CIVIC PARTICIPATION – GET INVOLVED NOW!

The data platform is financed by the city and state funds for digitalisation. The costs for the period between 2020 and 2026 are capped at €6.3 million, as approved by the city parliament.

Traffic data is collected throughout Darmstadt in its entirety. The results from the collected data can be viewed as raw data here (https://datenplattform.darmstadt.de/verkehr/apps/opendata/#/) or in visual form here (https://datenplattform.darmstadt.de/verkehr/apps/uitraffic) on the data platform. The sensors are procured and maintained by the Mobility department.

A working group, led by the Statistics department and assisted by Smart City, is currently working hard to create the formal basis for the open-data service. Several topics are dealt with at the same time, such as environmental and traffic data.

This is being planned for the city’s open-data portal. In the future, geodata will also be made available on the data platform if it is to be linked to IoT data, for example.

This is technically possible and we are currently examining a suitable application.

We check the quality and thus the authenticity of the project data as best we can.

The data is displayed in the cockpit in real time. The data is ‘changed’ in the sense that, depending on the display, it can be aggregated from different locally or temporally distributed measured values.

The data platform itself is not a plug-in, but a stand-alone application. Individual components used in the data platform are made available separately as open source. The Smart City Darmstadt data platform is not an open-source application.

An important goal for the future is to support open data, i.e. open data that does not create a direct ownership relationship. As part of the data platform, civic participation is planned to address this issue. Smart City Darmstadt is already supported by the independent Ethics and Technology Advisory Board, which acts as a committee to review and contribute to the various projects.

The data platform is primarily intended for presenting, processing and analysing the various data from Smart City Darmstadt with a focus on the Internet of Things (IoT). The city’s open-data portal, which is also technically independent, has a different focus and complies with the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) standard.

Digitalstadt Darmstadt GmbH does not carry out any software development itself. The service providers commissioned after the call for tenders use a large number of open-source solutions for their projects.

There are already plans to cooperate with local universities. In the future, we also want to work with a larger number of local groups, such as companies and associations. If you have ideas for cooperation, let us know as part of the civic participation (see above).

The collected data is stored either in the cloud or in a Darmstadt-based data centre. Data controllers decide on the storage location. For example, environmental and traffic data, for which there are future plans for an open-data publication, is stored in the cloud (but initially only accessible to authorised city administration staff). Other data, such as the fill levels of private waste containers, is kept locally.

The data platform currently focuses on non-personal data. The respective data sets contain explanations and information on their origin and significance. As we continue to expand, we are planning to ensure the greatest possible transparency for storing other data. However, the actual implementation is still pending. You are welcome to incorporate this as a use case into the planned civic participation.