Integrating Geospatial Information & Linked Open Data Dr. John J O’Flaherty,

Integrating Geospatial Information

& Linked Open Data

Dr. John J O’Flaherty,

The National Microelectronics Applications Centre Ltd,

[email protected]

GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI

mailto:[email protected]

Contents

1. Geospatial Information (GI) – OGC/INSPIRE

2. Linked Data (LD) – W3C/Semantic Web

3. Linked Open Data (LOD) – Open Data/OGP

4. SmartOpenData Project

5. Linking Geospatial Data

6. SmartOpenData pilots

7. Conclusion on the Future for GI

GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, [email protected]

The Future for GI will be LOD

“Everything is somewhere” Geospatial Information (GI) is fundamental. Open Interoperability is critical

The societal, economic & scientific benefits of integrating GI into commercial & institutional processes is huge.

– The process would be substantially aided if data were published on the Web with the appropriate GI at the source,

– thus allowing discovery & access using the standard Web mechanisms


GI – OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium)

GI is mainly based on standards fromOGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) & ISO (International Standards Organisation)

– Based on the OGC Reference Model» E.g. WMS 1.0 - Maps, Display, Features & Data

– See www.opengeospatial.org/standards

Based on extensive Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) that have been established

– E.g. the Irish Spatial Data Exchange, www.isde.ie Ireland’s INSPIRE GeoPortal, www.geoportal.ie


http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards

http://www.isde.ie/

http://www.geoportal.ie/

http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/

Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community

GI - INSPIRE Directive

5GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, [email protected]

http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/

INSPIRE Principles

1. Data should be collected once & maintained at the level where this can be done most effectively.

2. Combine seamlessly spatial data from different sources across the EU & share it between many users & applications.

3. Spatial data should be collected at one level of government & shared between all levels of government

4. Spatial data needed for good governance should beavailable on conditions that are not restricting its extensive use.

5. It should be easy to discover which spatial data is available, to evaluate its fitness for purpose & know which conditions apply for its use


Annex III1.Statistical units2.Buildings3.Soil4.Land use5.Human health & safety6.Utility & Government services7.Environmental monitoring facilities8.Production & industrial facilities9.Agricultural & aquaculture facilities10.Population distribution – demography11.Area management/restriction/regulation zones & reporting units12.Natural risk zones13.Atmospheric conditions14.Meteorological geographical features15.Oceanographic geographical features16.Sea regions17.Bio-geographical regions18.Habitats & biotopes19.Species distribution 20.Energy resources21.Mineral resources

Annex I1.Coordinate reference system2.Geographical grid systems3.Geographical names4.Administrative units5.Addresses6.Cadastral parcels 7.Transport networks 8.Hydrography9.Protected sites

Annex II1.Elevation2.Land cover3.Orthoimagery4.Geology

INSPIRE 34 Spatial Data Themes


Mechanisms for sharing & exchangeMechanisms for sharing & exchange

INSPIRE Directive – Legislatively driven - Top-down – mainly OGC/ISO standards

INSPIRE DIRECTIVEINSPIRE DIRECTIVE

METADATAMETADATA

MONITORING & REPORTINGMONITORING & REPORTINGDATA & SERVICE SHARINGDATA & SERVICE SHARING

NETWORKING SERVICESNETWORKING SERVICESDATA SPECIFICATIONDATA SPECIFICATION

Member States Data

USERS - Seamless access to data


Web of Linked Data (LD) – Semantic Web of knowledge

Community driven - bottom-up/collaborative W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards

See www.w3.org/standards/

Open Web of Linked Data (Semantic Web) - based on – HTML/HTTP – the “normal” web of documents – standard Web Browser

– RDF Triples – Resource Description Framework - graph based data model Two nodes (Subject & Object) & a relationship connecting them (Predicate)


– URIs – Universal Resource Identifiers

» Web addresses for everything

» All Subjects, Objects & Predicates

http://www.w3.org/standards/

http://www.w3.org/standards/

Tim Berners Lee – Founder of the Web

“In an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. We think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words. I liked the idea that a piece of information is really defined only by what it's related to, & how it's related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.”


Open Data – OGP (Open Government Partnership)

Open Data is – "A piece of data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, & redistribute it — subject

only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike” G8 Open Data Charter - http://opensource.com/government/13/7/open-data-charter-g8

– All government data will be published open by default,

– Will increase the quality, quantity & re-use of the data that is released.

– To help unlock the economic potential of open data, support innovation & provide greater accountability.

EU Directive on reuse of Public Service Information (PSI)– See http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/european-legislation-reuse-public-sector-information

Open Government Partnership (OGP) – Ireland joined in 2013– OGP – 65 countries, www.opengovpartnership.org – Irish OGP National Action Plan, www.ogpireland.ie

» Open Data is a key component

» All PSI Open Data to be Linked Open Data within 5 years.


http://opensource.com/government/13/7/open-data-charter-g8

http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/european-legislation-reuse-public-sector-information

http://www.opengovpartnership.org/

Open Data Formats

• Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web & Linked Data initiator, suggested a 5 star deployment scheme for Open Data. • From just electronic

to Linked Open Data (LOD)• See http://5stardata.info/

★ make your stuff available on the Web (whatever format) under an open license

★★ make it available as structured data (e.g., Excel instead of image scan of a table)

★★★ use non-proprietary formats (e.g., CSV instead of Excel)

★★★★ use URIs to denote things, so that people can point at your stuff

★★★★★

link your data to other data to provide context (LOD)GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, [email protected]

Linked Open Data cloud

http://lod-cloud.net/

Media

Government

Geo

Publications

User-generated

Life sciences

Cross-domain


data.cso.ie– 2011 Census – Linked Open Data

• 12 million RDF triples from Census

• Geographical entities (counties, cities, etc.)

• Codelists

• StatBank time series database

Linked Logainm.ie (Digital Repository Ireland) – Irish Place names

Irish Opendata.ie portal All-Island Research Observatory

– www.airo.ie Dublinked.ie Etc.

Irish Linked Open Data landscape


INSPIRE is moving quickly to becoming Linked Open Data

All INSPIRE Global IDs can now be defined as URIs. INSPIRE Secretariat at the Joint Research Centre (JRC)

is actively defining – An RDF representation for INSPIRE metadata based on DCAT-AP & other

relevant vocabularies.

» DCAT-AP (Data Catalogue Application Profile for European data portals – is a W3C recommendation.

– An open INSPIRE Registry

– See http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/

Various projects, including our SmartOpenData project is working closely with them to achieve this


SmartOpenDataLinked Open Data for environment protection in Smart Regions

FP7 ENVIR Grant no. 603824 - [Exploiting the European Open Data Strategy to mobilise the use of environmental data & information]

• SmartOpenData is creating a Linked Open Data platform of tools • to make public & voluntary GI resources on rural areas - such as

national parks.• available to SMEs as LOD in a way that will enable them to create

new services & products.

• Based on the practical needs & experience of 5 Demonstration Pilots

• SmartOpenData aims to help bridge the gap between

1. GeoSpatial Information - from the SDI/INSPIRE “world”• OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) – standards setting

2. Linked Open Data (LOD) - from the Semantic Web “world”• W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) – collaborative movement


SmartOpenDataLinked Open Data for environment protection in Smart Regions

• Involves 16 partners from 9 countries • Public Bodies,• Academic Researchers, • Industry• SMEs• Ireland – MAC, MWRA, Sindice

• Project started in November 2013 & will run for 2 years.

• See www.smartopendata.eu

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SmartOpenData Consortium

Industry

Academic

Public Body

SMEs

Started: November 2013Duration: 24 MonthEU Contribution: €2.4M


Sponsored by SmartOpenData & informed its work ! 106 of the world’s experts, 38 presentations, 16

panellists, 8 bar camp pitches, 2 days Report at http://www.w3.org/2014/03/lgd/report Considered issues such as

– how should we encode geometry?

– how & where should we implement topological functions?

– additional metadata is required for spatial datasets – how do we do that?

– where is the software support for spatial data types & functions?

– geometries expressed as WKT (Well Known Text) literals are large objects — the Linked data world is used to handling simple literals;

– how do we help developers handle (or avoid) the steep learning curve to work with Linked Data?

Linking Geospatial Data, joint W3C/OGC Conference, 5-6th March 2014, London


ConclusionsWe must seamlessly integrate the GI & LOD “worlds”Joint Working Group is required to create or recommend standards that work across those communities.

– OGC & W3C committed to work together in establishing such a group.

– Working Group is in the process of being established.

Interesting technologies to standardise include– GeoSPARQL

– GeoJSON

Linking Geospatial Data, joint W3C/OGC Conference, 5-6th March 2014, London


1. Environmental Conservation – Ireland • Focused on biodiversity & habitats data for researchers & decision makers

in management & conservation of the Burren & other National Parks.

2. Water monitoring – Italy• Will explore the role of aggregating information from different Open Data

sources to provide up to date monitoring of water quality in Sicily.

3. Forest sustainability – Czech Republic• Forest site classification, sustainable management & utilisation of forest

roads using the National Forest Inventory & Regional Plans for Development datasets.

4. Environmental data reuse – Slovakia • Will deploy two types of web applications to achieve reuse of environmental

data & information in line with the European Open Data Strategy.

5. Agroforestry Management – Spain & Portugal• Will focus on building a web based collaborative Spatial Data Infrastructure

to promote sustainable agroforestry management, environment protection, rural economic development, water management & drinking water protection.

SmareOpenDataDemonstration Pilots


SmartOpenData Irish PilotEnvironmental Conservation, Biodiversity

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• The Irish pilot will access & aggregate sources to impact on biodiversity, by allowing them to seamlessly bridge the gap between the “worlds” of open data & INSPIRE geo-spatial sources for Environmental Conservation.

• Focusing on European protected areas & its National Parks, • Starting with the Burren National Park in Ireland.• To demonstrate the value of SmartOpenData in helping Researchers & Decision

Makers to better manage, preserve, sustain & use this unique ecosystem.

• Pilot will explore:• Discovery, seamless use & mashing together of sources to address immediate

biodiversity research issues.• Overcoming the barriers (cultural, political, administrative) to opening up the data• Overcoming technical incompatibilities of datasets in terms of technical standards,

semantic structuring etc. • Validation of the SmartOpenData platform in the aggregation, analysis &

visualisation to support decision making of the various research & other stakeholders requirements, & the value-add/impact on their work


SmartOpen Data Irish Pilot

Burren National Park, Co. Clare, Ireland

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• 1,500 hectares on the west coast of Ireland• Managed by the Irish National Parks & Wildlife Service • An unique area of high conservation value • containing many habitats of international importance

• including limestone pavement, calcareous grassland, oligotrophic lakes, turloughs, hazel scrub & ash/hazel woodland.

• Involves many Communities & Europe-wide environmental issues


SmartOpenData Irish PilotUser Scenarios


SmartOpenDataPlatform Architecture


SmartOpenData Services

The SmartOpenData platform is • Integrates previously developed & available best open tools, • Being iteratively improved based on user operational feedback, • Provides services such as:

1. Discovery• Metadata harvesting & Publishing.

2. Data services• Distributed open data services• WMC• Registry services• GeoSPARQL tools • RSS/GeoRSS• KML/KMZ

3. Transformation• Workflow management

4. Monitoring5. External services6. Applications7. CMS8. Social Networks & Media


Huge Market Opportunity in combining GeoSpatial Information & Linked Open Data

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• GI Data €110-200B (with 30% growth) annually

• Ireland benefits > €0.5B/year

• OD in EU €42B in 2015 (with 7% growth) annually

• GeoSpatial OD has the widest applicability

• Combined GI/LOD - potential market > €20B in EU alone.


In Conclusion ….

The Future of GI will be – Linked

– Open

– Standardised - combining both OGC & W3C standards.

– Huge opportunity for us all !


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Thank You


Documents

Integrating Geospatial Information & Linked Open Data Dr. John J O’Flaherty,