OpenStreetMap Contribution to Local Data Ecosystems in COVID-19 Times: Experiences and Reflections from the Italian Case

Marco Minghini, Alessandro Sarretta and Maurizio Napolitano
Additional contact information
Marco Minghini: European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), 21027 Ispra, Italy
Alessandro Sarretta: Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection, National Research Council (CNR-IRPI), 35127 Padova, Italy
Maurizio Napolitano: Fondazione Bruno Kessler, 38123 Trento, Italy

Data, 2022, vol. 7, issue 4, 1-21

Abstract: Data and digital technologies have been at the core of the societal response to COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. This work focuses on the specific contribution of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project to address the early stage of the COVID-19 crisis (approximately from February to May 2020) in Italy. Several activities initiated by the Italian OSM community are described, including: mapping ‘red zones’ (the first municipalities affected by the emergency); updating OSM pharmacies based on the authoritative dataset from the Ministry of Health; adding information on delivery services of commercial activities during COVID-19 times; publishing web maps to offer COVID-19-specific information at the local level; and developing software tools to help collect new data. Those initiatives are analysed from a data ecosystem perspective, identifying the actors, data and data flows involved, and reflecting on the enablers and barriers for their success from a technical, organisational and legal point of view. The OSM project itself is then assessed in the wider European policy context, in particular against the objectives of the recent European strategy for data, highlighting opportunities and challenges for scaling successful approaches such as those to fight COVID-19 from the local to the national and European scales.

Keywords: cities; data ecosystem; COVID-19; geospatial; Italy; OpenStreetMap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 C80 C81 C82 C83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/7/4/39/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/7/4/39/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jdataj:v:7:y:2022:i:4:p:39-:d:784234

Access Statistics for this article

Data is currently edited by Ms. Cecilia Yang

More articles in Data from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().