ENERGIC-OD: International co-operation to promote of FAIR GIS Open Data

"ENERGIC-OD, a project funded by the European Commission as part of FP7/CIP programme, will come to an end in September 2017. The project launched a pan-European Virtual Hub (pEVH) facilitating the use of Geospatial Information System (GIS) Open Data (OD) across Europe. The readers can access the pEVH here: https://www.energic-od.eu/. The pEVH brokers together a potentially infinite number of geo-spatial open data sources, harmonising them, rendering them accessible through a single API and ready to be reused for various purposes. Data brokered by the pEVH is available under freemium licence: data is free to use, while users can pay for some extra features of the pEVH. The freemium model ensures the promotion of knowledge exchange while extracting value from such an exchange and from the services provided by the various actors involved.

ENERGIC-OD is committed to improve the quality of the open data available in the GIS sector: the pEVH was designed to ensure that data adheres to FAIR principles. These principles advocate that OD should be easy to Find, Accessible, Interoperable and freely Reusable. pEVH-brokered data is FAIR as the single site where data is stored renders GIS OD sources much more foundable than ever before; the single API utilised makes data extremely usable and interoperable; finally, the freemium license ensures the re-usability of the data. The market value of open data is projected to grow by 36.9% in 2020, reaching 75.7 billion €; ENERGIC-OD will thus be instrumental in allowing businesses to tap into this growing market."