Links and Resources

1. Starting into the topic with Tim Berners-Lee

> 'The year open data went worldwide'. Watch this TED talk!

You might also want to explore current and past articles in the Springer journal 'Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards'  - which "provides an advanced forum for the science and technology of Open Data, Crowdsourced Geographic Information, Sensor Web and Open Science for Earth Remote Sensing through the publication of reviews, regular research articles as well as software articles".

2. Overview and Examples

Open Data: "data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone".

As a first step, you may want to explore the >EU Open Data Portal.

There you will find loads of (European) government data sets, most aiming at enhancing the transparency of the public sector.

Only few of these are geospatial (explicitly georeferenced) data, most can be found by using the >GEOGRAPHY domain or keyword. From these, some are directly linked to a suitable viewing experience, like in this >Forest cover example. Others have to be downloaded and opened with a suitable viewing app/lication.

These developments, as well on national levels, are driven by the >Public Sector Initiative (PSI), recognizing that the vast holdings of governmental data have potential for economic development as well as for enhanced public participation.

A more mature environment, serving as a role model for many nations, is the >US open data repository.

3. Open Data Licenses

Creative Commons is the most frequently used licensing framework for open data.

4. Linked Data

The Linked Data paradigm has evolved as a powerful enabler for the transition of the current document-oriented Web into a Web of inter-linked Data and, ultimately, into the Semantic Web. The term Linked Data refers to a set of best practices for publishing and connecting structured data on the Web. It was introduced by Tim Berners-Lee in his Web architecture note Linked Data and have become known as the Linked Data principles. These principles are:

• Use Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) as names for things.
• Use Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) URIs so that people can look up those names.
• When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information, using the standards (RDF, SPARQL).
• Include links to other URIs, so that they can discover more things.

Explore this online book Linked Open Data -- Creating Knowledge Out of Interlinked Data

5. Standards and Open Data

Not surprisingly, like for all SDI elements, geospatial standards are key for open data as well!

Check out and read this article "The Success of Open Data Depends on Open Standards" by Denise McKenzie and Ron Exler. This provides a link to and recap of standards introduced in the prior lesson 'Standards for Interoperability'.

List and briefly discuss the standards mentioned in this article which have not been introduced previously!