Linked Data: Structured Data on the Web

(the jargon-free version) US EPA Linked Data

!Bernadette Hyland, CEO

bhyland@3RoundStones.com @BernHyland

General: info@3RoundStones.com

@3RoundStones Main +1-877-290-2127

Agenda• Intros ...

• What is the need?

• Jargon-free overview of Linked Open Data

• Trends in data management

• Government data publication

• EPA is moving towards Linked Data

Demand for environmental data

•High demand for improved information platforms to publish, share and visualize integrated data

•e.g., chemicals, pollution, air quality, regulated facilities

•Goal: Increase data quality & comparability to facilitate access & re-use

Data Sharing & Management Snafu in 3 short acts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

feature=player_embedded&v=N2zK3sAtr-4

RDF is a lingua franca for data

exchange

• Linked Data is about publishing and consuming data using international data standards

• Based on 20+ year old idea

• A system of linked information systems

GovernmentsGoals: Governmental transparency and/or improved

internal efficiencies (data warehouses)

“We’re moving from managing documents to managing discrete pieces of open data and content which can be tagged, shared, secured, mashed up and presented in the way that is most useful for the consumer of that information.” !

-- Report on Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People

What is driving us?

Global requirements

• Comprehensively link legislation & regulations for more effective government

• Explain context, source, version & publication date with the data itself

• We need global standards for metadata

US EPA publishes lots of CSV files ...

40% annual growth in data produced

5% annual growth in IT spending

1.8 ZB

35 ZB

2012 2020

Digital Information Produced

294B

1 Trillion

2 Trillion

3 Trillion

4 Trillion

5 Trillion

Online Ad Impressions

Emails Tweets

Daily (2013)

230M

4.8T

314 million Total population

90 million software end users

55 million users of spreadsheets/databases

13 million “end user programmers”

3 million professional programmers

The United States in 2012

“Most programs today are written not by professional software developers, but by people with expertise in other domains working towards goals for which they

need computational support.”

Readable by people

Data in the Physical World

Machine readable

Readable by

motivated people

Someone else (we don’t know)

Schemas/Vocabularies

johnson@example.com

Which Copy?

Today’s Data on the Web

Lack of Context

Required Context

my data

collector

collected by

measurement

Michael

first name

Hausenblaslast name

Person

a

a measurement

2011-01-01date

0

valueunits of measure

degrees Centigrade

...

Galway Airport

collected at

Linked Data on the Web

my data

collector

collected by

measurement

Michael

first name

Hausenblaslast name

Person

a

a measurement

2011-01-01date

0

valueunits of measure

degrees Centigrade

...

Galway Airport

collected at

or

Summary of Problems

• How can we archive our data in an open manner?

• How can we record data context?

• How can we record data provenance?

• How can we know whether our data is up to date?

• How can we share our data with others?

Linked Data is a way to

answer these questions

Linked Data

• Provides an international standard mechanism to put reusable data on the World Wide Web

• Provides a single data model with multiple formats

• Provides context, provenance and access

• Allows for both human and machine reuse

Linked Data Principles

• Name data files and elements with URIs

• Use HTTP URIs so people can resolve them on the Web

• Provide useful information at those URIs, using the standards (RDF, SPARQL)

• Include links to other URIs so people can discover more information.

US EPA Linked Data

• Cloud-based Linked Data provision • 2.9M Facilities (FRS)

• 100K substances (SRS) • 25 years of toxic pollution reports (TRI) • 3 years of chemical usage reports (CDR)

• Considering: Hazardous & non-hazardous waste management (RCRA) & GHG data

• FISMA compliant

• Millions of pages driven by < 20 Web templates

• Launch Spring 2014

From WikipediaFrom EPA

Open Street Map

HOW IT IS DONE TODAY ...

Audience for EPA Data

• Middle school student doing a science project

• Concerned citizen worried about local pollution

• Environmental Science PhD from EPA

• Doctor from NIH writing a research paper

How much mercury did Hanson Permanente Cement

release in 2004?

Envirofacts

Finding Hanson Permanente

Finding Mercury Released in 2004

Compliance Report

Potential Audience

• Middle school student doing a science project

• Concerned citizen worried about local pollution

• Environmental Science PhD from EPA

• Doctor from NIH writing a research paper

✔

XX

X

Linked Data

Finding Hanson Permanente

Finding Mercury Released in 20041

2

TRI Report

Data Reuse

Potential Audience

• Middle school student doing a science project

• Concerned citizen worried about local pollution

• Environmental Science PhD from EPA

• Doctor from NIH writing a research paper

✔

✔

✔

✔

Increasing the audience of US EPA

data consumers

NOAA EPA AirNow EPA Sunwise

Wikipedia NLM

• Empower users to create their own views of data to satisfy different applications

• Build a community around the data in which users help each other to curate and connect as needed

• Skip the supermodel - Leave data in the multiple “best of breed” systems; wrap and expose on the Web of Data

Increase re-use by publishing Linked Data

http://3roundstones.com/linking-government-data/http://www.manning.com/dwood

CreditsPopulation density image

(public domain) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA-2000-population-density.gif

2012 population estimate (CC-BY-SA)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States

Programmer estimatesScaffidi, C.; Shaw, M.; Myers, Brad, "Estimating the numbers of end users and end user programmers," Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, 2005 IEEE Symposium on , vol., no., pp.207,214, 20-24 Sept. 2005 doi: 10.1109/VLHCC.2005.34

End user programmer quote

Andrew J. Ko, Robin Abraham, Laura Beckwith, Alan Blackwell, Margaret Burnett, Martin Erwig, Chris Scaffidi, Joseph Lawrance, Henry Lieberman, Brad Myers, Mary Beth Rosson, Gregg Rothermel, Mary Shaw, and Susan Wiedenbeck. 2011. The state of the art in end-user software engineering. ACM Comput. Surv. 43, 3, Article 21

Bag of chips ideaOpen, Linked Data for a Global Community, Tim Berners-Lee, W3C, Gov2.0 Expo, Washington DC, May 25-27 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E7lV5_0M38

Social media iconsCourtesy of http://designreviver.com/freebies/6-free-new-social-icons-digg-twitter-stumble-rss-delicious-reddit/

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