Objectives

1. Review of the international strategies on open data and the scientific literature that underline such strategies in order to improve understanding on existing barriers and drivers for open data policy.

2. Analysis of the impact of adopting open data access policies in six of the largest governmental geodata producers in Romania.

3. Creation of innovative technologies and tools for geodata publishing and retrieval. The project’s research efforts will be dedicated to create a pilot web portal to host relevant samples of geodata by taking into account research issues such as data harmonisation, user involvement and collaboration, user friendly navigation, data quality and quality markers visualization.

4. Creation of a common methodology for open geodata publishing. The findings, that document the research results in the areas of geospatial portals, data visualization, data quality and harmonization, will be disseminated in the form of a manual (or cookbook).

5. Exploration of instruments and methods that can lower the cost of open geodata publication such as user communities. The community interest to voluntary contribute to open initiatives is well proved by projects like Wikipedia, OpenLibrary or OpenStreetMap.

6. Organization of "development day" type of events to demonstrate to governments and governmental institutions the value of opening up their geodata and to show the multiple ways in which the information can be managed to achieve the social and economic advantages.