The value of open data business is increasing at a very fast pace. The open data market is projected to be worth over 75 billion in 2020. Yet, accessing this expanding market is not easy. Open data sources are difficult to find, not interoperable and hardly reusable, as argued by a recent Open Knowledge Foundation’s report.
ENERGIC-OD, a European Commission project, aims precisely to facilitate access to the open data market in the Geographic Information System (GIS) sector. The project built a pan-European Virtual Hub (pEVH) simplifying the access to and the use of GIS open data in Europe. Readers can view and utilise the pEVH here. pEVH brokers together an 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. pEVH-brokered data is available under freemium licence: data is free to use and users can pay for some extra features of the pEVH. The freemium model guarantees the promotion of knowledge exchange, the extraction of value from such an exchange and from the services provided by the actors involved.
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