Presentation held on 18.09.2013 at the OKCon 2013 in Geneva, Switzerland in the course of the workshop: How Linked Open data supports Sustainable Development and Climate Change Development by Martin Kaltenböck (SWC), Florian Bauer (REEEP) and Jens Laustsen (GBPN).

1. Linked Open Data
Basic principles, potentials & benefits
OKCon2013, Geneva, 18 September 2013
Martin Kaltenböck
Semantic Web Company
www.semantic-web.at
www.poolparty.biz
@semwebcompany
@lod2project
@OKFNat
These slides are published under :
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

2. • Semantic Web Company founded 2001 in Vienna, Austria
• 20 experts in strategy, coding, consulting, research & PM
• Main Product: PoolParty Semantic Suite (launched 2009)
• Focus: Semantic Information Management & LOD Services
• Serving global 500 companies, GOV & NGOs worldwide
• EU- & US-based consulting services
Partner network:
About Semantic Web Company

3. Data Analytics 2.0 -
The islands are now open for the experts

4. 4
Open Data for Sustainable Development
OD4SD & what is important…
What is important when thinking about open data in use?
• Interoperability to ensure broad & easy use of data
• Human AND machine readable data plus: metadata (!!)
• In common open formats & open standards
• For smooth and cost efficient data integration (re-use)
• To generate effects : local – regional – national –worldwide
For several target groups with several interests!
• Politicians & decision makers
• Public administration & project developers
• Citizens (Citizen Analysts)
• Economy & Industry
• (Data) Journalists, media & publishers
• Academia & Science

5. Putting the L in front
From Open Data to Linked Open Data

6. 6
5 Stars for Open Data by Tim Berners Lee

7. What are the costs and benefits of ★ web data?
As a consumer ...
✔ You can look at it.
✔ You can print it.
✔ You can store it locally (on your hard drive or on an USB stick).
✔ You can enter the data into any other system.
✔ You can change the data as you wish.
✔ You can share the data with anyone you like.
As a publisher ...
✔ It's simple to publish.
✔ You do not have explain repeatedly to others that they can use your data.
5 Stars Model on OGD, M. Hausenblas et al: http://lab.linkeddata.deri.ie/2010/star-scheme-by-example/
From Open Data 2 Linked Open Data
7

8. What are the costs and benefits of ★★ web data?
As a consumer …
you can do all what you can do with ★ Web data and additionally:
✔ You can directly process it with proprietary software to aggregate it,
perform calculations, visualise it, etc.
✔ You can export it into another (structured) format.
As a publisher ...
✔ It's still simple to publish.
From Open Data 2 Linked Open Data
85 Stars Model on OGD, M. Hausenblas et al: http://lab.linkeddata.deri.ie/2010/star-scheme-by-example/

9. What are the costs and benefits of ★★★web data?
As a consumer …
you can do all what you can do with ★★ Web data and additionally:
✔ You can manipulate the data in any way you like, without being confined
by the capabilities of any particular software.
As a publisher ...
✔ It's still rather simple to publish.
! You might need converters or plug-ins to export the data from
the proprietary format.
From Open Data 2 Linked Open Data
95 Stars Model on OGD, M. Hausenblas et al: http://lab.linkeddata.deri.ie/2010/star-scheme-by-example/

10. From Open Data 2 Linked Open Data
What are the costs and benefits of ★★★★ web data?
As a consumer …
you can do all what you can do with ★★★ Web data and additionally:
✔ You can link to it from any other place (on the Web or locally).
✔ You can bookmark it.
✔ You can reuse parts of the data.
✔ You may be able to reuse existing tools and libraries, even if they only understand
parts of the pattern the publisher used.
✔ You can combine the data safely with other data.
As a publisher ...
✔ You have fine-granular control over the data items and can optimise their access
(load balancing, caching, etc.)
✔ Other data publishers can now link into your data, promoting it to 5 star!
! You typically invest some time slicing and dicing your data.
! You'll need to assign URIs to data items and think about how to represent the data.
! You need to either find existing patterns to reuse or create your own.
5 Stars Model on OGD, M. Hausenblas et al: http://lab.linkeddata.deri.ie/2010/star-scheme-by-example/ 10

11. What are the costs and benefits of ★★★★★ web data?
As a consumer …
you can do all what you can do with ★★★★ Web data and additionally:
✔ You can discover more (related) data while consuming the data.
✔ You can directly learn about the data schema.
! You now have to deal with broken data links, just like 404 errors in web pages.
! Presenting data from an arbitrary link as fact is as risky as letting people include
content from any website in your pages. Caution, trust and common sense are
all still necessary.
As a publisher ...
✔ You make your data discoverable.
✔ You increase the value of your data.
✔ You own organisation will gain the same benefits from the links as the consumers.
! You'll need to invest resources to link your data to other data on the Web.
! You may need to repair broken or incorrect links.
From Open Data 2 Linked Open Data
115 Stars Model on OGD, M. Hausenblas et al: http://lab.linkeddata.deri.ie/2010/star-scheme-by-example/

12. CC-BY-SA von campuspartybrasil (flickr)
“Linked Data realizes the vision of
evolving the Web into a global
data commons, allowing
applications to operate on top of
an unbounded set of data
sources, via standardised
access mechanisms.
I expect that Linked Data will
enable a significant
evolutionary step in leading
the Web to its
full potential.“
The Vision of the new Internet
12

13. Linked Open Data
in a Nutshell

14. 1. Uses RDF Data Model
LOD WS
Geneva
18.09. 2013
SWC
organizes
starts
takesPlaceIn
2. Is serialised in triples:
SWC organizes LOD WS .
LOD-WS starts “20130918^^xsd:date .
LOD-WS takesPlaceAt Geneva .
3. Uses Content-negotiation
Subject Predicate Object
Linked Data in a Nutshell
14

15. 1. Identify & analyse your data
2. Clean the data
3. Model your data (URI schema, vocabularies)
4. Select & specify license(s)
5. Convert data to RDF
6. Link your data to other data
7. Publish and promote your Linked Open Data
Quick Guide: Publish LOD
15

16. 1. Specify concrete use cases
2. Evaluate relevant data sources & data sets
3. License clearing: check respective licenses
4. Create data consumption patterns
5. Manage alignment, caching & update mechanisms
6. Create mash-ups, GUIs, services & applications on top
7. Establish sustainable new partnerships
Quick Guide: Consume LOD
16

17. Linked Open Data 4 Sustainable Development
The Benefits

18. 18
Open Data for Sustainable Development
Why OD4SD …
Why Open Data for sustainable development
• Awareness building & education
• Participation through information
• Enable & boost innovation
• Knowledge sharing & showcasing best practise
• Enable better decision making

19. • Less replication (offering same datasets in
different places)
• Encouragement to re-use existing
datasets (open standards, open formats,
reduce semantic & syntactic
heterogeneity)
• Clear which datasets are providing similar
/ same information
• More innovation and creation of new
knowledge by contextualisation
• Creating network effects by linking
• Enable scale out of the growing amounts
of data
The Benefits of Linked Open Data 4
Sustainable Development
19

20. Data Analytics 3.0 –
Connected islands based on open standards
20

21. The publication Linked Open Data: The Essentials gives
decision makers a good overview of Open Government,
Open Government Data, Open Data and Linked Open Data
(LOD).
See: http://www.semantic-web.at/LOD-TheEssentials.pdf
Further Reading & Announcements
FP7 project LOD2 - http://lod2.eu
• PUBLINK Consulting Service (next call: 10/2013)
• LOD Technology Stack: http://stack.lod2.eu
• Important Use Case: http://www.publicdata.eu
European Data Forum 2014 (EDF2014)
• 19 – 20 March 2014, Greece Athens
• 1 main focus: Data 4 Development
• Call for Contribution opens 09/2013
• See: http://2014.data-forum.eu 21

22. Martin Kaltenböck, CMC
Semantic Web Company GmbH (SWC)
Neubaugasse 1
1070 Vienna - Austria
Semantic Web Company (SWC)
Web
http://www.semantic-web.at
http://blog.semantic-web.at
m.kaltenboeck@semantic-web.at
Phone: +43-1-402 12 35–25
OKFN AT
Austrian Chapter OKFN
Web: http://okfn.at
Mailing List:
http://lists.okfn.org/mailma
n/listinfo/okfn-at
LOD2
Creating Knowledge out
of Interlinked Data
Web
http://www.lod2.eu
Blog
http://blog.lod2.eu
Stack
http://stack.lod2.eu
Contact

23. 23
Agenda
Session 6: How Linked Open Data (LOD) supports Sustainable
Development & Climate Change Development – Workshop
Wednesday 18 September, 11:45 – 13:15 @ Room 8, Floor 2
• Introduction: Open Data for sustainable development,
Florian Bauer
• Linked Open Data: principles & benefits, Martin Kaltenböck
• Use Case 1: GBPN, Jens Laustsen
• Use Case 2: reeegle.info, Florian Bauer
• Q&A and Discussion - all
Florian Bauer, Operations & IT Director, Renewable Energy & Energy Eff. Partnership
Jens Laustsen, Technical Director, Global Buildings Performance Network
Martin Kaltenböck, Managing Partner, Semantic Web Company

24. The Power of Linked Open Data
• Enables web-scale data publishing - distributed publication with web-based
discovery mechanisms
• Everything is a resource – follow your nose to discover more about
properties, classes, or codes within a code list
• Everything can be annotated - make comments about observations, data
series, points on a map
• Easy to extend - create new properties as required, no need to plan
everything up-front
• Easy to merge - slot together RDF graphs, no need to worry about name
clashes
• Easy use and re-use on top of common schemas AND schema mapping
• Allows complex querying of several distributed data sources & systems

25. • All of us have to use ONE schema
• Everything needs to be switched to RDF
• We all have to learn SPARQL, there are
no standard (web) APIs
• LOD is a pure academic approach
• LOD can only be used by Semantic Web
experts
• We have to change our data integration
& -management approaches
Misconceptions about Linked Open Data

26. Tim Berners-Lee outlined four principles of linked data in his
Design Issues: Linked Data
• Use URIs to denote things.
• Use HTTP URIs so that these things can be referred to and
looked up (“dereferenced”) by people and user agents.
• Provide useful information about the thing when its URI is
dereferenced, leveraging standards such as RDF, SPARQL.
• Include links to other related things (using their URIs) when
publishing data on the Web.
Read in more detail via:
• Wikipedia
• W3C Wiki
Linked Data Design Principles

27. Henry Maudslay (1771 – 1831)
He also developed the first industrially
practical screw-cutting lathe in 1800,
allowing standardisation of screw thread
sizes for the first time. This allowed the
concept of interchangeability (a idea that
was already taking hold) to be practically
applied to nuts and bolts. Before this, all nuts
and bolts had to be made as matching pairs
only. This meant that when machines were
disassembled, careful account had to be kept
of the matching nuts and bolts ready for when
reassembly took place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maudslay
John Sheridan, OGD2011 Conference, Vienna, Austria:
http://www.slideshare.net/semwebcompany/linking-uk-government-data-john-sheridan/
Customers - extractInteroperability & Standards

28. Customers - extract
 European Commission
e.g. DG ENV, DG DEV
 Austrian, German
& Suisse GOV
 City of Vienna
 Wolters Kluwer
 Pearson
 World Bank
 REEEP
 GBPN
 BPIE
 Education Services
Australia
 Institute for Industrial
Productivity (IIP)
 EIP Water
SWC Customers - Extract