4 European projects including SDI4Apps, OpenTransportNet, FOODIE and European Cloud Marketplace for Intelligent Mobility (ECIM) agreed on cooperation on data management and data sharing by signing a Memorandum of Understanding.

All 4 projects are co-funded by the European Union under the ICT Policy Support Programme as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme. The projects received funding from the European Union to increase the exploitation opportunities for open geographic information, facilitate market entry for new companies and to develop innovative services based on open geographic data.

There are at least three spatial data themes, including transport network, land use and points of interest, which are common for all the projects. These spatial data themes together with related technologies for data management are the main topics of the Memorandum of Understanding.

From the data point of view, the following activities will be performed by all 4 projects:

• data modelling – common data specifications  that will be in line with existing standards and will respect the project’s specific requirements;
• data search – active search for additional open data sources that can be integrated;
• data update – the projects will set up a working group on data update including data harmonisation;
• data provision – the above mentioned working group will provide means for data access for the projects and other users through open and standardised application programming interfaces;
• data promotion – the projects will collectively promote the datasets through various channels and networks to enhance their reuse.

From the technological point of view, the cooperation will tackle the following items:

• source codes – sharing open source codes in common repositories;
• bug tracking system – sharing tracking systems for reporting bugs;
• cloud computing – sharing capacities for large experimentation and testing.

The cooperation should result in a common plan for sustaining the data and technologies developed within the projects.