Components Supporting the Open Data Exploitation (COMSODE)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Destination: Technologies for Digital Content and Languages
Action type: Collaborative project
Countries involved: Italy,Czechia,Slovakia,Netherlands
Call:  (FP7-ICT-2013-SME-DCA, 2013)
Start date: 2013-10-01
End date: 2015-09-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1839863.0
EU funding (EUR): 1469000.0
Participants: 6
Project status: CLOSED

The project COMSODE (Components Supporting the Open Data Exploitation) is an SME-driven RTD project aimed at progressing the capabilities in the Open Data re-use field. The concept is an answer to barriers still present in this young area: data published by various open data catalogues are poorly integrated; quality assessment and cleansing are seldom addressed. Data consumers have to integrate the data before they can use them which increases significantly the costs of open data consumption and hinder open data usage and uptake, etc. COMSODE has the following main objectives: (1) Create a publication platform called Open Data Node that builds on results of previous research and development in the linked data field. Its mission is to bring results from research environment into real-world for people, SMEs and other organizations to use and re-use. (2) Create a methodology framework for easy use of technology in operating conditions of typical public bodies and rigorously tested for traceability, usability and sustainability in a public body environment. This is going to be verified in three pilot implementations during the project. End user-communities will be involved EU-wide to set a use case framework within which the requirements of heterogeneous organisations can be clearly understood. Provided feedback will be processed into the final methodology and recommendations for re-use applications. These two results will enable new applications to emerge – some of them will be directly created in the project by consortium members (search service by SPINQUE) or by associated bodies (Semantic Web Company, Austria). The project will cooperate with activities under progress in the EU and internationally (consortium members were personally involved in many of them: e.g. LOD2, OGP, etc.) It is a project ambition to lay the foundations for a data integration platform based on Open Data which will allow the re-use of data not only between public bodies and end-users but also among public bodies themselves: Public bodies can exchange information by using the same infrastructure and tools as end-users which will decrease costs of exchanging the data and in most cases also enhance the quality and speed-up of the exchange. What is even more important, OpenData APIs can be used by integration projects between public bodies, again saving costs and enhancing the quality of the resulting solution. This in turn strengthens OpenData publishing, with end-users benefiting again – a self reinforcing loop.

Keywords: open data,linked data,re-use,applications,data publication,quality assessment,provenance tracking,anonymization,sme,integration platform,exploitation of research