The City’s Anniversary: Amsterdam 750

In 2025 Amsterdam will celebrate its 750th year of existence. Time for a celebration! In the past months, the Amsterdam Time Machine has been working closely with the CTO Office (Directorate of Digitization and Innovation), GLAM’s and municipal teams such as 3D Amsterdam to prepare for new concepts. The aim is to develop a number of public applications based on a multitude of data sources about Amsterdam’s present, past and future. One example is Amsterdam Diaries. Together with  researchers from the UvA and the VU, the Waag future lab and several creative producers, we want to bring historical Amsterdam to live via personal stories that can be found in digitized diaries. From these diaries, address information will be connected to Adamlink addresses (URI’s), historical images will be added and information about people will be connected to public databases like Wikidata. To be able to do this, we strive for launching the Amsterdam Data Hub. This is the working title of a technical infrastructure that makes it possible to link data sources from several organisations, in such a way that the information from these different data sources can be enriched. Through a knowledge graph of and for Amsterdam data, we create a broader context in which the data can be interpreted and applied. We offer a single access point for (linked) data on Amsterdam, making it easier to query data in an unambiguous way. Moreover, we facilitate the reuse and enrichment of data and the expansion of links between data suppliers, such as heritage and research institutes and the municipality. We can thus provide a richer picture of the histories of people, houses and events in Amsterdam and connect these with data about the present and digital plans for the future. by: Boudewijn Koopmans (project manager)