The Netherlands: OpenEarth Receives Dutch Data Award

OpenEarth has won the 2012 Dutch Data Award in the exact and technical sciences category.

In OpenEarth, Deltares has teamed up with the Delft University of Technology, Van Oord, Arcadis Alkyon and UNESCO-IHE. A total of fifteen projects competed for the title. The award was granted by 3TU.Datacentrum and DANS and consisted of a sculpture and € 7,500.

OpenEarth is an open source instrument that stores and shares data, models and tools for marine and coastal projects. The collection and management of these data take a lot of time and, usually, after the completion of a project, nothing more is done with them. This was regrettable, decided the people behind the award a few years ago, and they established a platform for collecting, managing and providing access to these datasets, models and tools. That helps users to work more efficiently in terms of both time and money.

Because of the open source approach, every visitor can use the data on the platform free of charge, and also add new data. Large amounts of data about national and international projects have now been added to the platform, and people are turning to it more and more often. Particularly engineering firms and scientists, but also, for example, teachers who want to show pupils how the Dutch coast develops.

Fedor Baart, who is involved in OpenEarth on behalf of Deltares together with Gerben de Boer: ‘Our added value is not so much the collection of the data, but more a question of providing access to them. Allowing people to draw on existing knowledge allows them to build on it and develop new knowledge.’

For the jury, the easy access to OpenEarth was a decisive factor. ‘Collecting data is half the work. It is certainly just as important to classify and compress the data. That makes it possible to share it with colleagues and other interested people. The standard of research data collection and access provided by OpenEarth is excellent and entirely justifies the Data Award,’ was the opinion of the jury.

[mappress]

Press Release, October 29, 2012