towards a Shared European and National State of the Environment Technical Workshop NRC IS meeting 23 Feb 2010 at European Environment Agency

1. SoER makes SENSE
towards a Shared European and National State of the Environment
Antonio De Marinis
Click to edit Master subtitle style
European Environment Agency
eea.europa.eu
Technical Workshop
9/26/09 meeting 23 Feb 2010
NRC IS

2. SOER website

3. Content provision
SENSE
Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3
I

4. Manual upload via Plone

5. SENSE: Automatic content sharing
Why SENSE?
To automatically
fetch,
synchronize,
publish
share
national SOER information and data across Europe and even
the entire web

6. How?
What data format?
RDF/XML

7. Why RDF/XML?
widely accepted open standard
from
Used for Linked Data and the wider
Semantic Web initiatives around the world
The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows
data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise,
and community boundaries
(World Wide Web Consortium - W3C, 2009)

8. What is RDF/XML?
RDF stands for systems as web pages (HTML) stands for
humans
RDF is a standard framework to describe structured data
With RDF it is possible to share and link raw data across the
web
It enable to browse and query the data, no matter where it is

9. Simple and powerful data model
XML base syntax (RDF is XML)
Supports XML schema data types
Express statements about any resource
Provides formal semantics and provable inference
Therefore it supports logic programming and reasoning

10. Semantic web layercake diagram

11. What is Linked Data?
a term used to describe a recommended best practice for
exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data,
information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web using
URIs and RDF."

17. LinkedData
EnvData
EnvData EnvData
EEA-Eionet
Eurostat Country
(reportnet)
SENSE

18. Our long term vision
create the web of environmental data

19. RDF Basic concepts

20. RDF Model
Predicate
Subject Object
(property)
sentence: Mr. De Marinis likes Italian wine
likes
Mr. De Italian
Marinis (property) wine

21. RDF/XML representation
1. <?xml version="1.0"?>
2. <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
3. xmlns= http://wine.com/ >
4. <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.eea.europa.eu/staff/MrDeMarinis">
5. <likes>Italian wine</likes>
6. </rdf:Description>
7. </rdf:RDF>

22. RDF applied to SoER C
- SENSE -

23. SoER C: Class diagram

24. RDF model example
SoER sentence: Water bodies located in Norway are in a
good environmental condition.
Translates into the following RDF graph:
location
Water
Norway
bodies
condition
good

25. RDF/XML representation
1. <?xml version="1.0"?>
2. <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
3. xmlns="http://www.eea.europa.eu/soer/1.0# ">
4. <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www.environment.no/water-bodies">
5. <location>Norway</location>
6. <condition>good</condition>
7. </rdf:Description>
8. </rdf:RDF>

26. National Story RDF example

27. Triples of the data model

28. Several National Stories
Sequentially add all national stories in same RDF feed:
<rdf:RDF xml:lang="en" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-
syntax-ns#" xmlns="http://www.eea.europa.eu/soer/1.0#">
<NationalStory rdf:about="...">
...
</NationalStory>
<NationalStory rdf:about="...">
...
</NationalStory>
</rdf:RDF>

29. SENSE RDF with figures and data
1
2

30. Figures and data, alternative RDF representation
1. <Figure rdf:about="http://www.environment.no/vannkvalitet_07.gif">
2.
3. <dataSource rdf:resource="http://www.environment.no/Maps-and-
data/Data/?spraak=EN&amp;dsID=AKUTT"/>
4. </Figure>
1
5. <DataFile rdf:about="http://www.environment.no/Maps-and-
data/Data/?spraak=EN&amp;dsID=AKUTT">
6. <fileName>AKUTT</fileName>
7. <dataURL>http://www.environment.no/Maps-and-
data/Data/AKUTT/data.xls</dataURL>
2
8. <mediaType>application/excel</mediaType>
9. </DataFile>

31. Geographical coverage and logic deduction
biogeographical regions like Alpine region or Baltic sea.
<NationalStory rdf:about="http://www.environment.it/alpine-water-bodies">
<question>What are the state and impacts?</question>
<topic>freshwater</topic>
<keyMessage>Global climate change poses a grave threat to the alpine
1 hydrological system, altering precipitation, snow-cover patterns and
glaciers, with further effects downstream.</keyMessage>
<pubDate>2009-05-15</pubDate>
<geoCoverage
rdf:resource="http://rdfdata.eionet.europa.eu/article17/bioregions/ALP "
/>
</NationalStory>
2
Why not Italy, France, Austria etc ?
The other geographical coverage can be inferred automatically, deduced by semantic
(logic) rules. We have linked the bioregions to country regions.
The same can be done for NUTS code.

32. Geographical coverage
<geoCoverage
rdf:resource="http://rdfdata.eionet.europa.eu/article17/bioregions/ALP " />
Countries:
spatial country coverage in Reportnet
1
For trans-boundary assessments:
biogeographical regions like Alpine region or Baltic sea.
International river basin districts
or sub-national regions like NUTS regions
2

33. Deduction on topic
<NationalStory rdf:about="http://www.environment.it/alpine-water-bodies">
<topic>freshwater</topic>
</NationalStory>
1
Deduction by Gemet Thesaurus (now in RDF), we get more topics:
surface water (BT)
flowing water (NT)
ice (NT)
river water (NT)
2
We gain much more knowledge and power by linking data and applying
reasoning.

34. Conclusions
The SENSE principles: shared SOER
information
How? via semantic web technology
The potential of Linked Data and RDF
RDF applied on SOER part C
Inspiration for future development of the
web of environmental data!

35. Further reading and references
SENSE project intro:
http://svn.eionet.europa.eu/projects/Zope/wiki/SENSE
SENSE XML/RDF Specification:
http://svn.eionet.europa.eu/projects/Zope/wiki/SOERFeedSpec
The next Web of open, linked data: Tim Berners-Lee on TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html
Linked Data http://linkeddata.org/
Linked Data Tutorial http://www4.wiwiss.fu-
berlin.de/bizer/pub/LinkedDataTutorial/
RDF Primer http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/
Semantic web http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

36. Let's make SENSE!