The Innovation Arena

The Innovation Arena is a data platform where members, collabs, researchers, companies and individuals can participate. All of them contribute with available resources, perspectives and functions. The Innovation Arena provides an inspiring and productive collaborative environment that promotes and produces research solutions and innovations. The objective is to create good conditions for the smart, sustainable and vibrant cities of the future.

The Innovation Arena is a platform for large amounts of data that can reflect an entire society, and a place where data warehouses can be combined in different types of models.

For example, you can combine data from motion sensors placed around a city with weather forecasts to predict how many people will move through a specific city center tomorrow. Major focus has been placed on the Innovation Arena being able to form the basis for various types of digital, innovative and geo-based services and applications. The platform is being developed in line with a number of ongoing innovation projects around data modeling and simulation, and it is also open for application of data science, for example neural networks and other types of artificial intelligence. Thus, we significantly minimize the start-up-phase for parties who want to innovate new community-focused services, businesses and solutions.

In order to continuously develop the Innovation Arena, FPX currently runs and coordinates several database projects in areas such as property development, urban planning, local news, community information and research on urban environments. By registering a project account at fpx.se/innovationsarenan, anyone can access the Innovation Arena. Members are free to build applications directly on the Innovation Arena or build their own platform on top of the same underlying datasets and models.

Open data is the ambition

All API interfaces, models and algorithms are built on the premise that the systems must be available in the form of open source code. Deviations from the principle of open data may, for example, be relevant in research where the data stored during the process cannot be considered validated, or when private actors use the platform and only want to make their data available in aggregate form for privacy reasons.

Examples of projects where the Innovation Arena can be used to achieve results:

• Coordinate educations, seminars and workshops where competencies in Data Science and urban development can meet.
• Describe a society and its changes by making models available that predict people’s behaviors for businesses and associations.
• Identify positive effects and gains by creating collaborative areas where different parties can work together to streamline, for example, property management.
• Model transports and consumption in a society to find innovative logistics solutions with a focus on end customers/households.
• Make data and source code available in an open and standardized way for research in the urban environment.

The easiest way to use and experiment with the Innovation Arena is through the visual map application that is made available online. The purpose of this editor is not to offer a full-featured GIS tool but rather an easy way to quickly get an overview of the various datasets offered within the platform. However, it is possible to import and export data via the associated code view, and for simple needs it is possible to create, edit and delete data via editing tools.

Link: https://editor.fpx.se

Editorn är utöver sin GIS-funktionalitet också ett enkelt sätt att snabbt komma igång med datahanteringen inom plattformen. Nya användare kan registeras och nya dataset kan skapas enkelt både via det visuella gränssnittet eller genom API:et.

 In addition to its GIS functionality, the editor is also an easy way to quickly get started with data management within the platform. New users can register and new datasets can be created easily both via the visual interface or through the API.

ArcGIS
ESRI is a member and partner to FPX. For larger or more complex GIS projects we recommend that data from the Innovation Arena is exported and imported via their GIS tool ArcGIS.

FPX’s ambition is that every project involving data should have a direct connection to the Innovation Arena. This is made possible by the associated API. For example, the visual editor above is placed directly on the platform, and the source code for this application is open. A user who is registered via an application that FPX has developed is also represented as a user in the API. User data created via the editor for example can also be used to call the API.

 Feel free to use the dynamic documentation to explore the API directly in your browser.

Link: https://api.fpx.se

Contribute to development

FPX is a non-profit association and the development of the Innovation Arena is realized together with the project’s partners via open source. All parties are free, regardless of whether they are formally part of the project collaboration or not, to contribute to the development by creating additions and change requests via the Innovation Arena’s Github page.

Link to source code: https://github.com/Future-Position-X/fpx-monorepo