Onboarding cities to the UFDS: DISCOLLECT Framework and case study

DISCOLLECT saw the realisation of a Smart Data Platform (SDP) to onboard cities to the UFDS. The SDP consists of a data space connector, integrated in the database software Dagster. Besides being a data base, Dagster hase several additional features to scrape, covert and store data according to a predefined data model. The visual 1 shows a framework for 3 packages that are needed to onboard data from a city to the UFDS 1. The basic SDP package A data base that is connected to the UFDS where cities can onboard and offer structured data to the dataspace 2.

Figure : Smart Data Platform (SDP) components


The SDP expansion Additional Dagster components that help cities automatically scrape data from (e.g.) an open data portal and convert to the right standard, reducing manual work. 3. City components components required by the city: an open data portal where data can be stored and an API connection to connect the open data portal connect to the SDP This framework can be copied by cities to offer their data to the data space.

Visual 2 shows how this framework was applied to connect Ghent to the UFDS and offer parking data

1. Ghent offers parking data in their open data portal

2. The SDP scrapes the parking data to its database

3. The SDP converts the parking data to the right standard

4. The SDP connects to the UFDS and offers the parking data

5. Inlecom build a 2D visualiser app that visualised the parking data. The visualiser app is connected to the data space through a UFDS connector and a middleware component

6. The visualiser app can pull the data from the SDP and visualise its locations

Contributor : Dries Van Bever (IMEC)