RTOD, a walk through the future of Open Data

Every day we produce a lot of data. Cities themselves have sensors that are broadcasting real-time information, however, it is not always public. Everyone talks about the opening of the data, we are seeing more open data portals, but can you imagine what would happen if the city would produce sensors that could see open data in real time? Today, you will learn it with OGoov.

Cities, regardless of their size, are constantly producing data through sensors: subway stations, surveillance cameras, water meters, light meters, are examples of this. These data are not open, go directly to the departments and / or companies responsible for them, which custodian, monitor and at most, what sees the light are reports and statistics that are published, but not the original data.

If we include the data we produce through our mobile devices, internet and intelligent objects, the figures are overwhelming. We are in the era of information and accompanied by the movement that began Obama on the opening of data, we find ourselves in an environment in which citizens are increasingly informed and management is more and more transparent.

In the specific case of Europe, through Europe 2020 and more specifically the policies of Horizon 2020, aims to unite the efforts of all states members for a Europe more efficient, more transparent and where quality of life for people living in cities is improved. In this collaborative environment is where FIWARE was born, we talked about it a few weeks ago, a technology designed to share, to create applications on smart cities and  that allows integrate them with others easily.

At this point many of you will say wait a moment, but what is the relationship between the data collected in real time, smart cities and open data? Let’s begin by clarifying a couple of concepts.

Open Data

Open Data  are defined as those that are likely to be exposed with standard open formats and under not restrictive licenses of use, so  anyone can access and reuse them. Therefore, they have to be available for all, that information can be reused even for profit. Example: Developing Apps that eat certain data on traffic and weather.


RTOD, Real Time Open Data, is the name  Viavansi uses to name its own middleware that allows access to content from different sources through a single point solution. Thus, in the case of open data portals, it allows to provide information in real time.

Organizations, both public and private, which generate a large volume of data, have very heterogeneous data sources so the data they collect include a catalog of open data is very complex. However, thanks to RTOD drivers, the information may be available in seconds and automatically.

RTOD scheme within the OGoov Platform

Besides its use in extracting information from different portals of public organizations, institutions and others, RTOD soon, will have the ability to receive data from sensors that were previously commenting and any of their other sources of information about the city . It is proposed as a solution of Smart City, in addition to receiving and indexing of different data enables analysis and visualization in easily understandable formats for citizens and at the same time machines for further adds semantics to the data sets.

From the relationship between Open Data, RTOD and Smart City, Smart OGoov is born.  An integration project of RTOD with FIWARE allowing display on Open Data portals all information that offers a Smart City and you want to expose under this philosophy. In fact, for datos.gob.es, open data is an indispensable tool for  smart cities development and this is the meeting point between three concepts that we have been discussing.

Imagine the potential to have a system where most of the data produced by cities are open, so that companies and individuals could develop applications based on them. A collaborative environment where participation and constant improvements for the citizen are a reality.

We are talking about truly efficient cities, where for instances, we might know through our mobile applications, exactly what is free parking in the parking nearest public in real time. No more spin for all plants.

But the benefits do not stop there. Having real-time information allows the data quality of open data portals to be increased and therefore, public participation and transparency rise too. In addition, sites like OGoov have been integrated to ensure that data can be visualized easily understandable way technology.

The opportunities are endless, even though it is still a long way to reach these Smart Cities of the future, the latest trends like the Future Internet,  the advances in FIWARE, etc, let us that it will become a reality in not that far future.

See you next week.

Share this post

Share on facebook
Share on google
Share on twitter
Share on linkedin
Share on pinterest
Share on print
Share on email