Semantic Portals for Semantic Spatial Data Infrastructures Francis Harvey

University of Minnesota

[email protected]

@fhap13

Challenges • Much data

• Many geoportals

• Many semantics

• Many gazetteers

• Many values

• Many institutions

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/opinion/01srivastava.html

Disparities !

• Ontological and epistemological

• Political and economic

• Semantics

• incommensurabilities

Ways to handle data • Crosswalks

• Bridges

• Design loops, scrums, etc, etc

• Common ontologies

• Interoperability

• Create apps

Geo portals like mushrooms • In Wisconsin?

• Even in Iceland (population 321,857) nobody knows how many

• In Wrocław, Poland, 40 portals for geographic information

• Why?

• keep consultants busy?

• iterative improvements?

• different needs?

• different budget lines?

U-Spatial Ideas

Background • • • •

Support for spatial research and creative activities at the University of Minnesota

uspatial.umn.edu

Five years of funding; in third year now

A portion of efforts engages ‘data’ issues

Looking to develop pragmatic approaches

Long-term perspective •

Most government IT projects fail

•

Most people share data with people the know

•

Safe sharing

•

Facilitating data sharing in an institutional framework

•

Making connections

An Opportunity • Semantic interpretability through portal-level semantics

• Architecture that merges semantic

interoperability at the data set level and portal design

• Automation of the clearinghouse concept in a web-based architecture

• Facilities for search, access, extraction,

interpretation, and processing of information

DR

T F A

Scope for Semantic Web Portal Architecture • OGP

• ESRI GeoPortal

• CKAN

• Ex Libris

• GeoNode

Institutional Arrangements

http://rdap2010.blogspot.com/2010/05/panel-1-data-life-cycle-management.html

Implementation is coming... •

Pilot site for portals and discussion of concepts at present

• • • •

Control

Access

Curation

LOD for data descriptions and data

Activities • Search for a data analyst/curator position in Libraries/U-Spatial (contact me!)

• engage diverse user communities

• support development

• obtain grant support to fund development work

Disparities !

• Ontological and epistemological

• Political and economic

• Semantics

• incommensurabilities

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Semantics of institutions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

(F. Harvey, following Friedrich Nietzsche)

Reality Sucks!

But we can do cool things!

T.S. Eliot Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the information we have lost in knowledge? !

M. Gahegan Where is the data we have lost in information?

Organizations and politics get in the way

Data Sharing Myths • Altruism

• People want to share and do other good things

• Intangibles are important

• Hope, what remained in Pandora’s box

• Standards provide framework

• Contingencies and exigencies don’t matter

Semantic Interoperability: A Snare and A Delusion (following Fisher)

• Abstract concepts matter in their empirical reality

• Institutions

• People

• Meaning comes through use

• Data are context dependent

• Incommensurabilities

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images? q=tbn:ANd9GcQnza1NqTr7hLkHYFAvkvewnqxGOTI9wV_wnYI568AwRi3q9QKTJw

It’s not about data

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-seM8zVFctz8/UOnk7AeHNfI/AAAAAAAAC5Y/ ieQUnBIQJ84/s1600/mad-scientist-movie.jpg

It’s about people

http://www.sciencephoto.com/image/464909/350wm/F0051449Scientist_using_tablet_computer_in_lab-SPL.jpg

Scientists and others

SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS WILL COME FROM WORKING WITH DATA • GIS

becoming a fundamental technology for working with data

• Big • IT

Data in the media

meets science Complexity of planetary life-interactions

http://www.earthzine.org/2010/03/22/observing-the-oceans-a-2020-vision-for-ocean-science/

Spatial Data Infrastructure Lessons for Geospatial Architecture

It’s not just about the data • That’s just the beginning

• or the end

• People coordinating and working

• Acknowledgment and recognition

• Budgets and planning

• It’s always about control & Harvey 2008, Harvey & Tulloch 2006)

(Tulloch

iRobot looj

Thanks to the workshop organizers