The book “Open Cities | Open Data”  has been released this week. As common in edited books, the editorial team collaborated on the opening chapter, which is titled “Introduction: Open Data and the Generation of Urban Value”. In it, the editorial team starts with some historical bits that motivate the rest of the book:

“The world has made two significant transitions in the new millennium. The first involves the transition to a knowledge economy where the most lucrative industry is now the production and management of information or ‘data’. […]. The second significant transformation is the transition from a rural to an urban world, a process known as urbanisation.”

That is to say that data is the most important asset and valuable commodity today, especially in the functioning of cities and in the relationship with their urban citizens. The opening chapter then introduces the three areas that the book covers: Urban Inclusion and Social Entrepreneurship, Knowledge Ecosystems and Resilience, and Civic Innovation and Transparency.

Our contribution to the book is a chapter entitled “Tell Me How My Open Data Is Re-used: Increasing Transparency Through the Open City Toolkit” , which belongs to the section Civic Innovation and Transparency. The chapter was written as a case study, in which we showed the tools that were/are part of the Open City Toolkit in the realm of the GEO-C project. We describe the transparency module that’s useful to answer the questions: what are datasets available in my city? How often are these datasets used? We also emphasise the unique role of the transparency module in enabling greater transparency about the use of open datasets in cities.

The highlights of the chapter are:
• Dashboard to visualize apps and dataset usage in a city context.
• Visualization of spatial locations from which apps and datasets are accessed.
• Interactive guidelines as problem-solution patterns to communicate Open Data-based innovations.
• Interactive guidelines to empower citizens to participate in and shape the future of their cities.

The abstract of the book chapter is:
The Open Data movement has been gaining momentum in recent years, with increasingly many public institutions making their data freely accessible. Despite much data being already open (and more to come), finding information about the actual usage of these open datasets is still a challenge. This chapter introduces two tools of the Open City Toolkit (OCT) that tackle this issue: a tool to increase transparency and interactive guidelines. Interviews with city council employees confirmed the utility of the transparency tool. Both tools can be used by city councils (for planning purposes) and by users interested to know more about the value of current open datasets (for information purposes).

Cite this chapter as:
Degbelo A., Granell C., Trilles S., Bhattacharya D., Wissing J. (2020) Tell Me How My Open Data Is Re-used: Increasing Transparency Through the Open City Toolkit. In: Hawken S., Han H., Pettit C. (eds) Open Cities | Open Data. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore (pp. 311-330) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6605-5_14