Re: Coping with gaps in linked data (UK postcodes)?

Hi Stephen,

Really your only option is to mint your own URIs, but then later build
in links to the official URIs if/when they become available:

http://patterns.dataincubator.org/book/proxy-uris.html

The postcodes make good Natural Keys for building your URIs. This will
help to automatically generate links not just to your data, but also
to the official version when available.

Cheers,

L.


On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 2:08 PM, Cresswell, Stephen
<stephen.cresswell@tso.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> In our application, we wish to publish linked data, including addresses
> with postcode URIs.  The postcode URIs provided by Ordnance Survey for
> England, Wales and Scotland are really useful, with the postcode URIs
> dereferencing to provide useful information including co-ordinates.
>
> However, the geographical extent of our data includes Northern Ireland,
> which is outside the scope of (British) Ordnance Survey and not included
> in their dataset.  The equivalent postcode data for Northern Ireland is
> available from the NI government body NISRA, but it is not on an open
> license.
>
> This leaves us with a question about what URIs to use for Northern
> Ireland postcodes, as we know of no existing URI scheme for Northern
> Ireland postcodes.
>
> If we generate postcode URIs using the same pattern as the rest of the
> UK, those URIs would be in the Ordnance Survey's domain, but NI
> postcodes are not actually in their dataset and they won't dereference,
> so that seems wrong.
>
> If we are to have dereferencable URIs, we would presumably have to host
> them in our own domain, which is definitely not the most appropriate
> place for them to be.  If we buy a license to use the NI postcode data,
> we still wouldn't be able to republish it as linked data.  Presumably,
> however, there is some geographical information that is open and could
> be published, e.g. courser geographical information based on just the
> postcode district.
>
> Does anyone have any advice on best practice, either for the specific
> problem (NI postcodes) or for the general problem of how to cope with
> URIs based on an existing coding scheme (e.g. postcodes), where the
> published URIs don't cover all of the original codes?
>
> Stephen Cresswell
> The Stationery Office
>
>
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>



-- 
Leigh Dodds
Freelance Technologist
Open Data, Linked Data Geek
t: @ldodds
w: ldodds.com
e: leigh@ldodds.com

Received on Friday, 12 April 2013 13:41:24 UTC