Honestly speaking, we cannot reveal it entirely, as certain details are confidential. Nevertheless, we aim to provide a glimpse into the structuring and storing of data from our four project cities of Thessaloniki, Regensburg, Leuven, and Madrid.

The overall objective of the task related to the categorization of data sources was to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the available data and determine their potential usability for MOMENTUM. Additionally, the information that was provided by the cities was structed in the five categories of transport supply, transport demand, maps & cartography, socio-demographic and travel times. These mentioned categories were deliberately set in a relatively broad framework. For example, the ‘maps & cartography’ topic includes datasets related to, inter alia, weather, social, cultural or sportive events, as well as points of Interest.

How is the data stored?

The creation of common datasets from our project cities needed to be structured, harmonized, comparable and accessible to the necessary consortium members. Overall, 81 securely encrypted datasets are hosted in an online data repository, which allows each project partner to access the sets collected and generated in this project according to their confidentiality levels. Our commercial hosting solution even offers enough storage space for nearly 100 datasets, thus it is future proof for the entirety of the project.

How can we compare datasets from different cities?

All four cities are located in different countries, thus, the data sources could vary widely or do not exist at all for certain cities. For example, tourism statistics were gathered by all partners through an extensive survey, whereas Thessaloniki did not provide data for this category. Furthermore, the form of data also does vary quite significantly, based on the available data sources from each city. As an example, data concerning car ownership is based in two cities on the vehicle tax databases, whereas other cities provide information based on surveys and on a census.

Overall, we can conclude that these efficiently fulfilled tasks are essential fundamental work, which facilitates future coordination between the partners.