Observatories | Reprex

Cultural & Creative Sectors and Industries Data Observatory

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The creative and cultural sectors and industries are mainly made of networks of freelancers and microenterprises, with very few medium-sized companies. Their economic performance, problems, and innovation capacities hidden. Our open collaboration to create this data observatory is committed to change this. Relying on modern data science, the re-use of open governmental data, open science data, and novel harmonized data collection we aim to fill in the gaps left in the official statistics of the European Union.

Table of Contents

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Our approach to a cultural and creative sector data observatory

The CCSI Data Observatory aims to be the go-to point for the cultural and creative sector and industry data. We want to help creative businesses, policy-makers, film funds, cultural heritage organizations, and civil society organizations with their data problems. Such organizations in Europe usually have a small team, often made of freelancers. Most of them have no data scientists or data engineers (and could not afford them). They usually do not even have in-house IT, or it has a very limited capacity.

Reprex is a Hauge-based impact startup currently developing the prototype of a decentralized, modern, web 3.0-compatible European Music Observatory. We are collecting and processing our users’ hard-to-get data and information in 20 countries. Reprex’s live prototype, the Digital Music Observatory, has successfully solved several countries’ complex problems (e.g. valuing and pricing music, providing evidence on piracy, predicting audiences, and finding algorithmic biases against small-country artists.) Our product/market fit was validated in the world’s 2nd-ranked university-backed incubator, the Yes!Delft AI+Blockchain Lab. We further developed the idea in the JUMP European Music Market Accelerator and are currently a finalist in the international impact innovation competition, The Hague Innovators Challenge. In 2022, our Digital Music Observatory collaboration won a Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Grant and three Culture Europe grants.

We realized in 2021 that most of the hard-to-get and difficult-to-process information sources of music are identical or very similar to those in film, gaming, books, and even fashion. We created a consortium with some of our partners in the music observatory, but unfortunately this project, unlike our music observatory project, did not get the desired funding yet. With our partners, the Scuola Superiore di Studi Universitari e di Perfezionamento Sant’Anna as original project initiator, the Institute for Information Law Research or the University of Amsterdam kept the unfunded project alive. The Stichting Europeana from the Netherlands supported with recommendation Reprex to compete with this idea for The Hague Innovation Award.

We want to help cultural organizations with top-notch market research, for example, survey recycling, big data collection, and reuse of not-yet-processed public sector data to provide a much better value-for-money service. We can also place the research data into innovative apps, such as audience prediction with machine learning.
Make the digital presence of our creative partners more visible and usable in the era of web 3.0. Harmonize their website and information automatically with global knowledge graphs, and place their research material, films, 3D objects, and catalogs into international knowledge databases and web services to create a much more significant impact.
Test if autonomous, AI-driven applications (such as music, film, or book streaming platforms, library recommended systems, and search engines) find their content, understand it well and recommend it to the correct audiences. Big data and AI create many inequalities and usually place European creative enterprises, particularly from smaller countries, in a disadvantageous position vis-a-vis American or English-language productions. With our world-class research partners in metadata and algorithmic biases, we improve.
Provide so-called ‘smart policy documents,’ such as business or policy dashboards, newsletters, and advocacy reports that automatically refresh their international comparative data, its visualizations, and legal and official policy document references. We automate the work of an eminent research assistant: we find the correct version of data in your documents and remind you of outdated legal or policy references. We place your research on web 3.0 knowledge graphs so that the document will search for its appropriate audience and significantly increase your dissemination and advocacy outreach.

What are data observatories?

More than 60 EU, UN, or OECD-recognized data/social science observatories exist worldwide.

Data observatories are public-private partnerships among businesses, consultancies, policy- and knowledge organizations, NGOs, and academic research institutes. They ensure the continuity of data collection, processing, and dissemination in various sectors. Their role is vital in balancing big data inequalities: usually, only the largest corporations, best-endowed universities, and advanced governments can sustain significant and systematic data collection programs without partners. Sharing collection and processing costs allows city ecosystems, smaller enterprises, or researchers outside global knowledge centers to remain competitive.

Invitation for an open collaboration

We would like to find new partners to optimize their market, academic research, or digital heritage production/publication with modern data science.
We are looking for partners who want to get involved in methodological innovation (supported by national or Horizon Europe grants) in survey recycling, digital rights management, and the distribution of conventional and 3-dimensional cultural objects.
Also looking for partners to help develop and test our connected, open-source tools for releasing digital cultural objects on global knowledge graphs and make the innovations of 21st-century data science and engineering even in microenterprises or civil society organizations to combat the inequalities of big data and unethical AI. Such projects are ideal candidates for Creative Europe grants.
We are looking for a forward-looking city and a local art/media tech scene, possibly with an existing knowledge lab or a recent European cultural capital history, to host our future observatory. Reprex has the know-how to develop a PPP in such an ecosystem, develop the data governance plan, and obtain financing.

Green Deal Data Observatory

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Finding reliable historic and new data and information about climate change, as well as the impact of various European Green Deal policies that try to mitigate it is surprisingly hard to find if you are a scientific researcher. And it is even more hopeless if you work as a (data) journalist, a policy researcher in an NGO, or in the sustainability unit of a company that does not provide you with an army of (geo)statisticians, data engineers, and data scientists who can render various data into usable format, i.e.something that you can trust, quote, visualize, import, or copy & paste.

Visit the Green Deal Data Observatory

Try the Green Deal Data Observatory API

Connect on LinkedIn

Better, Bigger, Faster, More

Novel data products	Official statistics at the national and European levels follow legal regulations, and in the EU, compromises between member states. New policy indicators often appear 5-10 years after demand appears. We employ the same methodology, software, and often even the same data that Eurostat might use to develop policy indicators, but we do not have to wait for a political and legal consensus to create new datasets. See our 100,000 Opinions on the Most Pressing Global Problem blogpost.
Better data	Statistical agencies, old fashioned observatories, and data providers often do not have the mandate, know-how or resources to improve data quality. Using peer-reviewed statistical software and hundreds of computational tests, we are able to correct mistakes, impute missing data, generate forecasts, and increase the information content of public data by 20-200% percent. This makes the data usable for NGOs, journalists, and visual artists—among other potential users—who do not have this statistical know-how to make incomplete, mislabelled or low quality data usable for their needs and applications. See our example with the Government Budget Allocations for R&D in Environment indicator.
Never seen data	The 2019/1024 directive on open data and the re-use of public sector information of the European Union (which is an extension and modernization of the earlier directives on re-use of public sector information since 2003) makes data gathered in EU institutions, national institutions, and municipalities, as well as state-owned companies legally available. According to the European Data Portal the estimated historical cost of the data released annually is in the billions of euros. But if this data is a gold mine, its full potential can only be unlocked by an experienced data mining partner like Reprex. Here is why: data is not readily downloadable; it sits in various obsolete file formats in disorganized databases; it is documented in various languages, or not documented at all; it is plagued with various processing errors. We make the powerful promise of open data of the EU legislation a reality in the field of the Green Deal policy context.

Increase Your Impact, Avoid Old Mistakes

Reprex helps its policy, business, and scientific partners by providing efficient solutions for necessary data engineering, data processing and statistical tasks that are as complex as they are tedious to perform. We deploy validated, open-source, peer-reviewed scientific software to create up-to-date, reliable, high-quality, and immediately usable data and visualizations. Our partners can leave the burden of this task, share the cost of data processing, and concentrate on what they do best: disseminating and advocating, researching, or setting sustainable business or underwriting indicators and creating early warning systems.

Impact

We publish the data in a way that it is easy to find—as a separate data publication with a DOI, full library metadata, and place it in open science repositories. Our data is more findable than 99% of the open science data, and therefore makes far bigger impact. See our data on the European open science repository Zenodo managed by CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).

Easy-to-use data

Our data follows the tidy data principle and comes with all the recommended Dublin Core and DataCite metadata. This increases our data compatibility, allowing users to open it in any spreadsheet application or import into their databases. We publish the data in tabular form, and in JSON form through our API enabling automatic retrieval for heavy users, especially if they plan to automatically use our data in daily or weekly updates. Using the best practice of data formatting and documentation with metadata ensures reproducibility and data integrity, rather than repeating data processing and preparation steps (e.g. changing data formats, removing unwanted characters, creating documentation, and other data processing steps that take up thousands of working hours. See our blogpost on the data Sisyphus.

Ethical Big Data for All

Big data creates inequalities, because only the largest corporations, government bureaucracies and best endowed universities can afford large data collection programs, the use of satellites, and the employment of many data scientists. Our open collaboration method of data pooling and cost sharing makes big data available for all.

Big picture

Integrating and joining data is hard—it requires engineering, mathematical, and geo-statistical know-how that a large amount of environmental users and stakeholders do not possess. Some examples of the challenges implicit in making data usable include addressing the changing boundaries of French departments (and European administrative-geographic borders, in general), various projections of coordinates on satellite images of land cover, different measurement areas for public opinion and hydrological data, public finance expressed in different orders (e.g. millions versus thousands of euros). We create data that is easy to combine, map, and visualize for end users. See our case study on the severity and awareness of flood risk in Belgium, as well as the financial capacity to manage it.

Ethical, Trustworthy AI

AI in 2021 increases data inequalities because large government and corporate entities with an army of data engineers can create proprietary, black box business algorithms that fundamentally alter our lives. We are involved in the R&D and advocacy of the EU’s trustworthy AI agenda which aims at similar protections like GDPR in privacy. We want to demystify AI by making it available for organizations who cannot finance a data engineering team, because 95% of a successful AI is cheap, complete, reliable data tested for negative outcomes – precisely what dwe offer to our users.

Open Collaboration

Reprex grew out of an international data cooperation and works in the open-source world. We use the agile open collaboration method that allows us to work with large corporations, NGOs, developers, university researcher institutes and individuals on an equal footing.

Find us on LinkedIn or send us an email.

Competition Data Observatory

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Our observatory is monitoring the certain segments of the European economy, and develops tools for computational antitrust in Europe. We take a critical SME-, intellectual property policy and competition policy point of view automation, robotization, and the AI revolution on the service-oriented European social market economy.

We aim to create early-warning, risk, economic effect, and impact indicators that can be used in scientific, business and policy contexts for professionals who are working on re-setting the European economy after a devastating pandemic and in the age of AI. We would like to map data between economic activities (NACE), antitrust markets, and sub-national, regional, metropolitian area data.

Visit the Competition Data Observatory

Try the Competition Data Observatory API

Connect on LinkedIn

Finding reliable historic and new data that can fuel large market monitoring schemes or computational antitrust models is surprisingly hard. And it is even more hopeless if you work as a (data) journalist, a policy researcher in an NGO, or in a competition law practice that does not provide you with an army of (geo)statisticians, data engineers, and data scientists who can render various data into usable format, i.e. something that you can trust, quote, visualize, import, or copy & paste.

Better, Bigger, Faster, More

Get more information from public datasets, or data you had paid for. Find more data in higher quality that is available sooner than in other sources.

Novel data products	Official statistics at the national and European levels follow legal regulations, and in the EU, compromises between member states. New policy indicators often appear 5-10 years after demand appears. We employ the same methodology, software, and often even the same data that Eurostat might use to develop policy indicators, but we do not have to wait for a political and legal consensus to create new datasets. See our 100,000 Opinions on the Most Pressing Global Problem blogpost.
Better data	Statistical agencies, old fashioned observatories, and data providers often do not have the mandate, know-how or resources to improve data quality. Using peer-reviewed statistical software and hundreds of computational tests, we are able to correct mistakes, impute missing data, generate forecasts, and increase the information content of public data by 20-200% percent. This makes the data usable for NGOs, journalists, and visual artists—among other potential users—who do not have this statistical know-how to make incomplete, mislabelled or low quality data usable for their needs and applications. See our example with the Turnover of the Radio Broadcasting Industry in Europe indicator.
Never seen data	The 2019/1024 directive on open data and the re-use of public sector information of the European Union (which is an extension and modernization of the earlier directives on re-use of public sector information since 2003) makes data gathered in EU institutions, national institutions, and municipalities, as well as state-owned companies legally available. According to the European Data Portal the estimated historical cost of the data released annually is in the billions of euros. But if this data is a gold mine, its full potential can only be unlocked by an experienced data mining partner like Reprex. Here is why: data is not readily downloadable; it sits in various obsolete file formats in disorganized databases; it is documented in various languages, or not documented at all; it is plagued with various processing errors. We make the powerful promise Government Budget Allocations for R&D in Environment of the EU legislation a reality in the field of the Green Deal policy context.

Increase Your Impact, Avoid Old Mistakes

Impact

Easy-to-use data

Ethical Big Data for All

Big picture

Better data

Open Collaboration

Find us on LinkedIn or send us an email.

Economy Data Observatory

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Big data and automation create new inequalities and injustices and has a potential to create a jobless growth. Our Economy Observatory is a fully automated, open source, open data observatory that produces new indicators from open data sources and experimental big data sources, with authoritative copies and a modern API.

Our observatory is monitoring the European economy to protect the consumers and the small companies from unfair competition both from data and knowledge monopolization and robotization. We take a critical SME-, intellectual property policy and competition policy point of view automation, robotization, and the AI revolution on the service-oriented European social market economy.

We would like to create early-warning, risk, economic effect, and impact indicators that can be used in scientific, business and policy contexts for professionals who are working on re-setting the European economy after a devastating pandemic and in the age of AI. We would like to map data between economic activities (NACE), antitrust markets, and sub-national, regional, metropolitian area data.

Get involved in services: our ongoing projects, team of contributors, open-source libraries and use our data for publications. See some use cases.

Follow news about us or the more comprehensive Data & Lyrics blog.

Download our competition presentation

Our Product/Market Fit was validated in the world’s 2nd ranked university-backed incubator program, the Yes!Delft AI Validation Lab.

Digital Music Observatory

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Digital Music Observatory is a fully automated, open source, open data observatory that links public datasets in order to provide a comprehensive view of the European music industry. The DMO produces key business and policy indicators that enable the growth of music business strategies and national music policies in a way that works both for music lover audiences and the creative enterprises of the sector, and contributes to a more competitive, fair and sustainable European music ecosystem.

Its data pillars are following the structure laid out in the Feasibility study for the establishment of a European Music Observatory.

The Demo Music Observatory Pillars:

Music is one of the most data-driven service industries where the majority of sales are already made by AI-driven autonomous systems. The DMO is a fully-functional service that can function as a testing ground of the European Data Strategy, showcasing the ways in which the music industry is affected by the problems that the Digital Services Act and the Trustworthy AI initiatives attempt to regulate. If these policies will work for the European microenterprise-dominated, complex and fragile European music ecosystem, then they are likely to make Europe fit for the digital age.

Download our introduction.

Our Product/Market Fit was validated in the world’s 2nd ranked university-backed incubator program, the Yes!Delft AI Validation Lab. We are currently developing this project with the help of the JUMP European Music Market Accelerator program.

Follow news about us or the more comprehensive Data & Lyrics blog.

Use Cases

We work with collective management organizations, when they do not have the data, or do not have the right to use the data that they have for various professional uses, including private copying damage claims, setting royalty tariffs (and defending them in copyright or competition tribunals.)
We support researchers at universities and consultancy to produce better evidence-based policies, business strategies or scientific output. We provide them thoroughly tested, properly processed, ready-to-import, ready-to-use data in various music, creative industries, competition, and climate change related issues. We work with very heterogeneous and highly fragmented data.
Our team members have been involved with open governmental and open science data for almost 20 years individually. We know how to find, process, and make usable legally open, unique data which cannot be purchased on the market (from university archives, tax authorities, public satellites) in a way that matches scientific or financial auditing standards.
We participate in various trustworthy, ethical AI R&D projects with high-quality data and testing data to perform bad outcomes or malfunctioning recommendations of music AI systems.