The tale of a data innovator at GreenMov project

Hello. My name is David, I am a small SME owner and city innovator. I am trying to build new services for my small company around data for mobility services. Although smart cities are a well-established trend, my take is that there is a huge potential for actual innovation. And even more for those innovations that involve directly to the citizens.

As a SME owner, I need to remain profitable and open data sources (free to access) show great potential for me. Based on my experience there are several potential obstacles. First is the lack of API from the data sources, documented enough and tested in real case scenarios. Fortunately, at GreenMov project, there is a well-documented API based on NGSI-LD standard standardized by an independent standardization body (ETSI).

Another very relevant problem is determining where a specific data source is actually. That is, they meet their claimed update frequency. Last but not least another challenge is finding out what standard data model is used and whether this standard will be the same for the next data source or not. Again the data standards are documented in the smart data models program and merging also the OSLO ontology.

There are some other inconveniences like the lack of consolidation of data sources (some portals divide data sources per years / months, but this is not our case for the moment). When data sources are split, it forces us to consolidate them for using the data.

I am an entrepreneur but also a citizen, therefore I cannot avoid my concern about what can be my contribution to fighting climate change and making it easier for others to contribute themselves. In order to reach this goal, I am exploring the possibility to create a service in which the citizens can easily choose what is a more environmentally friendly way of moving across cities. And it also includes the impact of every type of pollution on the users like air pollution but also noise pollution or whatever. I am inspired by some other businesses like Bikecitizens or Moovit that also profit from the city’s release of open data regarding mobility or plume labs for pollution and air quality.

Thus, I welcome GreenMov-like projects. They are helping me out to check if such a business can actually be feasible. I love to deal with real-time data sources coming from the cities, and the example of the cities/regions participating in GreenMov (Murcia/Molina De Segura, Flanders, and Nice côte D’Azur Metropolis) is a fair example. I love to have a documented API, like NGSI-LD that explains precisely what can be done. Consequently, this makes it quite easy for my team of developers to understand how the information can be retrieved and how to process it.

When my team is developing the services, they also love that somebody cares about explaining what the meaning of the different fields in the data sources is. For the GreenMov data sources, they not only have identified the data sources but also they have made publicly available the definition of the fields.

As an example, these:

and several others are pending to be published. All of them include their field descriptions, and what data types I could be expecting to get. They also have some examples of payloads to develop my service. And I also love to have some support for these standards and to have an easy way to suggest changes/extensions of the data models.

What suggestions could appear in the coming future? As an example new pollutants to be controlled. Making an impact, either social or economic, is a challenge and many hurdles need to be overcome. But with GreenMov data sources the main ones are no longer an inconvenience. Developing a service will have to face market acceptance finding a viable business model and possibly several other issues under my responsibility. This is my job and fortunately, thanks to the current approach of these data sources no other technical issues from the sources are in front of me.

Alberto Abella

FIWARE Foundation