This international symposium, supported by the University of Brighton, aims to bridge the gap between researchers, service providers and end users creating, aggregating and providing access to open data, knowledge and software tools to address the global challenges exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges are related to health, societal inclusion, economic loss as well as the lack of access to education and learning opportunities. Such challenges would entail standard and consolidated process requiring reflection and reworking to be adapted to new settings. For example, whilst two years ago data providers were encouraged to publish data openly, due to the pandemic digitization has become mandatory in order to easily share and disseminate information with end-users. In this environment, organisations across the world require open, secure, interoperable and intelligent software systems to support digitisation, linking, aggregating, analysing, visualising and providing access to data and knowledge by using technologies such as semantic web, artificial intelligence, data analytics, immersive visualisation, as well as human-computer interaction.
The symposium will allow participants to discuss about the latest research, case studies, and best practises across various disciplines and sectors such as Health, Finance, Public Sector, Education, Media and Culture. Cross-cutting issues will also be explored including interoperability, business models, security and privacy, as well as ethics, and legal aspects of open data and software.
For the research community and practitioners, the symposium will provide an excellent scientific forum to exchange novel ideas and look ahead to potential directions for the development/deployment of software systems for sustainable development in a post-pandemic era. For end users, the event will provide a unique opportunity to feed into technical developments as well as to identify new techniques and ideas which can be transferred into practice.
