The European Commission (EC) has implemented new EU rules to make more public data sets available for reuse. These so-called ‘high-value data sets’ contain information on six thematic areas laid out in the Open Data Directive – geospatial, Earth observation and environment, meteorological, statistics, companies and mobility.
Meteorological applications
According to the EC, the new rules have the potential to generate important societal and economic benefits by fueling new products and services such as artificial intelligence (AI) applications. High-value data sets in the meteorological area, for example, can be used to produce better weather predictions and related apps. Agricultural companies could leverage satellite imagery, weather data and soil health information to implement precision farming techniques, thereby increasing yield and reducing waste.
European Commission’s data
The official portal for European data includes more than 1.7 million data sets from EU institutions and agencies, as well as from member states. The high-value data sets will be available for free in machine-readable format, and will be accessible via an application programming interface (API) and, where relevant, as bulk downloads.
In related news, NOAA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) recently hosted a joint workshop on the potential for AI to transform weather prediction. Click here to read the full story.