ENERGIC-OD Virtual Hubs: a brokered architecture for facilitating Open Data sharing and use

Open Data promise to create new market opportunities and social value. In particular, geospatial data have a potentially huge inner value. But to unleash their potential, data need to be not only open but also effectively usable. The present paper describes the concept and implementation of the Virtual Hubs developed in the ENERGIC-OD European project. The Virtual Hubs facilitate the use of geospatial open data, providing seamless discovery of and access to heterogeneous data sources, also providing semantic capabilities and dataset transformations. Virtual Hubs lower the entry barriers for both data providers and users facilitating open data publication and exploitation. Through open Web APIs, they reduce the development time for Web and mobile applications based on geospatial open data, supporting the creation of innovative services and the generation of new market opportunities.