Practical use of open data in geographic information systems

Placement of open data and their use by government and local authorities entered the active phase recently: the decree on the need of it appeared in 2012 only.

The information environment of the city or region contains huge volumes of information which can be used in strategic planning on different levels. The mode of work with big data files, convenient for the end consumer, are geographic information systems which allow to consider spatial placement of objects and their characteristics. The initiative of geographic information systems creation can go as "from up to down" (an example of such a project is creation of investment maps of the region), and "from up to down" as representatives of business community, public organizations, scientific institutes, and also certain citizens are interested in data use. In addition to those sets that government bodies provide, the data can be collected directly for the solution of a certain task.

The map of trade and service points providing discounts according to social cards is created on the capital open data portal for social cards holders. Drugstores, salons of optics, shops, clinics, cafes are plotted on the map; each organization has the detailed information — name, address and contact information, the type of accepted social cards, the work schedule.

In Moscow competition for mobile applications developers is held in the course of which the products making the life of citizens more convenient were created on the basis of the existing data sets. Among the offers of the participants there is an application allowing to make a route of Moscow museums visit; the application for cycling by means of which it is possible to rent a bicycle, to lay a route, to find people who ride along the same route; the application allows to look for fellow travelers; application for obtaining information on video cameras; the application with information on wreckers operation and auto pounds.

Creation of geographic information systems is possible not only on the basis of the open massifs provided by various government bodies but also on the basis of specially collected data the base of which can be replenished by users. An example of such a system is "Metro dlya vsekh" project which contains data on the subway availability in different cities for handicapped groups of citizens. On the map the route is displayed, and also the obstacles found on it; besides, information on the services of the subway rendering services to handicapped categories of passengers is available. Volunteers can participate in data collection for the new cities included in the project.

These are only a few examples of practical use of open data. The range of their application is very wide. Due to a machine-readable format and lack of use control mechanisms they can be used for the solution of individual tasks.