CEF Highlight of the Month: dealing with open data in SPOTTED project

One of the key contributions of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Telecom programme over its 10 years lifespan has been the development of technological solutions driven by the availability of public data.  

Open-data projects aim to assist public institutions in shaping policy and facilitate informed and evidence-based decision making based on big open datasets.  These projects have delivered citizen centric solutions, that help tackle the problems faced by many by increasing the efficiency in the delivery of basic services. 

The SPOTTED project is part of the public open data portfolio managed by HaDEA. The aim of the project was to provide an innovative solution based on the integration and customised processing of massive open data collections, including Earth Observation (EO) data, to monitor and support decision makers in the field of green areas management. The data were sourced from the public administrations involved in the project, the European Data Portal, and Copernicus, including real-time data captured by sensors, using advanced supervised AI algorithms for the data analysis.  

Under a technical framework, the project set the foundations to deliver robust, scalable services and applications that were developed in close collaboration with local stakeholders to ensure they were aligned with the unique operational and strategic goals. The services developed and deployed included Urban Green Index, Urban Heat Exposure, and Urban Heat Wave Risk. 

The SPOTTED project executed and validated pilot projects to demonstrate the SPOTTED framework's effectiveness in green area management. The pilots were implemented in three different cities (Milan, Helsinki and Naples) in the field of green areas management and their impact evaluation in societal and economic aspects, supporting in turn the replicability in other cities.   

Background 

The first generation of the Connecting Europe Facility ‘Telecom’ (2014-2020)EN••• facilitated the cross-border interaction between public administrations, businesses and citizens, by deploying Digital Service Infrastructures (DSI) and broadband networks. 

The CEF support to digital technologies will be continued and further developed in the next multiannual financial framework (2021-2027) under the Digital Europe ProgrammeEN•••.