News
Plan4Business portal now online available
2014-02-05: The plan4business development team has designed and implemented the first operational implementation of the plan4business service platform. There will be two main implementations of the system.
One is for non-expert users enabling browsing the content, viewing the thematic compositions and predefined analysis and core pan-European datasets such as Urban Atlas and Corine Land Cover.
The other implementation is targeted at experts users who are additionally able to create own map compositions, perform own analysis, integrate spatial data into the common data model based on INSPIRE, download certain datasets or use the developed Application Programming Interface (API).
The prototypes are used mainly for testing purposes and no charges will apply. The portal for non-expert users is publicly available. Your feedback is appreciated. Please stay tuned and follow this website for further details.
Or look at the portal on http://www.whatstheplan.eu/.
Another operational implementation of the plan4Business platform is the polish tender search engine http://www.askwhere.eu / http://www.askwhere.com.pl.
Plan4Business Final Conference
2014-05-07: The final conference of the plan4business project took place on 14th March 2014 in Dublin, Ireland, hosted by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (R.I.C.S.) at the Headquarters of the Society of Chartered Surveyors of Ireland (S.C.S.I.), represented by Tony Mulhall, Associate Director of the LandProfessional Group.
High-level contributions supported a lively discussion with the audience. In the first part of the conference, the achievements of the plan4business project were presented: its business solutions, an online demonstration of the features and services of whatstheplan.eu platform, the added value and challenges.
plan4business Questionnaire
2014-04-08: The plan4business team has designed and implemented the operational plan4business service platform that is available at http://www.whatstheplan.eu.
The feedback on the platform is going on. First results show a high percentage of satisfaction, but also very constructive remarks and questions related to the platform. Please continue to give your feedback through this questionnaire, so we can continuously update the quality of the services and data! Many thanks in advance.
The plan4business Platform
Core Aspects
The core aspects of the plan4business platform are:
| Aspect | plan4business summary |
|---|---|
| Data types in the pool | Urban and regional planning data, basic geodata such as transport networks, geostatistical data, land use |
| Similar pools | Only national or regional available, with limited online services, such as simple searching |
| Pool size (end of the project) | 25% of valid spatial plans in Europe, accessible without legislative restrictions |
| Curation cost change and monitoring | Improvement of Integration and Harmonisation Engines in project and pool of integrated data lowers effort |
| Main technical innovations | Collaborative integration and automated data harmonisation tools, analytical processing and conversion engines |
| Services offered on the pool | Integration/Conversion, Data Management (Versioning, History), Analysis, Processing, Simulation and Visualisation |
| API or Services | APIs will be offered as well as applications. |
| User sophistication | Professional technical and non-technical users |
| Owner of the data pool | Original data providers; licensing concept is in preparation for this purpose. |
Platform Schema
The plan4business platform consists of several technical components, grouped into three layers. The first layer contains human-machine interfaces, specifically for planning data management, integration and conversion as well as for accessing the analytical functions of the platform. The second layer provides two groups of processing engines, again for integration and harmonisation on the one hand and for analytical processing on the other hand. In addition, this layer provides the plan4business API, which is utilised by AVINET for their own portal solution, which enables their clients the access to pan-European data. The final layer is a storage layer, which contains a storage manager as well as two different data bases, each optimized for different goals.
Figure: Plan4Business Platform Schema
plan4business is a project co-funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission.