A growing number of Public Administrations and private organization share their geographic data as open data with free use licences. Open data are a natural step forward of simple free databases sharing, because data and metadata are served as standard format and organized as standard framework, following international rules. These characteristics makes them be used directly inside other application softwares without human intervention. Open data, thanks to this characteristic, can be used, for example, from smartphones Apps, be reached by open data research engines and integrated inside open data geoportals.
 

In Planetek we believe that opendata policies can always create new opportunities for citizens and businesses, and foster the economic and social development of people and the territory. Our teams has several years of experience in the development of Open standards products and solutions, making systems for the distribution of maps and images via internet competitive and effective, and maximizing thus the value for our clients.

With particular reference to geospatial data, we support policies aimed at the openness of Earth observation data and the derived value-added information. Our expertise covers all phases of the value chain of geospatial data: from their acquisition to processing, from the extraction of new information to their publication and distribution.

• We implement mechanisms for effective and selective access to satellite image archives, enabling the re-use of satellite opendata;
• We create open data catalogs and spatial data infrastructures which, thanks to efficient licensing systems and participation tools integrated with social networks, support open government policies of public bodies;
• We create geospatial value added products, derived from Earth observation data, and we distribute them with open licenses and formats in compliance with international standards;
• We support the publication of data in formats open, linked and readable by computer applications (Linked Open Data) and we create systems for the transformation of geospatial data into Linked Open Data.

We actively participate to several initiatives promoting the culture of open knowledge and opendata, and we support events promoting the openness, through hackathons organized in cooperation with organization like Wikimedia, onData, Stati Generali dell’Innovazione and events promoting the use of open geospatial database like OpenStreetMap. We have been also actively involved in other initiatives for several years: associate members of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Spatial Data Interest Community (SDIC) for the INSPIRE initiative.

Among recent state-of-the-art solutions developed are the Geoportal of Emilia-Romagna Region, the getLOD and LOD4SDI solutions.