GetLOD - Linked Open Data and Spatial Data Infrastructures W3C Linked Open Data LOD2014 Roma, 20-21 February 2014 Stefano Pezzi, Massimo Zotti, Giovanni Ciardi, Massimo Fustini
Agenda Context Geoportal & OpenData Portal SDI management Towards Linked Open geodata GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution 2
Context Local and interoperable Geo-Information (GI) is crucial for an increasing number of added value services provided by private companies on top of open government data Actually, local governments are playing an emerging role as they represent authoritative sources for highquality certified data for interlinking external information, and for smart cities applications In Europe main drivers for interoperable and open data are INSPIRE and Public Sector Information Directives and Open Data strategies, at various levels.
Context Usually geographical datasets are provided as quickand-dirty, simple and flat predefined files, with heterogeneous data models, semantics, content, as well Four critical issues: Local data should be published on different infrastructures; SDI and LOD infrastructures are not interoperable; Two parallel workflows and risk of additional workload and data quality; GI lacks persistent URIs and information cannot easily be linked on record level.
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution GetLOD is an open and reusable solution for publishing geographic data on the Web as Linked Open Data, according to the standard RDF / XML. GetLOD thus ensures the Web publication of geospatial data and its related metadata as open and linkable data, starting from traditional cartographic webservices 5
Geoportal & OpenData Portal The Geoportal represents an important part of the Open Data policy of the Region Emilia-Romagna. With a strong integration with the regional Open Data portal, the Geoportal is a provider of (geo)data in favor of the portal dati.emiliaromagna.it
ER Geoportal The ER Geoportal allows the diffusion, the distribution and the use of geospatial data, information and geographical services both to the public and the staff of the local and national government. It is compliant to the latest regional, national (AGiD) and international (INSPIRE, CEN, ISO, OGC) standards in terms of interoperability.
ER Geoportal Home Page of the ER Geoportal
ER Geoportal The data catalog
ER Geoportal Example of ISO Metadata
Regional SDI management Moka is a suite to organize the Geographic Information System and to develop applications that provide GIS services to citizens, professionals and businesses. Regione Emilia Romagna organizes his SDI with Moka Catalog and builds GIS applications with Moka CMS (Content Management System).
SDI and LOD will interoperate through Moka In Regione Emilia Romagna SDI and LOD infrastructures will interoperate through Moka. Moka Content Management System organizes SDI and builds GIS applications (web, desktop, apps for smartphone). Moka Catalog organizes the whole SDI Moka builds open data using GetLOD services.
SDI and OpenData will interoperate through Moka How Moka (CMS GIS) helps users to create OpenData through GetLOD From Moka users can manage the update of Open Data 5 Open Data are catalogued in Moka repository 4 1 In Moka Catalog user selects the geodata to be published as Open Data 3 2 Moka Catalog invokes GetLOD services to create Open Data
SDI and OpenData will interoperate through Moka In Regione Emilia Romagna Moka will Web Applications Desktop Applications Apps for smartphone Create applications with data and OpenData Oraganize SDI GeoData RDBMD and tables Web services Metadata (RNDT, Metadata RER) OpenData Functions and appications Catalog OpenData Create OpenData Uses GetLOD services
Towards Linked Open geo-data Data, if isolated, have little value. The value of data increases when different data sets, produced and published independently by different individuals, can be crossed freely by third parties. The generation of dataset in RDF format (Linked Data) increases the value of the data allowing connections among themselves and with external dataset! 15
Towards Linked Open geo-data Free data is not enough! In order to offer a really useful service to citizens, institutions and companies, you need to aggregate, process data and offer them as services. The creation of an "ontology network" of the Geoportal data allows to move from one conceptual dataset to another. Ontologies are considered one of the pillars of the Semantic Web: a number of on-going initiatives in EU Member States and EU projects (such as InGeoCloudS, GeoKnow and SmartOpenData) are creating RDF vocabularies based on the INSPIRE data models.
Towards Linked Open geo-data Applicazione Application sopra il over modello conceptual concettuale model esplicito L'integrazione Integration at a the livello level di data dati 17
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution The focus of GetLOD is on the governance of Linked Open Data from authoritative sources: data about addresses and buildings derive from municipal registers (e.g. building permits) provided by more than 200 municipalities, 9 provinces and gathered by the Region in the DBTR (Regional Topographic DB). 18
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution Open and reusable solution It is integrated with the Spatial Data Infrastructure thanks to the standards defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) WFS and CSW. It allows to publish the geographic open data both as RDF (Linked Open Data ) and, as a side effect, in other non-linkable interchange formats Shapefile and GML ) 19
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution Download Ricerca LOD Front-end Triple server JAVA API RDF dump LOD Back-end connettori catalogazione TripleStore GetLOD mapping file API Catalogo MD catalogo Open Data www OGC WFS OGC CSW OGC server MD server GI Middleware GeoRepository MD 19115 GI Data & Metadata 20
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution GetLOD is substantialy a batch RDFizer that extracts data from OGC services and transforms them in RDF/XML. It s a java application that can execute scheduled transformation jobs. A mapping file between GML elements and an ontology concepts controls the transformation. The core transformer is based on Apache Velocity. Data as well metadata are transformed in RDF graphs. 21
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution GetLOD has a plug-in architecture for what concernes the output destination of data extracted, so you can: Create a dump file; Transfer the file and index it on the ER custom open data portal; Load the data into standard (CKAN) open data portals using APIs. Load the data into a SPARQL endpoint... 22
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution Ontologies used by GetLOD have been derived directly from the conceptual model of the Topographic DB or, better, from the dissemination model of the DBTR. We did not start from scratch, asking ourself what is a building?. In this way, the mapping of concepts was fairly direct. Nevertheless, existing ontologies has been reused where possible, especially for geometry. Particular attention has been paid thinking at the real use of geometry in LOD data and we made some reasoning and drewed some conclusions 23
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution Geometry 1. LOD data are especially used in mash up apps that likely use common maps APIs WGS84 instead of official regional SRS 24
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution Geometry 2. If XML is verbose, RDF is really prolix In LOD context, location usually is more important than shape No complex geometry, but only simple & derived centroids for buildings, bounding box for Administrative Units 25
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution Geometry 3. OGC service are still there, but let s use them only when we need them. Link to WFS GetFeature for Full geometry If an app need to draw the shape of a particular building, RDF carries the GetFeatureByID query as the value of a specific ontology predicate. 26
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution Geometry 4. Standards are important, but does anyone already use them? Use OGC GeoSparql, but even WGS84 Redundancy is not a problem in LOD 27
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution In order to extract spatial LOD from SDI, some basic principle must be adopted in the SDI data model; fortunately DBTR already was almost compliant: 1. Unique and persistent identifier for every geographic object 2. Hystorical management and object s life cycle well defined But some things could be better: 1. UUID are not URI friendly 2. Codelist vs dictionaries 28
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution Not all geographical object are noteworthy: it makes no sense to convert to LOD a contour line or a land cover polygon. Only spatial object that can be thought as individual that can evolve in time (change and eventually die) and can be referred by other objects in the same or other datasets can be correctly converted to LOD. A lifeless object does not really die, that s why you should define its life cycle, that is which are the events that terminate its individual identity. 29
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution Interlinking The data that GetLOD extracts do not have interlinks for the moment. Interlinks are important but since we are talking about datasets coming from authoritative sources, interlinks that lead to general dataset like Geonames do not add particular value. Interlinks should be created also from other PA datasets towards these reference data. 30
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution 7. release 1. Identification & dataset selection GetLOD: solution that implements the entire LOD Life Cycle 2. cleaning up 6. validation LOD Life Cycle 3. analysis & modeling 5. external linking 4. enrichmenet Source Linee Guida per l Interoperabilità Semantica attraverso i Linked Open Data (Agenzia per l'italia Digitale) 31
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution ShapeFile GML XML metadata ISO 19115 (RNDT compliant) XML describing OpenData Generate OpenData Generate Linked OpenData RDF for Data RDF for Metadata ISO 19115 (RNDT compliant) XML describing Linked Open Data 32
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution 33
GetLOD: Open GeoData Solution 34
GetLOD: Demo GetLOD RDF Browser integrates: GeoER-API RDF Administrative boundaries, Buildings, Road Toponyms, Civic Numbers Events from E-R Culture (http://dati.emilia-romagna.it/dato/item/37-37-eventi-e-rcultura.html?goback=.gmp_3816349.gde_3816349_member_2 03780094) Query Endpoint SPARQL 35
GetLOD: Evolution in 2014 In 2014 we will focus on: Interoperability: In Regione Emilia Romagna SDI and LOD infrastructures will interoperate through Moka Interlinking: to compare entities from different datasets available as LOD and calculate similarities through textual, geographical and temporal distance to match Natural browsing: to integrate the existing map viewer with navigation and browsing of Linked Open Data 36
GetLOD: Evolution in 2014 37
Thanks for your attention! StefanoPezzi@sinergis.it Zotti@planetek.it GCiardi@regione.emilia-romagna.it MFustini@regione.emilia-romagna.it 39