In the age of Big Data, filtering mechanisms have to professionalized to increase accessibility to data. This presentation, held at Knowledge Management Academy in Vienna, shows how technologies derived from the Semantic Web can help to establish more efficient means to manage data and information.

1. Data Strategies
Metadata, Open Data & Linked Data
Andreas Blumauer
CEO, Semantic Web Company
www.semantic-web.at
www.poolparty.biz

2. About Semantic Web Company
Company was founded 2001 in Vienna, Austria
>20 experts in linked data technologies
Product: PoolParty Suite (launched 2009)
Serving global 500 companies & large NGOs
EU- & US-based consulting services

3. Some customers we serve
• Pearson
• Daimler
• Wolters Kluwer
• Ministry of Finance (AUT)
• GBPN
• Credit Suisse • Council of EU
• Education Services (AUS)
• World Bank • Roche
• Wood Mackenzie • REEEP

4. Agenda
Intro
 Data management – the current situation
 Potential & Benefits of Linked Open Data (LOD) –
what is metadata, open data, linked data,
what is linked open data?
Use Cases
 Global Buildings Performance Network (GBPN) & BPIE
 World Bank Thesauri
 EIP on Water: Marketplace
 Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP)
Q&A

5. Which problems can be solved
on top of big data?

7. Common interests. Common topics.
Water
Management

8. Common vocabulary?
Common understanding?
Wastewater
treatment
Wastewater
treatment
Water
Management

9. Globalisation + Localisation =
Glocalisation
Certification
(Europe)
Rating
(U.S.)

10. Common data?
Questions in common?
Energy management policies Search
Water
Management

11. The Semantic Puzzle

12. Data Analytics 2.0 The islands are now open for the experts

13. Data management in the environmental sector –
The current situation
 Example: Buildings performance
 “2012 saw the launch of an impressive
number of online portals sharing data and
analysis on energy efficiency in buildings”
(Ingeborg Nolte, Senior Communication
Manager at BPIE)
 However: how can the value be leveraged
of so many (open) data sets which are
actually isolated from each other?
 Will Excel be the ultimate solution?

14. What‟s wrong with Open Data?
<daycare id=„Seven Dwarfs“
address=„...“>
. . .
</ daycare >
<kindergarten>
<name>Seven Dwarfs</name>
<child_care name=„Seven Dwarfs“>
<address>
<location>...</location>
<street>...</street>
<description>...</description>
<zip>...</zip>
</address>
</kindergarten>
<text>...</text>
</child_care>
 Syntactic heterogenity – different trees
 Semantic heterogenity – different tags and attributes (e.g.
kindergarten, child_care, daycare)

16. What is metadata,
open data or linked data?
What is linked open data?

17. Metadata
Meta-metadata
Metadata
Data & Information

18. Thesaurus / Ontology
http://voc.org.com/core/355
altLabel
Café Central
altLabel
http://voc.org.com/core/77
Wien
broader
http://voc.org.com/core/176
narrower
http://voc.org.com/core/97
Das Central
prefLabel (de)
related
Places
Vienna
Vindobona
narrower
Café
Coffeehouse
prefLabel
prefLabel
broader
Gastronomy
http://voc.org.com/core/54
related
http://voc.org.com/core/44
prefLabel
Innere Stadt

19. Data Analytics 3.0 –
Connected islands based on standards

20. What is linked data,
what is linked open data?
The Free Universal
Construction Kit
connects
Lego®, Duplo®, Fischertechnik®,
Gears! Gears!
Gears!®, K‟Nex®, Krinkles®, Bristle
Blocks®, Lincoln
Logs®, Tinkertoys®, Zome®, Zom
eTool® and Zoob®
with a low cost 3D printed
adapter set
CC by Golan Levin (US), Shawn
Sims (US)

21. LOD as a giant knowledge base
Which policies in the area of renewable energy have helped to initiate
projects and programmes in the agricultural sector which finally have
improved substantially the nutritional situation in a certain country?

22. Application example #1:
Energy Market Intelligence
Scenario #1:
I am an energy market
researcher at the International
Energy Agency (IEA).
I inform policy makers about the
situation in specific renewable
energy areas to develop
targeted energy support
programs.
For my research I need indicators
about utilisation levels of all
alternative forms of energy with
regards to geographical and
political categories.
http://integrator.poolparty.biz/report_renewable/

23. How does it work?
 Articles about Renewable Energy
 72,018 documents
 From ~300 web sources
 Reegle Thesaurus: ~3,000 concepts
 Traverse hierarchies below main categories
(wind, solar, etc.) and classify documents
 Geonames
 Annotate documents with regards to their geographical
entities
 DBpedia
 Lookup several Yago classes to all extracted geographical
entities to assert additional categories, e.g.: EUcountries, French-speaking countries etc.

24. How does it work?
Semantic
Search
Geospatial
Search
PoolParty Semantic Integrator
….
Data
Visualisation

25. Application example #2: Health Care
Scenario #2:
I am an information officer at
the Global Health
Observatory of the World
Health Organisation.
I inform policy makers about
the global situation in
specific disease areas to
direct support to the
required health support
programs.
For my research I need data
about disease prevalence in
relation to socio-economic
factors.
http://integrator.poolparty.biz/report_medicine/

26. How does it work?
 PubMed Articles
 Cardiovascular Diseases: 39,911 documents
 Neoplasms: 69,937 documents
 Nervous System Diseases: 48,128 documents
 MeSH: 26,700 concepts / 346,600 triples
 Traverse hierarchies below disease main categories and classify
documents
 Geonames
 Annotate documents with regards to their geographical entities
 DBpedia
 Lookup HDI (The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite
statistic of life expectancy, education, and income indices used to
rank countries into four tiers of human development)

27. How does it work?
Semantic
Search
Geospatial
Search
PoolParty Semantic Integrator
Data
Visualisation

28. Data management in the environmental sector –
The current situation
 Example: Energy data
 “It’s necessary to split the responsibility for
different data sets between different data
providers.”
(Florian Bauer)
 However: how can this „splitting‟ be co-
ordinated and hwo can additional positive
network effects be stimulated?

29. 5 stars of data standards
• Publish Open Data in RDF reusing vocabularies which
can be understood and combined by apps in
unforeseen ways (e.g. visualization widgets)
link your
data
use URIs to
denote things
use non-proprietary formats
(e.g., CSV instead of Excel)
make it available as structured data
(e.g., Excel instead of image scan of a table)
make your stuff available on the Web (whatever format)
under an open license

30. Licensing is key for open data
Kind of license
Source: http://www.licensius.com/blog/lodlicenses
Num.
%
Not specified
132
39%
Public Domain
69
21%
Attribution
66
20%
Share alike
35
10%
Closed
16
5%
With
restrictions
5
2%
Other
3
1%

31. Use Cases

32. Global Buildings Performance Network (GBPN)
The Global Buildings Performance Network (GBPN) is a globally organised
and regionally focused network whose mission is to advance best practice
policies that can significantly reduce energy consumption and associated
CO2 emissions from buildings.

33. Goals
Launch of the GBPN global Knowledge Platform for the
Energy Performance of Buildings (www.gbpn.org)
 Share Knowledge
 Build Awareness & showcase best practise
 Stimulate collective research
 Stimulate collective analysis from experts worldwide
 Promote better decision-making
 Help the building sector effectively reduce its impact on climate change
Linked Open Data successfully services these objectives!

34. Technical Solution
Integrated view
(& search index)
annotation & mapping
publish
enrich
GBPN
Knowledge
Plattform

35. The GBPN Knowledge Plattform
 LOD based GBPN Terminology http://bit.ly/YSbD9S
 GBPN News Aggregator Tool: http://bit.ly/13JLJqk
 GBPN Policy Comparative Tool: http://bit.ly/X9Vihm
The GBPN Knowledge Platform is a Linked Open Data
project that aims to open and connect with the
best resources, data and information on buildings energy
performance policies worldwide.

Report Database: http://www.gbpn.org/reports

The Laboratory: http://www.gbpn.org/laboratory

GBPN web blog: http://bit.ly/X9VSeW
Live-Demo

36. The Worldbank Taxonomies & Thesauri
http://vocabulary.worldbank.org/

37. EIP on Water - Marketplace
http://www.eip-water.eu

38. reegle – country profiles
http://reegle.info/countries

39. Understanding synonyms & relations?

40. Standardisation and consistency is key
Based on our experience in establishing knowledge broker
portals we know:
 There is a strong need to increase consistency when tagging
climate and energy resources
 We need to ensure the consistency of message being
delivered to the public to avoid confusion using terms in
different ways
 This needs standardization of the used categories and tags

41. reegle thesaurus

42. The trusted Clean Energy LOD Cloud
http://blog.semantic-web.at/

43. reegle tagging API
blog.okfn.org/2013/04/08/sustainable-energy-policy-demands-sustainable-open-data/
Have a look on http://api.reegle.info – using the API is free!

44. Impact
reegle.info users per year (not including datasets reused on other sites)
3,000,000
2,500,000
2,000,000
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012

45. Contact
Andreas Blumauer
CEO, Semantic Web Company
+43 1 4021235
a.blumauer@semantic-web.at
www.semantic-web.at
www.poolparty.biz
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