Text Terhi Upola
The Helsinki Region Infoshare data catalogue already contains more than 1,000 datasets for innovative programmers to exploit. The application developers’ favourite type of material are datasets related to mobility.
When iPhone entered Finland in 2008, Markus Halttunen decided to realise his long-time dream: to combine GPS to the Helsinki Region Transport (HRT) Journey Planner.
. At first, the program operated without an official public interface but this made its development difficult. Everything became easier in the following year when HRT decided to make its interface open to all.
After the opening of the interface, the Journey Planner data has given birth to dozens of other applications. There were so many of them that the magazine MikroPC named HRT’s open timetable information and its applications the ‘phenomenon of the year’ in 2011.
Halttunen has felt for a long time that his ReittiGPS application already has all the necessary features. But it occasionally happens that a large number of users give the same feedback or development idea. Halttunen may then consider adding a new feature.
”All the wishes cannot be automatically fulfilled, since the additional properties shouldn’t complicate the basic use of the app.”
The ReittiGPS is a hobby project for Halttunen, although the popularity of the application has exceeded his expectations.
Two years ago, the National Land Survey published data that was instantly put into use in a full-length Finnish film. Kaappari (“The Hijacker”), which premiered in early 2013, tells the story of Finland’s only skyjacking case in 1978.
”We were just thinking how to execute the aerial photos in the film when we learned that the National Land Survey was going to unlock its data. We had been planning to purchase material from NASA but that would have been unreasonably expensive, and we had even thought about taking the photos by ourselves”, says Creative Manager Ville Vaajakallio from Fake Graphics, the company that prepared the aerial photos for the production company Solar Films.
The National Land Survey’s aerial photos, numerical land elevation data, and infrared images revealing the location of forest, fields and lakes, have been used for creating the aerial photos on a computer.
”Without this data, the images would have been less realistic or would have taken a much longer time to make”, says Vaajakallio.
At the same time as it made the aerial photos for the film, Fake Graphics also produced a ‘landscape generator’ for more general purposes. This tool enables the firm to create landscape photos of any part of Finland for similar uses. Without the data of National Land Survey, every job of this type would have to be done separately by hand and would take weeks to make.
”Now we are developing the system to be more versatile”, Vaajakallio reveals.
The company also plans to use data about the road network. The cost-free nature of the data had a great significance for the project because Finnish films are made mainly on small budgets. What is more, the makers of the aerial photos were not even sure beforehand whether it would be possible to use the data in making the photos.
”We had a few enthusiastic people with the ideas and the motivation to give it a try. The fact that the data was free made it worthwhile to examine whether this plan would work”, says Vaajakallio.
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