Dr. Christophe Debruyne

Summary

The goal of this category (c) "Innovative Use of Data/Projects" project entitled "Linking datasets with Ordnance Survey Ireland's authoritative Linked Data" is to add a geospatial dimension to datasets available on data.gov.ie. Since 2015, the ADAPT Centre for digital content technology collaborates with the Ordnance Survey Ireland to publish their authoritative geospatial data as Linked Data on the Web. The outcome of this collaboration is called data.geohive.ie and is currently live. Data.geohive.ie allows one to create links to geospatial resources, adding a spatial component to datasets that would allow one to visualize data on a map, or even query information via spatial predicates (e.g., "give me all observations in that rectangle" where a rectangle is drawn over the map of Ireland). Quite a few datasets on the portal have a spatial component, such as references to electoral divisions and counties in the "Census 2016 Preliminary Results" or town lands in "Roscommon Graveyard Survey 2005". We aim to take a series of such datasets to augment with links to data.geohive.ie by looking into the state of the art in interlinking resources. The goal would be to deliver a technical report published as a whitepaper describing best practices and guidelines to link datasets with data.geohive.ie. The process for a dataset will roughly look as follows: 1) "uplift" the dataset, which basically means turning the non-RDF dataset into RDF. RDF has the benefit to provide a simple data model for manipulating the content and apply the state of the art in semantic web interlinking; 2) discover and materialize the links with data.geohive.ie 3) "downlift" the dataset (which means transforming RDF data into non-RDF), and ensure that the discovered links are added to the original dataset, e.g., by creating additional column in a CSV dataset that contains the URI. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of those geospatial links, we also aim to develop a couple of non-trivial demonstrators built on top of these links. The software will be made available to the public as to promote use of the data. The stakeholders who will benefit from this initiative are the platform offering data with a geospatial component, and data providers who not only will be able to discover and store links in structured formats, but also have access to documents providing a basis for producing RDF versions of their datasets.

Funding Agency

DPER

Programme

Open Data Engagement Fund

Project Type

Innovative Use of Data/Projects