Towards emergency vehicle routing using Geolinked Open Data: the case study of the Municipality of Catania

Linked Open Data (LOD) has gained significant momentum over the past years as a best practice of promoting the sharing and publication of structured data on the semantic Web. Currently LOD is reaching significant adoption also in Public Administrations (PAs), where it is often required to be connected to existing platforms, such as GIS-based data management systems. Bearing on previous experience with the pioneering data.cnr.it, through Semantic Scout, as well as the Agency for Digital Italy recommendations for LOD in Italian PA, we are working on the extraction, publication, and exploitation of data from the Geographic Information System of the Municipality of Catania, referred to as SIT (“Sistema Informativo Territoriale”). The goal is to boost the metropolis towards the route of a modern Smart City by providing prototype integrated solutions supporting transport, public health, urban decor, and social services, to improve urban life. In particular a mobile application focused on real-time road traffic and public transport management is currently under development to support sustainable mobility and, especially, to aid the response to urban emergencies, from small accidents to more serious disasters. This paper describes the results and lessons learnt from the first work campaign, aiming at analyzing, reengineering, linking, and formalizing the Shape-based geo-data from the SIT.