Stein Runar Bergheim
Head of Reserach and Development
Asplan Viak Internet AS
Norway

Biography
With more than 18 years of experience within GIS, database and spatial web application implementation from assignments in Europe, the Middle East and Norway within areas such as establishment of regional, national and trans-national spatial data infrastructures (SDIs), spatial and societal planning, natural resource management, digitization and presentation of cultural heritage and; e-learning. His key areas of interest are Spatial (GIS), Semantic and Social Web technologies; active in a range of international information technology related policy, implementation and R&D activities, he has strong presentation skills and is equally at home communicating with high-level management, big audiences, leading technical workshops and performing one-on-one coaching sessions. He was co-founder of Asplan Viak Internet in 2001 and managing director from 2002 ? 2008.

Abstract
Linked Data in Practice - Experiences from Abu Dhabi, UAE

Co-Author: Tor Gunnar Overli, Managing Director, Asplan Viak Internet AS

The capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, is a rapidly emerging player on the scene of intelligent governance both regionally and globally. The emirate has made strategic investments into the application of information technology to effectively plan and manage the growth of its cities and the services provided to its citizens. One of the pillars of Abu Dhabi's intelligent government is an enterprise GIS system that supports, among other things, land management, construction permits, cut-and-fill and a wide range of asset management functions. As with INSPIRE, the foundation for Abu Dhabi's successful application of GIS is a set of base datasets on which other data may be displayed - or, most importantly, to which other data may be linked. Currently, Abu Dhabi is in the process of implementing a new addressing system, something that constitute a very important component in intelligent governance. Abu Dhabi has chosen to bring together the concepts of addressing with GIS and Linked Data in order to create a first-of-its-kind public persistent URI infrastructure through which the entire government, as well as businesses and residents, gets a common, free persistent URI that they can attach information to. Uniquely, the URI is put on each individual address unit number sign along the streets to facilitate location verification for people, service and goods delivery. This talk describes what has been done in Abu Dhabi and relates it to the potential of the INSPIRE data infrastructure for the evolution of intelligent governance in the EU and the EEA.