CEF Context Broker and Big Data tool shine at SEMIC 2020
The first ever Semantic Interoperability Conference (SEMIC) to be held fully online took place on 15 October, with a total of 327 participants. The theme of this year’s annual SEMIC conference, organised by the European Commission’s ISA2 programme, was ‘Sustainable Data Services’.
Over the last decade, more and more public administrations have been looking to unleash the potential of big data. This conference was a great chance to explore the role interoperable solutions play in helping public administrations maintain, analyse and share big open datasets across sectors and borders, particularly in the area of sustainable development, which is fast becoming a key priority for the EU.
At this year’s virtual conference, the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Digital team presented the Context Broker and Big Data Test Infrastructure (BDTI) building blocks at virtual booths during a morning networking session.
The participants, including policymakers, IT practitioners and researchers, could take their digital avatars to the virtual booths to learn more about each solution through brochures, flyers, news articles and success stories. If they needed more information about a specific solution, they could simply interact with that building block’s exhibitor to find out more.
Big Data Test Infrastructure (BDTI): A ready-to-use and safe virtual environment for public entities to experiment with and analyse big datasets. Request a pilot here!
Context Broker: A digital platform component capable of integrating and visualising data gathered from various sources, giving key insights to inform public policy and help make data-driven decisions in real-time. Get started now!
Following the opening sessions and a keynote speech on sustainable API platforms for public administrations, there were four parallel sessions exploring cross-border data exchange in various contexts, from the fight against COVID-19 to optimising open data portals for end-users.
The BDTI team were proud to present two exceptional case studies in the ‘Fighting COVID-19 through data sharing’ parallel session, demonstrating how the BDTI building block helped European public administrations in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
BDTI against COVID-19
Convalescent plasma therapy: The European Blood Alliance and the European Commission's Directorate-General for Health, DG SANTE, used the CEF BDTI building block to analyse the effectiveness of convalescent plasma therapy, where blood plasma from recovered patients is used to help current patients recover, as a possible treatment for COVID-19. BDTI empowered them to create and manage an EU-wide, open-access platform for gathering and accessing data on this promising treatment. Pooling big datasets supports research, making it far easier to assess the viability and safety of this treatment moving forwards. Read more about the pilot here.
The Valencian Pharmacy and Health Products authority: This Valencian health authority is running a six-month pilot with BDTI to develop a tool for gathering and synthesising data on COVID-19, from scientific evidence to documents on regulation. BDTI will use Machine Learning to perform advanced text-mining, turning the vast amount of data available into visually accessible graphs and actionable insights for clinicians and hospital managers. Read more about the pilot here.
An afternoon session looked at the success of the EU Datathon 2020. This competition challenged competitors to come up with new, innovative ways of using big, open data across sectors and borders to address the following priorities:
- An European Green Deal;
- An economy that works for the people;
- A new push for European democracy;
- A Europe fit for the digital age.
More than 36 countries were represented in the competition, and on the same day as SEMIC 12 shortlisted teams, three per priority, presented their open data applications to a jury and over 300 open data professionals and enthusiasts. Proposals varied from platforms tracking waste circulation through Europe to an application helping SMEs to assess their financial viability during the coronavirus pandemic, and to identity suitable investment and grant funding opportunities. You can find out more about all the finalists here.
SEMIC 2020 left organisers and participants alike confident that open datasets and data interoperability across borders will be a key asset to Europe, not only in overcoming the current health crisis, but also in growing together as a continent in the future.
See our success stories to learn more about how the building blocks are connecting Europe.