Ziņas

Data from the European Commission's Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs shows promising results for the European economy. Despite the pandemic, the economy is forecast to recover faster than expected. In both the EU and euro area, GDP is expected to grow by 4.8 % in 2021 and 4.5 % in 2022. Some Member States may already see their economic output return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year, though the trend is Europe-wide. This is likely the result of declining numbers of infections as well as hospitalisations and progress in vaccination, which led multiple EU Member

EU Datathon is an annual competition organised by the Publications Office of the EU. It invites people from all around the world to build applications based on EU open data. This year nine teams have been shortlisted to compete in the finals. Meet the three finalist teams for challenge 1 of the EU Datathon 2021: A European Green Deal. Originally from Spain, Montenegro and India, these open data initiatives support Europe’s ambition of becoming the first climate-neutral continent. cleanSpot – “ Boost recycling because there is no planet B” The cleanSpot application provides information and

In March this year, the ENDORSE conference took place, three days packed with presentations and round table discussions around reference data and semantics in the European context. As a follow-up to this event, the Publications Office of the European Union launched a series of webinars. The first of this series focused on the topic of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and featured Ivo Velitchkov, data management consultant and linked data expert for the European Commission. PKM refers to a conceptual framework for organising and integrating important information that we encounter, and it has

In June this year, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) launched EpiPulse, the European surveillance portal for infectious diseases. Appointed experts from countries that collaborate with the ECDC, ECDC staff, and representatives of European authorities and international organisations provide data to the portal. The platform combines data from various surveillance systems such as the European Surveillance System (TESSy), the five Epidemic Intelligence Information System (EPIS) platforms and the Threat Tracking Tool (TTT). By integrating data from these systems, the

To support and advance medical research, Fundación 29 and LaLiga, in collaboration with Microsoft, have published several open datasets including anonymised results of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and antibody tests of the players and staff of LaLiga clubs, the professional football division of the Spanish league. By publishing these data, LaLiga aims to improve prevention mechanisms in a medical challenge such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In such a situation it is vital that organisations collaborate to collect data and make it available to the community. The dataset can be used for research

In April this year, the EU Open Data Portal and the European Data Portal consolidated into one service providing access to European data under the name of  data.europa.eu. This portal, brought to you by the  Publications Office of the European Union, provides access to public data resources from EU institutions and agencies, EU Member States, and other European countries. Currently, you can find over 1 million datasets, from 36 countries, along 13 thematic categories on data.europa.eu. If you are a data scientist or developer, the portal can help you:  find data to build and develop innovative

At the 2019 EU Datathon, Gregory Ruessmann presented ‘Euromaps’, a prototype app to turn open data into maps that visualise complex topics such as climate change or international trade in such a way as to make the stories hidden within the data obvious for anyone to see. ‘Euromaps’ made it to the finals of the competition and won the 2nd prize. After integration of initial feedback and fully automating the service, the team has taken the project to the next level. Under the new name ‘ Alphamaps’, they are launching a full-scale universal data mapping application that turns EU open data into

On June 11-13, the 2021 G7 summit took place, with the overarching theme of “Building Back Better” from the pandemic. The G7 leaders discussed a wide range of pressing topics, including COVID-19, pandemic preparedness and economic recovery, evolving future frontiers in the global economy and society, fighting climate change, and protecting the environment. Regarding the topic of future frontiers, there will be a focus on championing data free-flow with trust. In other words, better leveraging the potential of valuable data-driven technologies while continuing to address data protection

The Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) offers the CORDIS Datalab, providing new ways to explore the CORDIS open data. The visualisation shows which private and public organisations participate in Horizon 2020 research and innovation projects, where they are located and who they collaborate with. You can search for any organisation, all over the world, that participates in one of the projects. Discover also the “Hot Spots”-layer, a heat map that reflects the density of organisations on the map. A word on CORDIS: the website shows results from projects funded by

Ukraine is a trend-setter when it comes to opening up finance data in Europe. As one of the fast-trackers of the Open Data Maturity assessment of 2020, the country has shown substantial progress in publishing finance data on the online platform E-data. This platform is in fact a collection of three portals: Spending: a dataset of all transactions from the State Treasury; OpenBudget: a knowledge base containing budgets of local administrations; ProIFIs: an information hub for social and investment projects financed with government loans. These portals not only increase accessibility and