GEO-C students organised 5th Open Data for Open Cities participatory workshop at Agile 2017 #agilewag2017

From May 9 to May 12, 2017, in Wageningen, The Netherlands, the 20th AGILE conference took place.

As part of the pre-conference program, GEO-C candidates  Mehdi Moradi (Esr12) and Fernando Benitez (Esr11) organized the 5th Open Data for Open Cities participatory workshop, which presented an opportunity to discuss about reuse and discoverability of open data in cities. Topics such as Crime, Disaster Management, Spatial point process and geo-portals assessment were part of the selected papers and a set of short presentations.

How data user barriers can impact the usefulness level of open data was the discussion with experts of Open Data during this workshop.  Participants included Professor Bastian van Loenen, associate professor in open data in the Department of Architecture and The Built Environment at Delft University of Technology, and Heleen Vollers, one of the authors of the last analytic report of European Data portal, who was the KeyNote speaker. Her talk about barriers and benefits of working with Open Data brought participants new insights about how several European countries and enterprises are using open data to improve their innovation level, as well as how cities should deal with barriers in data producer or consumer perspective. For more information about this presentation, you can check the workshop’s website.

The afternoon session was more interactive, using wallpapers and some findings of City Data 3.0, participants covered three questions regarding reusing and finding open data.

  • Is the downloadable formats the effective way to promote the reuse of open data?
  • What should be the precise and efficient way to display data in open data portals?
  • Moreover, what should be the way to make the open data in cities available: through SDI portals, Open Data portals or both?

The last part of Open Data for Open Cities workshop was a point process analysis using the new methodology covered in the Ph.D. research of Mr. Moradi. Using Open Data from Medellin City in Colombia, related to car accidents, the last session was used to calculate an intensity network along streets of Medellin city. For more information about the methodology and steps to getting the results follow this link.

GeoTec Group and GeoC UJI presented several talks in last Esri Spain user conference.

img_7288 From October 26 to October 27, was held at Madrid the last Esri Spain User conference, the main event of Esri Spain company which meet together their customers, professors, some partners and students related to, GIS, smart Cities, Open Data, and GI applications that use Esri Technology.

During this couple of days, the Geotec research group and GeoC UJI presented several talks related to their projects and initiatives. Education track was the place to meet with some professors, Esri Master program students, and other people interested with the progress and success stories related to educations and GIS applications.

David Frias, who led the talks called, “NavApps: Un juego móvil para mejorar las habilidades espaciales en la ESO”, was the initial talk for GeoTec research group, Whom presented the process made for ENAbLE project. NavApps project is a geo-game with APP/Web application to improve the spatial skills of children from 12 to 16 years old, which is also part of ENAbLE project.

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GeoC UJI and Nova were part of GeoMundus 2016 conference.

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From November 4 to November 7, 2016, Geomundus an international symposium on Geography, Earth and Environmental Studies, held by the students from the consortium of Erasmus Mundus (EM) International Master’s program in Geospatial Technologies.

This year GEO-C: Enabling Open Cities project, funded in the Marie Curie International Training Networks (ITN) program was also part of this conference. The conference took a place in Castellón, Spain.

Geo-C team at UJI University, Spain; and Geo-C Nova, Lisboa; conducted several talks to share their current research progress as well as a participatory workshop called Open Data for Open Cities (leaded by Esr11) with over 30 students from the International Master Program.

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