This week Bart van Leeuwen will be present on behalf of Netage at FDIC in Indianapolis, USA. FDIC is the largest international fire-fighter congress in the USA. Bart will join lots of workshops himself and will be introduced to the latest products for fire-fighters. Bart will also give a classroom session himself on Thursday , April 21. Bart’s classroom session, called ‘Situational Awareness Barriers in a Digital Information Environment‘ will give an easy accessible explanation on how to use digital information in the fire service.

In the clip below, Bart himself introduces his session:

Friday, January 15th, Bart van Leeuwen will give a presentation on be halve of netage at the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) in Boston.
The NFPA who sets the standards for fire departments in the USA, is organizing a ‘First Big Data Analytics Meet Up Workshop & Breakfast‘ and has asked netage to share their experiences with smart data. The presentation of Bart is called “Smart Data for Smart Fire Fighting” and will cover his experiences with smart data and the Firebrary.
Also exploratory discussions are taking place about a possible future cooperation in this area.

netage has been commissioned by the IFV to realize a electronic dictionary, the Firebrary. During the Dutch Firefigthters Congres the result were shown in a stand and the promotion video was launched and can be found on the website. The fire department electronic dictionary is an integral part of the VeRA, the safety region reference architecture. netage has built the electronic dictionary with open standards which are also recommended by the Dutch Forum standardisation.

netage.nl has won funding with RESC.Info Insight: A web based service for fire departments to assess residential fire risks in neighbourhoods based on Open Data, to help distribute resources and fire safety education.

From tackling fire risk, to publishing company information, eleven winners secure €1 million from new European incubator.

Eleven businesses from across Europe will receive up to €100k of EU grant funding after being selected in the second round of the new programme: Open Data Incubator for Europe (ODINE). The programme supports European startups and SMEs to build sustainable businesses using open data.

In addition to their grant funding, over the next six months the eleven winners will receive:

• expert advice from business mentors
• peer-networking and support
• technology and datasets
• coverage in The Guardian datablog
• brokering introductions to business angels and venture capitalists
• training in open data and business management

Since the first of October Nicky van Oorschot has been employed by netage.nl as Data Specialist. Nicky is just graduated from the master course “Information Sciences” at the VU University Amsterdam. During his master thesis Nicky studied whether it is possible to calculate dwelling fire risks solely based on Open Datasets. During this master thesis there was intensive cooperation with Bart van Leeuwen as well as researchers from the Web & Media research group from the VU University Amsterdam.

The outcomes from the master thesis research were promising why is decided to continue the project with netage.nl. Because of the innovative character and the international potential the research has been selected to participate in the ODINE program.

Nicky will focus himself on the further development of the Proof Of Concept developed during his master thesis.

Eind oktober vond in Sapporo, Japan TPAC 2015 plaats. TPAC brengt W3C Technical Groups, het Advisory Board, de TAG en de Advisory Committee samen om nieuwe ontwikkelingen en ideeën te bespreken en planningen te maken voor de komende maanden. Netage.nl was als W3C lid aanwezig om een bijdrage te leveren.

Namens Netage.nl is Bart van Leeuwen lid van de ‘Spatial Data on the Web‘ groep en heeft met leden van deze groep twee intensieve meeting dagen gehad. Daarbij is er tijdens deze dagen ook een use case in gebracht die voor emergency response belangrijk is.

Na de Working Group meeting  was er nog een Plenary Day met ‘Break Out’ sessies, ook hier heeft Bart van Leeuwen aan deelgenomen.