INSPIRE ‐ Geospatial World Forum 2015

WORKSHOP

INSPIRE & Linked Data: Bridging the gap.
Friday, 29 May 2015, 1100 – 1230 hrs

Session I: Linked INSPIRE

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Considering the impact of the human society towards the environment the requirements to improve the accessibility and re-usability of geo and non-geospatial data and services are becoming more and more visible. With that harmonisation of digital content and functionality is driven from various directions facing to new challenges. Significant effort from policy driven direction was done by INSPIRE initiative. Governance transparency and political influence highlighted the role of Open Data initiatives. At the same time maturation of the technology and data management & publication techniques introduced new approaches for the data enrichment via semantic web of data. All approaches comes with commonalities as well as specific aspects generating challenges as for those creating the content and functionality as well as for those using these infrastructures to create new added values. Despite the work done so far in this area via various studies and projects, there still remains open some essential questions which serve as main topics for this workshop:

What INSPIRE can gain with Linked data?
How Linked data can profit from INSPIRE?

INSPIRE content gaps can be fulfilled and current data models can be enriched with linked data content whilst at the same time available INSPIRE data and services can provide important contribution to the semantic web of data. Identification of the options, how to make this happen will be the main ambition of this workshop.

TARGET AUDIENCE

In order to benefit from the workshop participants are expected to be actively shaping the direction and the outcomes of the workshop. With that in mind, all interested participants are kindly asked to express their plans for participation, interest in this area (particularly, whether they are data and services producers/publishers, transformers/developers or users/consumers) and are encouraged to propose modifications to the indicative agenda in written via this email address: martin.tuchyna@sazp.sk with the “Linking INSPIRE WS” label in the subject by the 1st of May 2015 latest. Potential (not-exhaustive) audience:

INSPIRE community
Linked data community
Open data networks
Geospatial data producers and consumers
Policy makers and public sector

WORKSHOP REQUIREMENTS

Instructions for participants: See description of the target audience instructions.

DETAILED WORKSHOP AGENDA

Indicative agenda for the workshop including:
Presentation section:

Linked geo data activities from standardisation perspective (W3C/OGC) (10 mins.)
Concrete examples of INSPIRE linked data implementations from the ongoing related projects (15 mins: 3 examples each for 5 mins.) Interactive section: Facilitated discussions on the following topics:
What is the potential of linking INSPIRE with the Web of Data? (15 mins.)
a. Main benefits and risks
i. From INSPIRE point of view
ii. From Linked data point of view
b. Dimensions of linking INSPIRE content (data) and functionality (services)?
i. Technological (Metadata vs. data, APIs, PIDs, registers)
ii. Semantic (Data models, ontologies)
iii. Societal&Economic (Inovations, Public Private Partnership, …)
c. Use cases pool. Examples of possible linkages of SDI with the semantic web.
What can be done for stakeholders & Conclusions ? (5 mins)

Session II: GeoKnow tools for linked INSPIRE data.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

This session of the workshop presents a methodology towards repurposing INSPIRE Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) as high-quality Linked Data sources according to the Resource Data Framework (RDF) and GeoSPARQL standards. It will also showcase a suite of related open-source software tools (TripleGeo, TripleGeo-CSW). With these tools, INSPIRE Catalogue Services can be accessible with Semantic Web technologies, thus facilitating discovery of INSPIRE data. In addition, the tools integrate reusable application profiles in RDF for INSPIRE metadata and INSPIRE Annex I data themes, making them accessible through SPARQL endpoints. This methodology may be applied as-is for INSPIRE metadata and data of Annex I across the EU, and is inherently extensible for Annexes II & III data by simply authoring additional RDF mappings with minimal overhead.

Having already used these tools for publishing geodatasets on the Semantic Web (geodata.gov.gr/sparql), we will share our practical experience from all stages of this process with real-world examples on selected INSPIRE-aligned datasets and services from several European countries.

Hence, the learning objectives of this session of the workshop are:

to make participants understand the essential concepts of geospatial Linked Data and metadata and their impact on INSPIRE;
to demonstrate that exposing the entire spectrum of INSPIRE data as RDF through (Geo)SPARQL endpoints is possible with relatively little work;
to offer best practices for transforming INSPIRE features as RDF triples;
to point out the potential benefits from reusing existing INPIRE SDIs for data discovery, retrieval, interlinking, fusion, and reasoning;
to discuss the challenges towards INSPIRE-aligned semantic data infrastructures, and the advantages of harnessing the wealth of Linked Open Data (LOD cloud) for novel applications.

This part of the workshop will start with a short presentation followed by interactive hands-on exercises on actual INSPIRE data, metadata, and catalogue services. The idea is to make all participants acquainted with the main concepts and the practical needs that arise when attempting to transform INSPIRE into RDF.

TARGET AUDIENCE

The intended audience is:

Member State representatives implementing INSPIRE and e-government participants interested in exposing data/metadata to the Semantic Web;
Practitioners and researchers working with geospatial linked data;
GIS/INSPIRE experts interested in the applied use of geospatial data with Semantic Web technologies;
Software developers from the open source community (e.g., OSGEO) interested in Semantic Web technologies that can repurpose INSPIRE-aligned features;
SMEs building on INSPIRE so as to create services/applications.

WORKSHOP REQUIREMENTS

Instructions for participants: Attendees may bring their own laptop if they want to do a hands-on exercise with INSPIRE datasets. Otherwise, they can only watch presentations and demos by the facilitators. A webpage at geodata.gov.gr/sparql with all the material used in the demos will be available to the public during and after the conference.

DETAILED WORKSHOP AGENDA

Presentation #1 (10 minutes): A data-centric approach to transform INSPIRE to RDF:

Overview of the open-source implemented tools (https://github.com/GeoKnow/TripleGeo, https://github.com/GeoKnow/TripleGeo-CSW);
Encoding elements from INSPIRE GML application profiles into RDF;
Using XSLT to produce an INSPIRE-aligned RDF representation of metadata and data;
Obtaining geometry serialisations according to the OGC GeoSPARQL standard.

Interactive hands-on exercise (25 minutes): How to turn INSPIRE data/metadata into RDF:

Customising XSL stylesheets: how to handle INSPIRE identifiers, geometry representations, thematic attributes, voidable properties, etc.
Handle indicative INSPIRE-aligned datasets from Annex I themes.
Apply XSLT transformation through the TripleGeo tool in order to obtain RDF representation of the input data/metadata.
Load the resulting triples into a RDF store (e.g., Virtuoso).
Using the TripleGeo-CSW tool to discover INSPIRE data across Europe.
Submit example (Geo)SPARQL queries to retrieve/discover data.

Discussion (10 minutes): Lessons learned, challenges ahead:

Summary & benefits from this methodology to the Linked Data Lifecycle;
Feedback from participants;
Are there any special use cases, recommendations, or subtle issues related to exposing INSPIRE data on the Semantic Web?

Speakers