Geographic information in govt linked data

Geographic Information in Government Linked Data W3C Government Linked Data F2F 29 June 2011 Todd Pehle tpehle (at) orbistechnologies.com

Agenda
The Emerging Web of Linked Locations
The Role of Government SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure) in Linked Data
The Role of Lightweight Linked Locations in Government Linked Data
The Role of Citizen Sensors and VGI (Volunteered Geographic Information) in Linked Data
Geo Vocabularies, Tools & Best Practices Needed in Government Linked Data

The Emerging Web of Linked Locations

Linked Locations
Linked Data + Location Data = Linked Locations
Web of Linked Locations = a spatiotemporal projection of the Web of Linked Data (a global spatial KB)
Orbis Technologies, Inc. Cartographic Projection GeoSPARQL Spatial Reasoning LOD Spatial Projection

Building the World’s Spatial KB Geo Web has base vector layers (GIS Data) to be connected to Web of Linked Data. Linked Locations inter-connects Geo Web features & bridges Linked Data with Geo Web. Linked Data exposes thematic attribution & relationships of Linked Locations. Linked Data + Geo Web Geo Web Links (horizontal links) (vertical links)

The Role of Government SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure) in Linked Data

Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)
Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) :
“ An SDI is a coordinated series of agreements on technology standards , institutional arrangements, and policies that enable the discovery and use of geospatial information by users and for purposes other than those it was created for.” - Werner Kuhn, IFGI
Succinctly, SDI is interoperability and sharing of geospatial information
SDI utilizes many OGC service and ISO metadata specifications:
WMS, WFS, CSW, WCS, GML, ISO19xxx metadata profiles, etc.
SDI important in government for science, environmental monitoring, emergency response, natural disasters, homeland security, etc.
SDI spans local, state, federal government plus industry & academia
SDI in U.S. began in 1994; President Clinton signed an Executive Order calling for the establishment of a NSDI (National SDI)
EU INSPIRE, GEOSS, UNSDI, GMES also examples of SDI

Linked Spatial Data Infrastructure
Linked Spatial Data Infrastructure (Linked SDI) :
SDI data published as Linked Data
Work in progress
Traditional SDI largely utilized by the GIS domain only
Linked SDI offers the chance to open up rich location data to a much wider audience
Linked SDI could be consumed just like all Linked Data via SPARQL (to include GeoSPARQL) and URI dereferencing
Linked SDI could uniformly expose the massive amounts of structured GIS data into the Linked Data Cloud
Thus the lines between the Semantic Web and Geo Web could become very blurry!

Examples of SDI (Cited in Wikipedia)

Importance of Government Linked SDI to Linked Open Data
Governments are HUGE producers/consumers of geo data
Governments as producers have an opportunity to bootstrap billions of triples into LOD and RDF clouds
Governments as consumers have an opportunity to make better informed analytic decisions; but also to produce enriched correlations and republish to LOD
Government Linked SDI could bootstrap LOD with “ base layers ” of spatial knowledge (NASA, USGS, Census Bureau, Ordnance Survey, INSPIRE, etc.)
Government Linked SDI can also provide “ overlay layers ” for certain contexts (EPA, FEMA, HHS, etc.)
Published data will have varying degrees of complexity; some agencies may simply publish W3C Basic Geo while others may publish heavyweight GIS

Bootstrapping LOD with Government Linked SDI (LSDI) Government LSDI Base Raster Layers Government LSDI Core Vector Layers Government LSDI Contextual Overlays

The Role of Lightweight Linked Locations in Government Linked Data

Lightweight Linked Locations in Government Data
SDI offers rich data, but traditionally is “heavy” GIS
Often requires specialized knowledge and tools to utilize
However, many agencies have data (unstructured reports and semi-structured work products) that have simple location information within it:
Placenames
Addresses/Geocoding
Latitude/Longitude fields
GeoTagged Images
This shouldn’t require GIS departments to publish as LOD
With the rise of Neogeography (DIY mapping) simpler tools can expose geographic information on the Geo Web
Neogeography tools could also be used to publish lightweight government Linked Locations data

The Role of Citizen Sensors and VGI (Volunteered Geographic Information) in Linked Data

Citizen Sensors, NGOs and Linked VGI
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI):
“ The harnessing of tools to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic data provided voluntarily by individuals” – Mike Goodchild (UCSB)
User-generated geo content, crowd sourcing, collective intelligence generated by ordinary citizens and NGOs
Cell phone sensors (cameras, GPS, augmented reality, etc.)
VGI produces “hyper local” and “hyper temporal” knowledge that complements SDI data
Linked Gov Geo Data can embrace VGI to produce “hi-res” knowledge of location & events
USGS held VGI workshop in 2010
OSM volunteers produced amazing maps for Haitian earthquake first responders
What if Gov VGI was Linked VGI?
VGI in Haiti: Earthquake Damaged Buildings from Open Street Map

Geo Vocabularies & Tools Needed in Government Linked Data

FOAF = Person
Organization Ontology = Organizations
OWL-Time = Time
Event Ontology = Events (sort of???)
SIOC = Linking online communities, wikis, blogs, etc.
SKOS = Thesauri, classification schemes, taxonomies
Dublin Core = Authoring Metadata
voiD = Vocabulary Of Interlinked Data
W3C Provenance = source metadata
The Lack of Common Geo Vocabularies in the Web of Linked Data
W3C Basic Geo = 1 Geo Model! (GeoSPARQL soon)

GeoSPARQL
Draft specification recently released by OGC
Consists of a small vocabulary that defines a geographic feature and a set of spatial relations
Defines a set of spatial functions based on OGC Simple Features Specification
Allows powerful query over RDF graphs and geometry
GeoSPARQL vocabulary does not replace W3C Basic Geo; should be complementary
Represents MAJOR bridge between the Semantic Web and Geo Web
Represents a key enabler to more uniformly access and integrate geospatial information in Linked Data

Example GeoSPARQL Query SELECT ?airport WHERE { ?airport rdf:type :Airport . ?airport :hasPointGeometry [ ogc:asWKT ?aPointGeom ] FILTER(ogcf:distance(?aPointGeom, “ POINT(-122.4192 37.7793)”^^ogc:WKTLiteral, ogc:km) <= 100) } Example Query: Find airports within 100 KM of San Francisco :SemTech2011 :locatedIn :SanFrancisco . :SanFrancisco :hasPointGeometry [ ogc:asWKT “POINT(-122.4192 37.7793)”^^ogc:WKTLiteral ] . Example Data: SemTech 2011 is located in San Francisco

Example GeoSPARQL: Features Contained In User-Defined Polygon GeoSPARQL enables rich spatial queries over RDF Example Query : Find tourist attractions contained in Capitol Mall area in Washington D.C.

The Linked Locations Core? GeoSPARQL Spatial Relations Events Feature Types Metadata Note: Citizen Sensor “Observations” are separate but make use of these core models

Linked Locations Tools & Best Practices
Almost no tools exist!
Almost no best practices exist!
Need many of the following tools:
Geo2RDF converters
GeoD2RQ
More GeoSPARQL-enabled triple stores
GeoSPARQL publishing tools
Slippy Map extensions
Need many of the following best practices:
Geo Provenance publishing
Geo voiD and geo SCOVO publishing
GeoSPARQL & W3C Basic Geo alignment & interplay
Spatiotemporal data publishing best practices (place + time)
Spatial Dataset Change publishing
Linked SDI (OGC-to-LOD) publishing best practices
Linked VGI (citizen sensor) publishing best practices

Thanks!

Geographic information in govt linked data

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