The steering group of HRI has announced its selection of the best open data activities of 2018 and gives first prize to the MyHelsinki.fi service. Honorable mentions go to an orthophotograph of the Helsinki region in 2017 and data that shows the amount of solar radiation received by rooftops in the Helsinki metropolitan area, both published by Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority HSY.

The HRI steering group met earlier in February to select the best open data activities of 2018, naming the open API of MyHelsinki.fi as the year’s best open data initiative. MyHelsinki Open API is an open API maintained by Helsinki Marketing. It provides up-to-date and curated information on the places of interest, events and activities of Helsinki and the Helsinki metropolitan area.

The HRI steering group cites the broad range of content and commercial opportunities offered by the open API as the particular merits of the MyHelsinki.fi open data initiative. It is also noteworthy that MyHelsinki.fi itself utilizes open data on events accessed through the Linked Events Helsinki API. One of the commercial users of the interface is the Chinese conglomerate Tencent in its WeChat mobile app.

The HRI steering group awarded the following open datasets published by Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority HSY with honorable mentions:

• Orthophotograph of Helsinki Region 2017
• Amount of solar radiation on rooftops in the Helsinki metropolitan area (in Finnish only)

The HSY orthophotograph was cited by the steering group for its merits in the routines of continuous maintenance. The solar radiation dataset of HSY was cited by the steering group for its environmental merits.