Topic: open-data

Berlin, September 29, 2023 – Today, FIWARE Foundation e.V. announced that, effective November 1, 2023, FIWARE’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ulrich Ahle will become CEO successor of the Gaia-X AISBL headquartered in Brussels.

More than a decade ago, governments throughout the world made a radical policy shift from storing data in government silos to opening the data for reuse by entrepreneurs, citizens, and businesses. This was the beginning of a global open data movement — an era when government data is made available under an open license in a usable, machine-readable form with minimal restrictions for reuse.

Smart cities must collect plenty of data as a means to analyse urban problems and support participatory governance. Fortunately, the modern world generates plenty of data. More than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is a staggering estimate of the volume of data created each day in the global economy, governments, universities and think tanks.

Today, terms such as “open source” and “open data” are becoming used in everyday conversations, but what do these words really mean? The right open source definition is really hard to find. We caught up with the FIWARE Foundation’s CEO, Ulrich Ahle, at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona to find out more about FIWARE, open-source technologies, and the future of urban data.

Asia is one of the most exciting continents on the planet, with rapidly evolving economies, fertile economic ecosystems, and bold leadership from proactive governments. But which cities are the smartest in the region? To get an idea, we’ve ranked the top smart cities in Asia using metrics from the IMD Smart Cities Index Report.

Urban data platforms (UDPs) are helping smart cities to evolve. These platforms serve as the supporting pillars for many smart city applications. They can map, combine, and store data from a wide range of sources, and process them to help form practical solutions to city-wide problems. Urban data platforms are an important part of any smart city ecosystem, taking data from government sources, private enterprises, NGOs, and members of the public, to help provide data-driven solutions that benefit everyone.

In a 2018 report completed by the Eden Strategy Institute, 12 of the globe’s 20 smartest cities were located in the USA. Founded upon a spirit of innovation, it is perhaps no surprise that many of the country’s smart cities are so high-ranking, providing inspiration to other cities all over the world. Following our exploration of 4 up-and-coming North American Smart Cities in Part 1, we’ve chosen to take a brief look at 4 of the most prominent smart cities in the country in Part 2. From 2018’s highest ranking smart city worldwide, New York, to its start-up hub, San Francisco, we’ll take you through some of the smartest initiatives the US has to offer.

Bob Bennett, the former Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) of Kansas City talked in our Smart City Leader Interview Series - while he still was the CIO of Kansas City - about the importance of smart cities and smart citizens. He emphasized the role of technology and the benefits for citizens.