National Geographic Institute (NGI) Belgium
"With the NAP, we encourage convenient and more environmentally friendly passenger transport by making the (geo)information needed for innovative travel information apps accessible in one place."
Ingrid Vanden Berghe, Director, National Geographic Institute, Belgium
The National Geographic Institute (NGI) is responsible for the development of the website Transportdata.be that was created to align Belgium with the European Delegated Act 2017/1926. This requires all member states set up a National Access Point (NAP) for multimodal transport information to enhance the development of multimodal travel information services.
The Belgian NAP – www.transportdata.be – is a metadata portal on which all travel data concerning passenger transport must be registered. To promote the ‘modal shift’, it enables the exchange of data between data providers, such as transport authorities and operators, and developers of multimodal travel information services. In this modal shift, the personal car is replaced by more environmentally friendly and multimodal alternatives, thereby providing a better service to travellers. Furthermore, it is an essential step into lowering CO2 emissions as described in the climate ambitions of the Paris Agreement, as the transport sector is responsible for more than 20% of the global CO2 emissions.
Benefits
- Stakeholders (national and international) know where to find travel and traffic related information.
- A common access point for data enhances the use of common standards by the data owners.
- By simplifying the access to the relevant information, the threshold is lowered for the development of door-to-door travel information services.
- The transportdata.be-forum gives the different stakeholders the opportunity to exchange experiences and ask the community questions.
- Passenger transport can be organised in a more efficient and environmentally friendly manner.
