Re: 'area profiles' - use case for back links

Personally, I would be careful about the back-linking as this has many 
implications on LinkedData as an infrastructure. Where would such back 
links be stored, can I filter them by source, etc?

Best,
Krzysztof


On 08/05/2015 08:32 AM, Joshua Lieberman wrote:
> We are having to deal with some confusion over spatial specialness 
> because many important capabilities for spatial data also have 
> conceivable usefulness for other data. The difference is often one of 
> centrality. Spatial data “always” deals with features, the basis of 
> defining what the data represents. It is usually valuable and often 
> essential for working with distributed spatial data to be able to 
> identify where features and/or geometries are being shared, e.g. links 
> to all the data that characterize not just more or less the same 
> location but the same feature such as a hill or an aquifer. The 
> reference back to a shared feature or perhaps a shared observation 
> concerning a feature is an important constraint on the relationships 
> between forward-linked data elements as well as their mutual validity. 
> For example, suppose there exist 5 datasets describing the bus 
> arrivals for the same bus stop. It would raise questions if those 
> times did not agree. We would only know that by being able to find 
> multiple arrival datasets linked from the bus stop feature. Links are 
> needed both from and to related data in some fashion in order to 
> enable “crawlability" as well as to answer both directional questions, 
> i.e. what data was this data derived from (provenance) and what other 
> data is making use of this data (usage).
>
>
> It is conceivable that someone might want to follow all the links to 
> data that show a temperature of “9” or a color of “blue” but those are 
> arguably not central to use of distributed data in general. While 
> there are some other capabilities that should be considered general 
> data-on-the-web issues, It makes sense to me in this case for the 
> SDWWG to take the lead in recommending this capability and let others 
> then look at generalizing this to non-spatial data.
>
> Josh
>
> Joshua Lieberman, Ph.D.
> Principal
> Tumbling Walls
> jlieberman*tumblingwalls.com <http://tumblingwalls.com>
> +1 617 431 6431
>
>> On Aug 5, 2015, at 11:06 AM, Bill Roberts <bill@swirrl.com 
>> <mailto:bill@swirrl.com>> wrote:
>>
>> I don't have a strong feeling about this and agree it is a more 
>> general problem than just spatial. We could perhaps identify a good 
>> solution, perhaps one from another domain, and list this in our best 
>> practices. Maybe the data on the web group has something to say on 
>> the issue?
>>
>>
>>
>> On 5 Aug 2015, at 15:53, Kerry Taylor <Kerry.Taylor@acm.org 
>> <mailto:Kerry.Taylor@acm.org>> wrote:
>>
>>> frans,
>>> I suppose because the "linking", including "backlinks" , is a major( 
>>> the major?) reason for our existence....and a serious missing 
>>> element in existing standards for spatial data publishing/ 
>>> consuming. Does that argument stand up?
>>> Kerry
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 6 Aug 2015, at 12:38 am, Frans Knibbe <frans.knibbe@geodan.nl 
>>> <mailto:frans.knibbe@geodan.nl>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 2015-08-05 16:08 GMT+02:00 Kerry Taylor <Kerry.Taylor@acm.org 
>>>> <mailto:Kerry.Taylor@acm.org>>:
>>>>
>>>>     Bill,
>>>>     This seems to me to be a use case we need, that is kind-of
>>>>     there in a few  use cases but not so explicit as you have
>>>>     described it here ( although you have included some solution
>>>>     suggestions). Can you put it on the use case page on the wiki
>>>>     as a starting point to processing it further?
>>>>     @Frans, @Alejandro, would that be appropriate?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yes, I think it would.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     This is not really specific to "spatial" linking but I do think
>>>>     it is something we should specifically address nevertheless...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> That was my initial thought too: backlinking is an understandable 
>>>> requirement, but I don't see how it fits within our scope. Why do 
>>>> you think we should address it nevertheless? It would be nice if we 
>>>> can discover the spatialness of the matter.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Frans
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     Kerry
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     On 5 Aug 2015, at 10:32 pm, Bill Roberts <bill@swirrl.com
>>>>     <mailto:bill@swirrl.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>     Hi all
>>>>>
>>>>>     In last week's call I mentioned a use case for 'back links' to
>>>>>     places - the question of what resources are linked to my
>>>>>     location of interest, or in RDF terminology, which triples
>>>>>     exist with my location as the object.  Something that comes up
>>>>>     frequently in our work for local government is 'area profiles'
>>>>>     - selecting and presenting data about a place.  The data
>>>>>     typically covers topics like demographics, health, economy,
>>>>>     environment etc. and in our work is usually represented as
>>>>>     statistical data in linked data form, using the RDF Data Cube
>>>>>     vocabulary.  The RDF links generally go from an 'observation'
>>>>>     to the place.
>>>>>
>>>>>     The area profile usually this incorporates some kind of simple
>>>>>     map of the place, plus simple charts of selected data.  See
>>>>>     http://profiles.hampshirehub.net/profiles/E06000045 for an example
>>>>>
>>>>>     This is straightforward in principle if all the available data
>>>>>     is in a single database - you can retrieve the things you want
>>>>>     by SPARQL query.  A more general and challenging problem is to
>>>>>     answer a user question along the lines of 'what data is
>>>>>     available about location X' drawing from distributed data
>>>>>     sources.  A practical solution to that would generally involve
>>>>>     some manual discovery and integration - becoming aware through
>>>>>     various means of the existence of a relevant data collection
>>>>>     (by web search, or personal recommendation, or social media or
>>>>>     whatever), deciding if it holds info about a place then adding
>>>>>     it to a list of services that could be queried to pull back
>>>>>     the data.
>>>>>
>>>>>     Sometimes this could be more complicated if we are interested
>>>>>     not only in data that links directly to our place identifier,
>>>>>     but to related identifiers (other names for same thing, a
>>>>>     sub-area or super-area of the place in question etc).
>>>>>
>>>>>     The challenge in question is one of discovery.  The most
>>>>>     practical solution might be 'just google it' (having allowed
>>>>>     search engines to crawl the data collections). Perhaps more
>>>>>     targeted indexes for specific domains of interest could meet
>>>>>     the same need with less noise. Querying metadata of data
>>>>>     catalogues might be another option.
>>>>>
>>>>>     Best regards
>>>>>
>>>>>     Bill
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> Frans Knibbe
>>>> Geodan
>>>> President Kennedylaan 1
>>>> 1079 MB Amsterdam (NL)
>>>>
>>>> T +31 (0)20 - 5711 347
>>>> E frans.knibbe@geodan.nl <mailto:frans.knibbe@geodan.nl>
>>>> www.geodan.nl <http://www.geodan.nl/>
>>>> disclaimer <http://www.geodan.nl/disclaimer>
>>>>
>


-- 
Krzysztof Janowicz

Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara
4830 Ellison Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060

Email: jano@geog.ucsb.edu
Webpage: http://geog.ucsb.edu/~jano/
Semantic Web Journal: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net

Received on Wednesday, 5 August 2015 18:32:27 UTC