 So you can ask your question in the chat and we will answer at the end. So Doné is dead to ask questions in the chat. So let's start the discussion without any further delay, and it's with great pleasure that I welcome to this interview Joran from the city of Ghent. Thank you. Hi Joran, thanks a lot for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you here. So to begin this discussion, could you please introduce yourself and tell us what's your role in the city of Ghent? First of all, thank you for having me, of course. My name is Joran Vandala, I work for the city of Ghent. I'm responsible for the open data program here in the city. I work within the data and information units. So that's very cool already that we have a data and information unit within the city of Ghent. And my role actually as an open data coordinator is to actually manage our open data portal, communicate about our open data events, and organize them of course, and keep in touch with our community actually. So that's enough about me. So what about you Mano? Can you tell me something more about your role and life in open data software? Yes, of course. So my role at ODS is to help our customers like you Joran. In the use of the platform. So I train them and then I work with them to build their data sharing project and get the best out of the solution open data software. I also take into account their suggestions for improving the solution and give this feedback to the product team. And finally, I am here to help them promote their data project with the marketing team such as what we're doing here today. So moving to the next question. Now that the presentations are done, let's go to the heart of the matter. Joran, can you tell us about the beginnings of open data in the city of Ghent? So what were the main objectives at first? So in Ghent, we actually started around 11 years ago, around 2011, 2010. We actually just started really simple. We just started with some rudimentary open data files on the local city page. There are some HIST data. Actually, there were the street name lists, actually. And there was no other people to reuse it in order to create new services such as a map or itineraries to do next work in the city and discover other trees that are the widest, for example. And also it can be used to create an app to add new information on another app about the city. So yes, it could be really, really interesting. So looking forward to it. So yes, I was a bit talking about reuses that can be done, for example, with these new data sets that's coming. And I think, and I find this type of reuses of data really interesting when people are using the platform. And I know that you are actively doing it against, like you show for the packing, for example. So can you tell us a bit more about it? Yeah, so the main goal actually for open data this time is actually to actively indeed engage people to reuse our open data. So like I said, the first step in that process was to have a new open data portal. It's more user friendly. So that's already obtained. And something else that we actively do is organize hackathons. So like I already said, we organized apps for Gantt for the last 10 years. At the start it was just a hackathon, a simple hackathon, as simple as maybe not so good to say, but it was a hackathon which actually focused on the reuse of the open data. So now we shifted that focus a little bit and we focused more on the site events. For example, three years ago, our team of our hackathon was Space Data and Satellite Data. For example, we organized Datadive at an observatory. So people actually watched the stars after they listened to our data talks. We organized a water rocket workshop for the children, just all in the team of science and space. And we also organized a more formal Gantt for Space conference, for example, with all within the apps for Gantt framework. So we actually used this framework to organize more data events, more awareness, and to get more people using open data. We also noticed that our Datadives were getting more and more important. It was getting more popular as well. The tickets were sold out last three times, actually. So we noticed that people really liked the formula of just an evening and formal talking about open data, which you can do with it, and get free drinks from the city as well. Maybe that's the reason why it's sold out, I don't know. But it really worked for us. So that's how we do this. The thing is with apps for Gantt, we actually decided maybe people here have already noticed that. We decided to actually stop with the concept of apps for Gantt. This does not mean, of course, that we won't do anything else in the place. But we will move on next year in 2022, actually, hopefully, where we can organize events, hopefully, towards a more open data, a broader open data event. We mainly focused on applications. But our opinion actually is that this is too limited. You want to move on to insights, open data stories, visualizations, nice maps, for example. It's also very valuable for us as a city. So it's something we will do in 2022, hopefully, when we can do this, of course. Manon, like you already said, we're a bit of a forerunner, as you could call it, in Gantt, with our actions, our community, and so on. Do you have other examples in Belgium that have a sort of similar approach as us? Well, yeah. Indeed, a few cities open their data in Belgium. For example, in Wallonia. The city of Namur is one of them and it's a good example. Because what's nice with them is that they are reusing a lot of data to create new services, new pages, and dashboards. And good visualizations also for cities. So a very good example is the city statistic portal, which I will show you here. It's here. So it's in French, but basically what it says, it presents figures about the 26 localities of the city of Namur on various categories, such as populations, civil status, roads. So you have the total populations, the average age, and also how it's spread in the cities. And you can see the most given last names and first names, for example, in the cities. So this is pretty nice because are you reusing all the data they publish on the portal to create a page that presents them? So it's easier for citizens to understand what they offer on the open data portal, actually. So that's a nice example, which you will be able to see, I think, Claudia, which has the link in the chat. And Namur also reused data from the open data platform to create a specific service around the city cemeteries. So it's another page that you can see here. And here the idea is to offer residents a service online to find their way around cemeteries in the cities and locate the graves of the deceased people in the city. So you have a nice map, and you can check for all the graves. And it's really nice because it's a service created outside the platform, but reusing data from the platform from the open data. So that's also a really good part, like I said, of open data. It's a good reason to open it because you can create new services and innovate with the data that are shared publicly. So also, I think Claudia will share this link for you to check it a bit more on your side. So there were the good examples that I had for Belgium, for example. So Yoram, we talked about data reuse and innovations. Can you maybe give us some examples of new developments created thanks to the open data on your side? So I'd actually like to make the division between internal and external projects. So internally, within the city administration, for example, we have our mobility dashboards. Until next month, we had our T-MAS project, which actually actively used open data source, mobility open data sources to make a dashboard of all our mobility data within the city. So for example, I already showed the parking spots, but also the real-time locations of buses that we have in the city, real-time traffic counts, for example. So they were all put in one dashboard, which was available, actually was also publicly available, but actually was used within the city administration and monitor the mobility within the city. Something else that we've used internally and externally are corona numbers, of course. Like every city has those numbers, I guess. So they actually also published as open data and is also published in a dashboard, not on an open data portal, but also by using open data there. We used to track our numbers and to see if we are doing well or not doing well. Another thing that I already showed is our crowdedness level. So I showed the dashboard with the parking spots, and it was actually the bigger story. We wanted to monitor our crowdedness within the city because in December last year, we reopened our shops just before the holiday periods. And our politicians wanted to monitor how crowded our city was because when it would get too crowded, we could close off some streets. So we actually used different sorts of data to monitor this. We have our parking data, of course. Like I already showed. This is why the dashboard was made, actually. But there was also numbers from telco providers. That is also open data, by the way, on an open data portal. So you could actually see how many SIM cards there are in certain regions. And we are also using something that is in development, actually, right now. Sort of a counting system for pedestrians. And we also open data. So we use different sources of data to actually monitor this crowdedness. And then more external, of course. Something that is very interesting to see every year, apart from last year, is that we have people making applications for our Gantt Festival. So each year, normally each year, we have our Gantt Festival. 10 days of Gantt Festival. And we publish our events, our time schedules, our locations of stages, and so on. We publish that as link to open data. And people always make their own applications of it. We as a city, Gantt Festival application. It's always made by my citizens. So it's very nice to see that. We also had an interesting analysis on our littering data. So in Gantt, we have an application that people can use to report street littering. So if you see some street littering in the street, you report it in an app. You take a picture, and it sends a location and a picture towards our department that actually cleans up the streets. And the data from that application is also open data. And a company in the pocket can actually analyze this open data to find patterns within this data to see how long it would take for the littering company, on average, to clean up that littering, for example. So we did a full analysis, it's like a three-page analysis on the website, on that open data. So it's very interesting to see that people would actually dive in this open data. Another thing, it's a bit old school already, is our sheep tracking data. We used to track our sheeps within the city. So we had some sheeps in our city that actually more regressed, instead of using machines more eco-friendly. And we had some trackers on them. And people actually started to reuse that data just for the fun of it. They were making their own maps with it. A guy that I know is actually making a game, Gandalf thought it's called, and actually used that API from that location to put in sheeps in his game. So they had sheeps in real-time on locations in the game as well as where they were in the city. So it's very interesting to see that people would dive in and use it just for fun or for more serious stuff, of course. So these are some examples of our city, of course. Do you have some examples, for example in France or other cities, England, for example, that are doing the same things or developing the same sort of applications? Well, yes, in this, we have a lot of other cities doing this type of re-uses. For example, for the COVID crisis, lots of French cities published COVID dashboards during the first confinement. And also, as well as for US cities, Spanish collectivities, for example. And after that, other information about COVID has been shared published through dashboards or dedicated pages, such as, for example, open shops or the location of testing centers. And for example, we have the city of the jealous city doing this. And I will show it to you and say, I think, Closia will share the link on the chat. And so on this type of map, you can locate the testing centers in the city and also have information here about the opening hours, the street address, and some more information and details about the center. So this is a nice re-use that's made by the city of Jersey. And in the mobility category, we also have the city of Bordeaux in France doing a nice map and page showing the availability of parking in the city. So the ones that are in green are open. The ones that are in red are full. And some in black are also closed. I think there are no parking closed here. And when you click on parking, you can see the availability rates here and the number of free places and total places here. And you have some examples of prices for this parking lot. And also here, you have more information such as the biggest height if you want to go with a big height car. And some more information. And this is all, of course, updated really in real time so that you can have also always the last availability in the city. And another good example that I wanted to show you today is what is doing the city of Gielong in Australia. And there are releasing some nice data about device counters deployed around multiple areas in the city center. So it's counting the number of Wi-Fi signals emitted by non-identifiable mobile devices within a specified quantity and performing certain filtering and processing. So this shows, for example, average daily count in the city and you can have the difference between the weekends and the weekdays. You can locate different devices in the city and check also the number of visitors every time and you have also a heat map. You can see the evolution also here showing how it's moving through the time. And you have also a possibility to see by location how they are counting the visitors. And you can have some nice filters here to check, for example, one location only on weekdays, only on certain days or months. And yes, that's really interesting. And the one last reuse that I wanted to show was from the city of Vancouver. Here and here in Vancouver what they did, they created a really nice dashboard called the van dashboard and showing really nice key figures about the cities showcasing performance data for specific services in the city. So here you have 65 indicators divided in six categories and you can always see a key figure and also if they have a desired trend you can see how it's going sometimes they have some targets. So here you can see that the McDonald's response time is 6 minutes 56 the target is 6.30. So this is a really nice way to show citizens how the city is going and the improvement of a lot of services in the city. So here you have really a lot, you can check for example and you will have more indicators and by clicking on one you can also have more information about the evolution. For example here you see the evolution during the time and also always have access to the data set linked to each indicator. So that was it for me for the examples of we use this around the world. I'm going back to the slides and well I think that we are done for the interview so thank you Joran for this very interesting and inspiring exchange I really hope it helps you to understand the open data approach in Ghent and maybe inspire you. I suggest that we move on to the question and answers so feel free to write all your questions in the chat and also on the left side of your screen and we will check it out with Joran and answer your questions. I think Joran that we had already one question during the discussion I don't know if you yes thank you Claudia for the remainder. Asstrid asked if I can give a scoop of our new open data project nice try I think you have to wait for a few weeks sorry but it will be interesting so like I already said we are working more on our community we want to have more engagement with our users so that's actually all I can say we are trying to do that more in the coming months and years so it will be about that that's all I can say for now it's actually already more than it was on Twitter so thank you maybe you have a question hopefully yes our link to open data we are currently working on putting our link to open data on the portal so I guess that's already an answer on a bit of your question we want to actually reopen we want to reopen our new portal as well so in the coming weeks you will see some news messages and on Twitter that we really opened our link to open data so there is some support for this platform I have to be a little patient I can answer the question from Bart we do not have such fun data sets that are that funny that's the one we have for the tip but I saw one from the city of Bordeaux about the taste of water so actually it's a running test to check the taste of the water and see if it's sour or whatever and it was pretty funny but it hasn't been updated for a few times so that's it but that's a good data set maybe I don't know if you are and you have some other examples in your mind that you saw in other cities I didn't notice that the whole city is tracking sheeps but fun data sets in some way if we think really hard now and you also have the shark attacks eventually listing all the shark attacks that happen in the world and sometimes it's really funny reasons that's the one I relate but it's a bit sad sometimes but it's kind of a funny data set that's true we are using in Ghent I cannot talk for Namur of course but we are using our proposal for our linked open data but like I said I can't answer for Namur of course what technologies do you use to build user interfaces? which user interfaces do you mean? interfaces of our portal because that's all open data soft the pages that you are and this is like the platform and we are using HTML, CSS languages to create those pages and in the world we are using some widgets from the platform to create the to create the aggregations and stuff like that to the APIs on the pages so it's all built with HTML and CSS thank you for the notification by the way of the links of apps for Ghent really because like I said we are moving to a new concept for the new website so let's look into it because I know there are some use cases there and they were used to link presentations of that use cases and so on to find the documentation thank you for the notification and concerning the question about APIs yes you will find some documentation on the yes all the data you can check one for example in the portal you will see a specific tab