Notes from INSPIRE 2014

Dear all,

Last week some of us were in Aalborg for the INSPIRE 2014 conference,
and we would like to share some notes on what happened, in particular
on topics relevant to the LOCADD CG. Please note that we're reporting
our personal understanding, so we would kindly ask who was there to
correct and/or extend these notes.

First of all, W3C and OGC jointly organised a workshop [1], concerning
LGD'14 and the joint W3C/OGC working group on Spatial Data on the Web.

The workshop raised a lot of interest (around 150 people attended),
and it was co-chaired by Phil Archer (W3C), Bart De Lathouwer (OGC),
Alex Coley (DEFRA) and Ed Parsons (Google). Overall, the feedback from
the audience was very positive.

Basically, the discussion was about the charter of the joint W3C/OGC
WG and, in particular, on the deliverables listed in Section 4. There
was a general agreement on the importance of the first 2 ones (UC&Rs
and BPs), and a lot of discussion on their actual scope and
objectives. About the other deliverables, the one considered as
relevant was the  Time Ontology or, more in general, the
representation of time.

About the general scope of the WG, Clemens noted that, also based on
the name of the WG, it should be not only on LD, but, more in general,
on the use of Web technologies for geo data. Again, it should be about
"linking" geo data. There was a general consensus from the audience on
this statement.

@Phil, @Clemens, did we get it right? Nothing to add?

Interestingly, this point was confirmed during the Linked / Open Data
sessions [2-4], where in many cases LD was seen not as a goal, but
rather as a means to bring geo data on the Web, for a number of
reasons - e.g., in order to make them discoverable by using Web
technologies, accessible to a broader, cross-domain audience (citizens
included), and to better link and integrate them with other data
(including crowd-sourced data). So, there was a lot of discussion on
data formats, complexity, interoperability, and on what is missing to
effectively use geo data on the Web.

The impression we got is that, although there is still interest in
replicating geo standards with Semantic Web  technologies, the idea of
"bringing geo data on the Web" seems to be the prevalent trend in the
INSPIRE community.

Cheers,

Andrea & Michael

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[1]http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/events/conferences/inspire_2014/page/wsl#c_40_233
[2]http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/events/conferences/inspire_2014/page/oral#c_16
[3]http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/events/conferences/inspire_2014/page/oral#c_22
[3]http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/events/conferences/inspire_2014/page/oral#c_34

-- 
Andrea Perego, Ph.D.
European Commission DG JRC
Institute for Environment & Sustainability
Unit H06 - Digital Earth & Reference Data
Via E. Fermi, 2749 - TP 262
21027 Ispra VA, Italy

https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/

----
The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may
not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official
position of the European Commission.

Received on Friday, 27 June 2014 09:01:50 UTC