, such as IoT sensors, government records or public transport systems, and is the basis for providing a holistic view of how cities function holistic view of how cities function and how and how their inhabitants interact with the urban environment.

The growing importance of open data in training these models is reflected in initiatives such as the Task Force on AI Data Assets and Open Government, launched by the US Department of Commerce, which will be tasked with preparing open public data for Artificial Intelligence. This means not only machine-readable formats, but also machine-understandable metadata. With open data enriched by metadata and organised in interpretable formats, artificial intelligence models could yield much more accurate results.

A long-established and basic data source is OpenStreetmap (OSM), a collaborative project that makes a free and editable map of open global geographic dataavailable to the community. It includes detailed information on streets, squares, parks, buildings, etc. which is crucial as a basis for urban mobility analysis, transport planning or infrastructure management. The immense cost of developing such a resource is only within the reach of large technology companies, making it invaluable to all initiatives that use it as a basis.

 

Figure 2: OpenStreetmap Images (OSM)

 

More specific datasets such as HoliCity, a 3D data asset with rich structural information, including 6,300 real-world views, are proving valuable. For example, recent scientific work based on this dataset has shown that it is possible for a model fed with millions of street images to predict neighbourhood characteristics, such as home values or crime rates.

Along these lines, Microsoft has released an extensive collection of building contours automatically generated from satellite imagery, covering a large number of countries and regions.

 

Figure 3: Urban Atlas Images (OSM)

Microsoft Building Footprints provide a detailed basis for 3D city modelling, urban density analysis, infrastructure planning and natural hazard management, giving an accurate picture of the physical structure of cities.

We also have Urban Atlas, an initiative that provides free and open access to detailed land use and land cover information for more than 788 Functional Urban Areas in Europe. It is part of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Serviceprogramme, and provides valuable insights into the spatial distribution of urban features, including residential, commercial, industrial, green areas and water bodies, street tree maps, building block height measurements, and even population estimates.

Risks and ethical considerations

However, we must not lose sight of the risks posed, as in other domains, by the incorporation of artificial intelligence into the planning and management of cities, as discussed in the UN report on "Risks, Applications and Governance of AI for Cities". For example, concerns about privacy and security of personal information raised by mass data collection, or the risk of algorithmic biases that may deepen existing inequalities. It is therefore essential to ensure that data collection and use is conducted in an ethical and transparent manner, with a focus on equity and inclusion.

This is why, as city design moves towards the adoption of artificial intelligence, dialogue and collaboration between technologists, urban planners, policy makers and society at large will be key to ensuring that smart city development aligns with the values of sustainability, equity and inclusion. Only in this way can we ensure that the cities of the future

are not only more efficient and technologically advanced, but also more humane and welcoming for all their inhabitants.

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Content prepared by Jose Luis Marín, Senior Consultant in Data, Strategy, Innovation & Digitalization. The contents and views reflected in this publication are the sole responsibility of the author.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of targets adopted by the international community aimed at addressing the most pressing challenges of our time. These goals were born simultaneously with the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data and the International Open Data Charter, which provided a coalition of experts willing to harness the benefits of open data for the new development agenda.

In this regard, open data plays a very relevant role within the development agenda as indicators of progress towards the SDGs, as they allow measuring and evaluating their progress, as well as improving accountability through sharing that data with the rest of the community, providing great value in multiple ways:

• Facilitating decision-making when designing policies and strategies to help meet the objectives;
• Identifying inequalities and specific challenges among different regions or population groups;
• Improving efficiency in policy and program implementation;
• As an engine of innovation through research and development.

Today, there are large global databases, both generalist and thematic, that we can use for these purposes, in addition to all the national data sources available in our own country. However, there is still a long way to go in this regard: the proportion of SDG indicators that are conceptually clear and have good national coverage is still 66%, according to the latest SDG progress report published in 2023. This leads us to continue facing data gaps in vital areas such as poverty, hunger, education, equality, sustainability, climate, seas, and justice, among others. Additionally, there is also a fairly general and significant lack of data disaggregated by age and/or sex, making it very difficult to properly monitor the potential progress of the objectives regarding the most vulnerable population groups.

This report takes a journey through the dual role that open data plays in supporting national and global progress in achieving the SDGs. The first part of the report focuses on the better-known role of open data as mere indicators when measuring progress towards the objectives, while the second part addresses its role as a key tool and fundamental raw material for the development of society in general and for the achievement of the objectives themselves in particular. To this end, it explores which datasets could have the greatest potential in each case, showing some practical examples, both national and at the European level, in various specific development objectives.

If you want to learn more about the content of this report, you can watch the interview with its author.

 The active participation of young people in civic and political life is one of the keys to strengthening democracy in Europe. Analyzing and understanding the voice of young people provides insight into their attitudes and opinions, something that helps to foresee future trends in society with sufficient room for maneuver to address their needs and concerns towards a more prosperous and comfortable future for all.   

 In the mission to gain a clearer perspective on how they participate in Europe, open data has become a valuable tool. In this post, we will explore how young people in Europe actively engage in society and politics through relevant European Union (EU) open data published on the European open data portal.   

Youth commitment in the European elections  

 The European Union has as one of its objectives to promote the active participation of young people in democracy and society. Their participation in elections and civic activities enriches European democracy. Young people bring diverse ideas and perspectives, which contributes to decision-making and ensures that policies are tailored to their needs and challenges. In addition, their participation contributes to a political system that reflects the interests of all citizens, which in turn fosters an inclusive and peaceful society.  

 In the last European Parliament elections, the highest turnout in the last 20 years was achieved, with more than 50% of the European population voting, as corroborated by the EU's Eurobarometer post-election survey. This increase in turnout was largely due to an increase in youth participation. 

The data show that the younger generation (under 25) increased their electoral participation by 14% to 42%, while the participation of 25-39 year olds increased by 12% to 47%, compared between the 2014 and 2019 European elections. This growth in youth participation raises a question: what motivated young people to participate more? According to the 2021 Eurobarometer Youth Survey, a sense of duty as a citizen (32%) and a willingness to take responsibility for the future (32%) were the main factors motivating young people to vote in the European elections. 

Why do young people want to participate in the EU?

In addition to voting in elections, there are other ways in which young people demonstrate that they are an active part of citizenship. The Youth Survey 2021 reveals interesting data about their interest in politics and civic life.

In general, politics is a topic that interests them. The majority of participants in the Youth Survey 2021 claimed to discuss politics with friends or family (85%). In addition, many said they understand how their country's national government works (58%). However, most young people feel they have little influence on important decisions, laws, and policies that affect them. Young people feel they have more say in their local government (47%), than in the national government (40%) or at the EU level (30%).

The next step, after understanding the policy, is action. Young people believe that certain political and civic activities are more effective than others in getting their voice to decision-makers. In order, voting in elections (41%), participating in protests or street demonstrations (33%) and participating in petitions (30%) were considered the three most effective activities by respondents. Many young people had voted in their last local, national or European elections (46%) and had created or signed a petition (42%).

However, the survey reveals an interesting divergence between young people's perceptions and their actions. On some occasions, youth get involved in activities even though they are not what they consider to be the most effective, as in the case of online signature petitions. On the other hand, they do not always participate in activities that they perceive to be effective, such as street protests or contact with politicians.

The youth impulse for European democracy

Young people want the issues they see as priorities to be on the political agenda of the next European elections. A more recent special Eurobarometer on democracy in action in 2023 revealed that young people aged 15-24 are the age group most satisfied with the functioning of democracy in the EU (61%, compared to the EU average of 54%).

Climate change is a particularly prominent concern among young people, with 40% of respondents aged 15-24 considering this issue a priority, compared to 31% of the general EU population.

To encourage youth participation in the European political agenda, initiatives have been developed that use open data to bring politics closer to citizens. Examples such as TrackmyEU and Democracy Game seek to engage young people in politics and enable them to access information on EU policies and participate in debates and civic activities.

In general, open data provides valuable insights into many realities, for example, that affecting youth and their interaction in society and politics. This analysis enables governments and public administrations to make informed decisions on issues affecting this social group. Young Europeans are interested in politics, actively participate in elections and get involved in youth organizations; they are concerned about issues such as inequality and climate change. Open data is also used in initiatives that promote the participation of young people in political and civic life, further strengthening European democracy.

In an increasingly digital and data-driven society, access to open data is essential to understand the concerns and interests of youth and their participation in civic and political decision-making. As a part of an active and engaged citizenry, youth have an important role to play in Europe's future, and open data is an essential tool to support their participation.

Content based on the post from the European open data portal Understanding youth engagement in Europe through open data.

El Instituto de Estadística y Cartografía de Andalucía (IECA), in collaboration with the Andalusian Agency for International Development Cooperation (AACID), has incorporated new indicators at the municipal level into its Sustainable Development Indicators System for Andalusia for the Agenda 2030. This effort aims to integrate statistical and geographical information while enhancing the efficiency of the Andalusian public administration and the information services provided to society.

Thanks to these efforts, Andalusia has been selected as one of the participating regions in the European project "REGIONS 2030: Monitoring the SDGs in EU regions," along with nine other regions in the European Union. All of these regions share a strong commitment to the analysis and fulfillment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), recognizing the importance of this work in decision-making and sustainable regional development.

The "REGIONS 2030" project, funded by the European Parliament and developed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission in collaboration with the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) and EUROSTAT, aims to fill data gaps in monitoring the SDGs in EU regions.

Image 1: "REGIONS 2030" Project: Monitoring the SDGs in EU regions.

Source: Andalusian Institute of Statistics and Cartography (IECA)

The new indicators incorporated are essential for measuring the progress of the SDGs

The Andalusian Institute of Statistics and Cartography, in collaboration with AACID, has created a set of indicators that allow for evaluating the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals at the regional level, available on their website. All the new municipal-level indicators are identified with the Joint Research Centre (municipal) for Andalusia, and they address 9 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

The methodology used for most of the indicators is based on georeferenced information from the Andalusian Institute of Statistics and Cartography, using publications on the Spatial Distribution of the Population in Andalusia and the Characterization and Distribution of Built Space in Andalusia as reference points.

One of the indicators provides information on Goal 1: No Poverty and measures the risks of poverty by assessing the percentage of people residing at an address where none of their members are affiliated with Social Security. This indicator reveals more unfavorable conditions in urban municipalities compared to rural ones, consistent with previous studies that identify cities as having more acute poverty situations than rural areas.

Similarly, the per capita Built-up Area indicator for Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities has been calculated using cadastral data and geospatial processes in geographic information systems.

Visualization and query of the new municipal indicators

Allow for obtaining information at the municipal level about the value and variation of the indicators compared to the previous year, both for the entire Andalusia region and different degrees of urbanization.

Image 2: Data visualization of the indicator.

Source: Andalusian Institute of Statistics and Cartography (IECA)

Moreover, the applied filter enables an analysis of the temporal and geographical evolution of the indicators in each of the considered areas, providing a temporal and territorial perspective.

Image 3: Visualization of the indicator's evolution by area.

Source: Andalusian Institute of Statistics and Cartography (IECA)

These results are presented through an interactive map at the municipal level, displaying the distribution of the indicator in the territory.

Image 4: Interactive map of the indicator.

Source: Andalusian Institute of Statistics and Cartography (IECA)

The data for the indicators are also available in downloadable structured formats (XLS, CSV, and JSON). Methodological information regarding the calculations for each indicator is provided as well.

The inclusion of Andalusia in the "REGIONS 2030" project

Has integrated all of this work with the existing Sustainable Development Indicators System for Andalusia for the Agenda 2030, which has been calculated and published by the IECA to date. This collective effort among different regions will serve to establish a methodology and select the most relevant regional indicators in Europe (NUTS2 European level) so that this methodology can be applied to all European regions in the future.

The "REGIONS 2030" project, after completing its initial work in Andalusia, has disseminated its results in the article "Monitoring the SDGs in Andalusia region, Spain," published by the European Commission in July 2023, and in an event held at the Three Cultures Foundation of the Mediterranean on September 27, under the title 'SDG Localisation and Monitoring Framework for 2030 Agenda Governance: Milestones & Challenges in Andalusia.' In this event, each selected region presented their results and discussed the needs, deficiencies, or lessons learned in generating their reports.

The "REGIONS 2030" project will conclude in December 2023 with the presentation and publication of a final report. This report will consolidate the ten regional reports generated during the monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals at the regional level in Europe, contributing to their effective monitoring as part of the proper implementation of the Agenda 2030.