GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI
Integrating
Geospatial Information
& Linked Open Data
Dr. John J O’Flaherty,
The National Microelectronics Applications Centre Ltd,
john@mac.ie
Contents
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Geospatial Information (GI) – OGC/INSPIRE
Linked Data (LD) – W3C/Semantic Web
Linked Open Data (LOD) – Open Data/OGP
SmartOpenData Project
Linking Geospatial Data
SmartOpenData pilots
Conclusion on the Future for GI
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
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
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
GI – OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium)
 GI
is mainly based on standards from
OGC (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
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
GI - INSPIRE Directive
Infrastructure for Spatial Information in
the European Community
http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
5
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 be
available 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
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
INSPIRE 34 Spatial Data Themes
Annex I
1. Coordinate reference
system
2. Geographical grid
systems
3. Geographical names
4. Administrative units
5. Addresses
6. Cadastral parcels
7. Transport networks
8. Hydrography
9. Protected sites
Annex II
1. Elevation
2. Land cover
3. Orthoimagery
4. Geology
Annex III
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Statistical units
Buildings
Soil
Land use
Human health & safety
Utility & Government services
Environmental monitoring facilities
Production & industrial facilities
Agricultural & aquaculture facilities
Population distribution – demography
Area management/restriction/regulation zones & reporting units
Natural risk zones
Atmospheric conditions
Meteorological geographical features
Oceanographic geographical features
Sea regions
Bio-geographical regions
Habitats & biotopes
Species distribution
Energy resources
Mineral resources
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
INSPIRE Directive – Legislatively driven
- Top-down – mainly OGC/ISO standards
USERS - Seamless access to data
INSPIRE DIRECTIVE
METADATA
DATA SPECIFICATION
DATA & SERVICE SHARING
NETWORKING SERVICES
MONITORING & REPORTING
Mechanisms for sharing & exchange
Member States Data
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
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Web of Linked Data (LD)
– Semantic Web of knowledge
 Community
driven - bottom-up/collaborative
 W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards
See
 Open
www.w3.org/standards/
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
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
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.”
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
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.
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
Open Data Formats
• Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web &
Linked Data initiator, suggested a 5 star
deployment scheme for Open Data.
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•
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, john@mac.ie
Linked Open Data cloud
Media
User-generated
Government
Publications
Cross-domain
Geo
Life sciences
http://lod-cloud.net/
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
Irish Linked Open Data landscape
 data.cso.ie
–
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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.
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
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
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
SmartOpenData
Linked 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.
2.
GeoSpatial Information - from the SDI/INSPIRE “world”
•
OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) – standards setting
•
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) – collaborative movement
Linked Open Data (LOD) - from the Semantic Web “world”
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
SmartOpenData
Linked Open Data for environment protection in Smart Regions
• Involves 16 partners from 9 countries
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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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GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
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1
SmartOpenData Consortium
Public Body
SMEs
Industry
Started: November 2013
Duration: 24 Month
EU Contribution: €2.4M
Academic
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
Linking Geospatial Data, joint W3C/OGC
Conference, 5-6th March 2014, London
 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?
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
Linking Geospatial Data, joint W3C/OGC
Conference, 5-6th March 2014, London
Conclusions
must seamlessly integrate the GI & LOD “worlds”
 Joint Working Group is required to create or recommend
standards that work across those communities.
 We
– 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
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
SmareOpenData
Demonstration Pilots
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.
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
SmartOpenData Irish Pilot
Environmental Conservation, Biodiversity
• 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:
•
•
•
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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
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
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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
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
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SmartOpenData Irish Pilot
User Scenarios
Meetings & Discussions with the stakeholder groups
have identified the following four User Scenarios
1. SmartOpenData enabled European Tourism Indicator System (ETIS)
Webservice for the Burren & European GeoParks Network.
2. SmartOpenData enabled Farming for Conservation webservice
3. SmartOpenData enabled App to Ground-Truth potential Protected
Monument sites
4. SmartOpenData Platform input to the Irish Open Government
Partnership (OGP) process
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
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SmartOpenData
Platform Architecture
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
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
•
2.
Data services
•
•
•
•
•
•
3.
Distributed open data services
WMC
Registry services
GeoSPARQL tools
RSS/GeoRSS
KML/KMZ
Transformation
•
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Metadata harvesting & Publishing.
Workflow management
Monitoring
External services
Applications
CMS
Social Networks & Media
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
Huge Market Opportunity in combining
GeoSpatial Information & Linked Open Data
• 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.
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
27
In Conclusion ….
The
Future of GI will be
– Linked
– Open
– Standardised - combining both OGC & W3C standards.
– Huge opportunity for us all !
GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie
Thank You

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GIS Ireland 2014 - The Future for GI, Dublin, 16 Oct 2014, john@mac.ie