Geodata interoperability and harmonization in transport: a case study of open transport net

Abstract

Background: In Europe, a lot of data portals are emerging on the local, national or interregional levels. These portals have a common objective to share data and information to its citizens and businesses, and to make information more accessible. However, studies showed that people are still facing difficulties in finding and reusing public sector information. To facilitate data reuse, the information should be available in a machine-readable format and agreed metadata standard, so that interoperability and discoverability could be enhanced. Methods: This article focuses on the interoperability and harmonization of spatial and non-spatial data in the transport field. Both the open data and geospatial world have stable standards (such as DCAT and INSPIRE), and the GeoDCAT-AP is the first attempt in combining the two worlds. Through a case study approach, this article aims to provide insights in the implementation of this new standard and other interoperability cases in transport, such as the Data Tank data management system and a harmonized model for road network data.

Cross-Border Open Data Sharing: Gioconda Project

“…The advantages of working on a unique standard is reflected on the reduction of efforts to identify information available in the datasets. For instance, the representation of two datasets with different semantics require the need to develop a common framework for their description, this process is referred to as harmonization (Veeckman et al, 2017). This is avoided thanks of the efforts of the European PAs.…”

Integrating Global Open Geo-Information for Major Disaster Assessment: A Case Study of the Myanmar Flood

“…When used for disaster damage assessment, explicit requirements should be a driving factor and are best handled for geo-information integration and not by integrating all forms of geographic analysis into one package, but by providing appropriate linkages to allow resource components to act in combination. Global and local geo-information integration has proven to be effective for efficient disaster damage assessment [34][35][36][37][38]. Such integration could be applied at the data, methodology, and information levels.…”

“…Some web-based geo-information integration tools have been developed for specific application services to identify data inconsistencies and for automatic integration. For example, the Open Transport Net project realized the integration of multi sourced open and geospatial datasets in the transportation domain, for which both standards and tools were facilitated as the approaches of data interoperability [38]. For some major disasters, geo-databases have been shared through web services for specific groups to facilitate crowd participation for damage assessments.…”

Accessibility of Brzozów by public transport on a local, regional and national scale

“…The problem of incomplete and outdated information is a problem that is not only associated with public transport in Poland. The availability of timetables constitutes one of the components of a properly functioning system (Cullinane & Strokes 1998) and as a rule they should be made readily available (Veeckman et al 2017). The data derived from timetables has been analysed according to the modified method described by R. Guzik (2010Guzik ( , 2012, in a database containing information on direct public transport connections (travel time and number of bus runs) between Brzozów and: a) Rzeszów (the capital of Podkarpackie Province); b) the capitals of the municipalities 2 in Brzozów District (Domaradz, Dydnia, Haczów, Jasienica Rosielna, Nozdrzec); c) capitals of districts surrounding Brzozów District (Krosno, Przemyśl, Rzeszów -previously included, Sanok, Strzyżów), attention: there is no direct connection with Przemyśl; d) any city in Poland that is not mentioned above.…”