The project is concerned with harmonisation of open data relating to a specific domain in the European Data Portal (EDP). Harmonisation is currently (partly) achieved in the EDP only at the level of cataloguing. The heterogeneity of data formats and standards (if any) followed by different data providers as well as the poor-quality descriptions of the actual content hinders the deployment of added-value services which can allow end-users to discover and make sense of the available open data. The main objective of the project is to propose a set of specifications along with technological tools which can streamline and facilitate harmonisation at the level of content (i.e. records) of datasets and enable users to search and visualise data that is relevant to them. The project thus seeks on one hand to assist data providers to improve the quality of their data by following a well-defined workflow supported by a user-friendly toolset; and offer advanced search capabilities to interested users who can benefit from accessing data coming from different providers and countries in a homogeneous way, from a single entry point.
The harmonisation and search capabilities will be offered as a service which will integrate and customise for the purpose of the project state-of-the-art semantic technologies and tools. The service will offer (a) semi-automatic capabilities for enriching and mapping datasets in different formats and of different quality to an RDF (Resource Description Framework) representation; and (b) federated search functionalities, which will support semantic queries on the content of these datasets. In order to showcase the potential and usefulness of adopting such an approach, the project will consider datasets from the economy domain coming from different countries. The use case will particularly focus on datasets about business registries discoverable via the EDP as well as datasets to be made available by participating and affiliated data providers. An open online advanced search service will be deployed, offering useful information to users who are looking for information about enterprises active in different European countries.

Sustainable Development Goals

Masaryk University is committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to improve the conditions and quality of life on our planet by 2030.

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