Open Data as Enabler for ITS Factory

Open Data as Enabler for ITS Factory Mika Kulmala Traffic Engineer, City of Tampere POB 487, 33101 Tampere, Finland +358 503826455, mika.kulmala@tampere.fi Aki Lumiaho Chief Consultant, Ramboll POB 718, 33101 TAMPERE, Finland +358 20 755 6830, aki.lumiaho@ramboll.fi ABSTRACT The ITS Factory is to provide a high quality proving, testing and demonstration environment for ITS innovation and demonstration projects in Tampere Region, Finland. The activities are categorised in six ways: Open data & developer support, Test field, End user experience, Standardisation, Roadmapping and Marketing & Partnering support. Open data is recognised to be one of the key success factors in an open proving, testing and demonstration activities and facilities. ITS Factory is considered to be the venue for application, system, service and product development for all interested parties in the domain of Intelligent Transport Systems and Services. The process to join ITS Factory is intentionally kept informal, however, some basic assumptions are defined and expected to be complied with. ITS Factory provides access to public data, various tools and processes related to ITS research, development and innovation. All public data in the Tampere Region are made available for ITS Factory participants and projects against minimum bureaucracy and formalities. Open data sources are available to address user, service, technical, environmental, commercial and/or socio-economic aspects. Keywords: Open data, applications, services, developer support, standardisation, roadmap 1. INTRODUCTION Tampere is the 3 rd largest city in Finland and the biggest inland city in the Nordic countries. Tampere Central Region is the 2 nd largest growth centre of Finland. Traffic in Tampere Region (Fig.1) provides tangible challenges to be managed and operated. 1

Figure 1. Tampere and Tampere Region in Finland ITS organisations in Tampere Region are the forerunners in Finland in the ITS community. The ITS Factory, also known as Tampere Region ITS Proving and Innovation Arena, is a joint initiative of City of Tampere, regional and national transport authorities, companies, service providers as well as research institutions. Current situation in the data collection, generation and access is rather uncoordinated and scattered among all actors, data providers and data services. Service providers and application developers need to get access in the various sources of raw data and various types and formats data bases. In a long run this is not acceptable and counter-productive. The current situation is depicted below, Fig 2. Figure 2. Current relationship scheme of between data providers, information providers and application developers. 2

The working domains of ITS Factory are split in three operations and six categories, Fig 3. Open data related activities take place under Market Making operations. Other closely tight activities are a.o. common access interfaces to open data sources, real-time data and location data. Figure 3. ITS Factory Operations and their Categories 2. ENABLING OF BUILDING ITS INNOVATIONS USING OPEN DATA By definition we understand that open data is available with published interfaces and standard-based definitions. These are targeted to enhance the companies, research institutes and developer communities possibilities to develop and demonstrate pre-competitive systems and services using available open data sources within the scope of ITS Factory. It is a strong understanding within local entities that this will bring added value for all stakeholder groups. Openness and cooperation are parts of the ITS Factory working culture from the very beginning of its establishment in 2012. Open data and developer community are key themes of working. In data gathering and data exploitation the strong stepping stone is the always present cooperation between private and public sectors. This gives ever better possibilities for developers and providers to get into product and service development, productisation, business models and export possibilities. Open ecosystem is emphasised through common approach to standardisation, using the existing and upcoming standards to enable scaling up and wide deployment of solutions. For this extent the Roadmapping activities are designed to keep track how the ITS technology, infrastructure, data and interfaces develop across public sector and the partnering companies. 3

ITS Factory Open Data Sub-team Group (ST6) has drafted an action plan to pave the way for advanced possibilities and access for developers and service provider, Table 1. Table 1. The Initial set of actions. Courtesy of Tero Piirainen, University of Tampere. Action proposals Create and publish the catalog of the open traffic data sources and data providers, including public and private data. Create and maintain ITS Factory developer register. Establish good relationship with key developers in the community. Define and agree with ITS Factory Development Policy, which defines the the rights and responsibilities of the data owners and the developers. Create developer wiki and discussion boards for the developer community. Benchmark with existing communities, and reuse, or develop new. Establish a gateway server to support application data traffic and to provide additional services. Arrange national developer event, where developers meet each other, and the data and service data providers. Create a communications plan that ensures consistent and systematic communication with the development community. Encourage the creation of traffic applications through development competitions. Establish cooperation with relevant parties to clarify various developments. Marketing and partnering support are to support ITS Factory members and ITS Factory to enhance Intelligent Transport as its own industry, supporting the partnering opportunities for the companies involved in the relevant projects. 4

3. ITS DATA SOURCES AVAILABLE FOR DEVELOPERS Tampere Region s organisations, specialists and developers are committed to open data approach. There has been four Open Data Tampere Meets since early 2013. The open data is available from various public sources for activities within ITS Factory. Current data source cover a.o. road and street network traffic (Fig.4), public transport (Fig.5), pedestrians and cyclists services (Fig.6) and geodata needs (Fig.7). Figure 4. Traffic information examples. Figure 5. Public transport information examples. Figure 6. Pedestrian and cycling information examples. Figure 7. Geodata information examples. In the domain of Open data and Developer support target is to provide tools and processes as well as procedures for service development. This activity is also the venue for application, product and service development with close-knit developer collaboration, Fig 8. 5

Figure 8. Developer support with open data access for market penetration. In Tampere Region a set of key stakeholders has established a supporting project for ITS Factory activities. The targets of Open Data Tampere Region (Open Data TRE) are related to adding knowledge of open data and fostering the opening of municipal data storages in the region, developing practices and operational model to expand open data procedures to business as usual, starting an active open data community to utilize the open data sources and encouraging and advancing new business models on open data. The project is hosted by Digital Contents Centre of Excellence, City of Tampere Data Administration Unit and Open Tampere Programme. It is envisaged that a selection of potential applications (Fig.9) would cover a.o. multimodal route planners and navigation with support of road weather, congestion and exception information, value added applications and services for safety, security, parking, eco-efficiency and entertainment; data services with Big Data servers and analysis services, data processing and distribution as well as personal traffic data management; new kinds of mobility applications and services for 3lectric vehicles, car sharing and car-pooling; enterprise solutions and public services for traffic control, emergency vehicles, city planning, regulatory transport services, fleet management and traffic operations; and to conclude hardware components and embedded software for on-board units (OBU), roadside equipment (RSE), sensors, components, test equipment and the actual ITS Test Site facilities. 6

Figure 9. Using open data and standardized interfaces enable development of applications up to complete scalable solutions 5. CONCLUSIONS The role and mission of public authority is to develop innovative and cost-effective ways to collect different types of mobility associated static and real-time data initiating from transport system, and to provide these data sets for private entities and developers at a reasonable cost preferably for free. Opening of public data sets for use and re-use has been brought to as one of the key activities within the national government program. European Union Directives are pushing public entities to open their data sets and databases for distribution. The collected data needs to be open and to be shared, preferably in a standard format in order to ensure the emergence of services and their scalability. In this way public sector contributes to evolution of a range of services for road operators and authorities for traffic management and operation, for the citizens to facilitate mobility and encourage and promote new business. When public sector manages this role well there is less need for procurement of external services, the roles of different actors become clearer, the activities promote development of new kinds of services, and the development roadmaps may high light the future progress and their descriptions, as well as versatile services increase. 7

Such policy requires public sector to procure all developments to be based on open interfaces and already in the request for tender documentation. Public authorities need to develop their own processes and procurements with a significant notion of innovation and perseverance, as well as Public-Private Partnership co-operation with other cities and the governmental entities and authorities/administrations. The challenges include a.o. data structure and interface harmonization, securing the quality and consistence of the data to be distributed, cooperative server structures, hardware and software architectures as well as service layers, and compatibility of third party data sets (e.g. navigation device suppliers). The City of Tampere supported by ITS Factory activities, Open Tampere Programme, Open Data TRE Project and various R&D projects are already working according to the agreed open data and interface based procurement and development. 6. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like express their gratitude to City of Tampere, Hermia Oy, University of Tampere and Ramboll Finland Oy for this opportunity to promote ITS Factory Initiative. 8