A leading geospatial industry group is championing Linked Data as the key to easier sharing of the UK’s location-based information. The Digital National Framework (DNF) Expert Group is to align its core strategy with the ongoing development of the emerging universal web standard for connecting all kinds of data. The group, an independent forum of data providers, software vendors, implementers and users, sees Linked Data as the best way to integrate different kinds of information, geospatial included, through web applications crossing organisational boundaries and taking data directly from source publishers.
Following an initial technical workshop in 2010, the group has approved a fundamental change in its operating plan for 2011 to embrace what Linked Data, and the community that helps drive and support it, has to offer.
The workshop looked at how Linked Data principles were already helping to release siloed information on subjects as diverse as bathing water quality and transport networks.
One session looked at how the BBC had built its website for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa using a semantic publishing framework based on Linked Data.
DNF Expert Group Chair Keith Murray of Ordnance Survey said: “Linked Data is the key to all types of data and applications and DNF, as an industry initiative, is ideally placed to help facilitate its publication and consumption in the geospatial community and beyond. We know through DNF that while location is important as a means to reference other information to data representing real world objects, the information being linked is diverse. It goes beyond location and impacts on all information domains whether health, statistics, transport and so on. The alignment with the original DNF concepts is very strong.”
The changes, which will be reflected in the plan for 2011, will see a much closer collaboration between geospatial and Linked Data communities both on the technical and communications sides. The detail behind this was due to be agreed at a meeting of the DNF Expert Group, hosted by Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, on 17 February 2011.
Priority areas will include a greater focus on building up knowledge levels, explaining how to translate and migrate data sources, and securing the business benefits of Linked Data.
A series of collaborative outreach events is now under way, aimed at bringing Linked Data and geospatial specialists together. The first one, held jointly by the DNF Expert Group, UK Location and the British Computer Society, was a free workshop entitled ‘Linked Data: Why, where and how?’. It took place on 10 February 2011 and was heavily oversubscribed. This huge demand has meant the immediate scheduling of a repeat event which will take place at the BCS offices, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA on 10 March 2011, 10:00-16:00.
To register, visit www.dnf.org/events/register.
