Otakar Čerba

Geodata interoperability and harmonization in transport: a case study of open transport net

BackgroundIn Europe, a lot of data portals are emerging on the local, national or interregional levels. These portals have a common objective to share data and information to its citizens and businesses, and to make information more accessible. However, studies showed that people are still facing difficulties in finding and reusing public sector information. To facilitate data reuse, the information should be available in a machine-readable format and agreed metadata standard, so that interoperability and discoverability could be enhanced.MethodsThis article focuses on the interoperability and harmonization of spatial and non-spatial data in the transport field. Both the open data and geospatial world have stable standards (such as DCAT and INSPIRE), and the GeoDCAT-AP is the first attempt in combining the two worlds. Through a case study approach, this article aims to provide insights in the implementation of this new standard and other interoperability cases in transport, such as the Data Tank data management system and a harmonized model for road network data.ResultsThe results are presented through a case study approach that was executed in the Open Transport Net project, and in consultation of the standard bodies Open Geospatial Consortium, the World Wide Web Consortium, and the in-house research centre of the European Commission, the Joint Research Centre.ConclusionsThe results highlight that still a lot of work needs to be done to combine both worlds, and that certain advantages and drawbacks need to be taken into account when combining spatial and non-spatial data.

Analysis and expert assessment of the semantic similarity between land cover classes

Products of CORINE Land Cover (CLC), the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD), the FAO/UNEP Land Cover Classification System (LCCS), etc. currently provide an important source of information used for the assessment of issues such as landscape change, landscape fragmentation and the planning of urbanization. Assuming that the data from these various databases are often used in searching for solutions to environmental problems, it is necessary to know which classes of different databases exist and to what extent they are similar, i.e. their possible compatibility and interchangeability. An expert assessment of the similarity between the CLC and NLCD 1992 nomenclatures is presented. Such a similarity assessment in comparison with the ‘geometric model’, the ‘feature model’ and the ‘network model’ is not frequently used. The results obtained show the similarity of assessments completed by four experts who marked the degree of similarity between the compared land cover classes by 1 (almost similar classes), 0.5 (partially similar classes) and 0 (not similar classes). Four experts agreed on assigning 1 in only three cases; 0.5 was given 33 times. A single expert assigned 0.5 a total of 17 times. Results confirmed that the CLC and NLCD nomenclatures are not very similar.

SmartTouristData approach for connecting local and global tourist information systems

The tourist industry needs an extensive information support to promote their activities. There are many existing information resources that have two main characteristics: focus on local initiatives and are very heterogeneous (using different data models, frequency of update etc). On the other hand users have their own requirements. They want to find interesting, attractive and credible information in a simple and fast way. The concept of SmartTouristData is developed as part of Smart Open Data and SDI4APPS interconnect a view of users and character of data sources. Our approach adds other components such as global and local open data sources and crowd-sourcing initiatives, social media (feedback from users) and the latest technologies and standards. The SmartTouristData provides benefits for two main groups. Users are able to find information in one place and to compare and evaluate information from more sources. They are appreciative of the simple and attractive interface for dealing with information. SmartTouristData also supports business subjects. An easy integration of project system to proprietary solutions, reusing and sharing of existing information resources and tools saves money and time, because it is not necessary to collect or buy data or develop new software. Moreover users are not forced to change or modify their ways of providing of information. SmartTouristData connects both main participants of the tourist industry by providing high-quality information, as satisfied and well-informed users will come back and recommend the destination.

Web Services for Thematic Maps

The current world of information technologies (including geoinformation technologies /GIT/ as well as internet maps) heads towards the new generation of Web (as a collection of interlinked documents accessed via the Internet). The next development stages of Web (Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Semantic Web etc.) are associated with terms – user-centred applications, information sharing, collaborative work and interoperability. Just the last word is very important because it represents the necessary condition to functioning of complete system and its components like blogs, wikis, mushups, web applications and services. Geoinformation technologies work also with one important term associated with Web – Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI).

XSLT Templates for Thematic Maps

Computer technologies are gaining ground in cartography. But support and implementation of the wide range of cartographic interpretation methods ranks among the weak points of most computer systems focused on geospatial data visualisation. This paper tries to fill this gap. It presents XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) templates and their control file designed for generating some types of thematic maps (e.g. different types of choropleth maps or diagram maps).

Linked Forests: Semantic similarity of geographical concepts “forest”

Abstract Linked Data represents the new trend in geoinformatics and geomatics. It produces a structure of objects (in a form of concepts or terms) interconnected by object relations expressing a type of semantic relationships of various concepts. The research published in this article studies, if objects connected by above mentioned relations are more similar than objects representing the same phenomenon, but standing alone. The phenomenon “forest” and relevant geographical concepts were chosen as the domain of the research. The concepts similarity (Tanimoto coefficient as a specification of Tversky index) was computed on the basis of explicit information provided by thesauri containing particular concepts. Overall in the seven thesauri (AGROVOC, EuroVoc, GEMET, LusTRE/EARTh, NAL, OECD and STW) there was tested if the “forest” concept interconnected by the relation skos:exactMatch are more similar than other, not interlinked concepts. The results of the research are important for the sharing and combining of geographical data, information and knowledge. The proposed methodology can be reused to a comparison of other geographical concepts.

Towards a cross-domain interoperable framework for natural hazards and disaster risk reduction information

According to the United Nations’ International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, “natural hazards are processes or phenomena that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage”. They are at the interface between human and natural systems. From this perspective, natural hazards are a multidimensional domain including environmental issues, the private and public sector and citizens and governance ranging from local to supranational. The vast amount of information and data necessary for comprehensive hazard and risk assessment present many challenges regarding the lack of accessibility, comparability, quality, organisation and dissemination of natural hazards spatial data. In order to mitigate these limitations, an interoperability framework has been developed and published in the INSPIRE Data Specification on Natural Risk Zones—technical guidelines (DS) document. This framework provides means for facilitating access, integration, harmonisation and dissemination of natural hazard data from different domains and sources. The objective of this paper is twofold. Firstly, the paper highlights the key aspects of the interoperability to the various natural hazard communities and illustrates the applicability of the interoperability framework developed in the DS. And secondly, the paper “translates” into common language the main features and potentiality of the interoperability framework of the DS for a wider audience of scientists and practitioners in the natural hazard domain. In this paper, the four pillars of the interoperability framework will be presented. First, the adoption of a common terminology for the natural hazard domain will be addressed. A common data model to facilitate cross-domain data integration will then follow. Thirdly, the common methodology developed to express qualitative or quantitative assessments of natural hazards is presented. Fourthly, the extensible classification schema for natural hazards developed from a literature review and key reference documents from the contributing community of practice is discussed. Furthermore, the applicability of the interoperability framework for the various stakeholder groups is illustrated. This paper closes discussing main advantages, limitations and next steps regarding the sustainability and evolution of the interoperability framework.

Open Data Platform for Data Integration, Visualisation and Map Design

The current trend in the EU is to open access to public sector information which is provided either for free or for marginal cost, and reuse it in various applications. Information technologies enable people to access, process and analyse spatial data from various sources, help to design on-demand maps and provide information for decision makers. However, the provision of data varies across different authorities, and combining heterogeneous data is not an easy task. We present an Open Data Platform that enables people to integrate, harmonise and visualise spatial planning and other data. The platform connects to the approach of real cartography and aims to enable non-cartographers to correctly design maps and gain new information in a user-friendly way based on modern technologies and robust data storage. This chapter mainly tackles the issues of heterogeneous data integration, harmonisation and visualisation. Ongoing research aims to explore new methods of data reuse and cartographic visualisation, following the trends of modern cartography.

The HABITATS Approach to Build the INSPIRE Infrastructure

Different initiatives focused on spatial data in Europe should not be isolated but closely connected. The portfolio of such initiatives is very extensive. On the one hand, it covers all European activities such as INSPIRE or GMES, on the other hand, there are products of modern approaches based on neogeography and Volunteered Geographic Information (e.g. OpenStreetMap). Data are published by various regional or local authorities, non-governmental organisations, public bodies, research projects as well as by different commercial subjects. The focus of the HABITATS project was to build an environment that enables to share and combine data in order to reach new data, information and knowledge. On the basis of different pilots, HABITATS defined and tested harmonisation rules for spatial environmental data and designed the concept of Reference Laboratory as a tool for testing the interoperability and supporting unification of outputs cross different pilots.

Centrality as a Method for the Evaluation of Semantic Resources for Disaster Risk Reduction

Clear and straightforward communication is a key aspect of all human activities related to crisis management. Since crisis management activities involve professionals from various disciplines using different terminology, clear and straightforward communication is difficult to achieve. Semantics as a broad science can help to overcome communication difficulties. This research focuses on the evaluation of available semantic resources including ontologies, thesauri, and controlled vocabularies for disaster risk reduction as part of crisis management. The main idea of the study is that the most appropriate source of broadly understandable terminology is such a semantic resource, which is accepted by—or at least connected to the majority of other resources. Important is not only the number of interconnected resources, but also the concrete position of the resource in the complex network of Linked Data resources. Although this is usually done by user experience, objective methods of resource semantic centrality can be applied. This can be described by centrality methods used mainly in graph theory. This article describes the calculation of four types of centrality methods (Outdegree, Indegree, Closeness, and Betweenness) applied to 160 geographic concepts published as Linked Data and related to disaster risk reduction. Centralities were calculated for graph structures containing particular semantic resources as nodes and identity links as edges. The results show that (with some discussed exceptions) the datasets with high values of centrality serve as important information resources, but they also include more concepts from preselected 160 geographic concepts. Therefore, they could be considered as the most suitable resources of terminology to make communication in the domain easier. The main research goal is to automate the semantic resources evaluation and to apply a well-known theoretical method (centrality) to the semantic issues of Linked Data. It is necessary to mention the limits of this study: the number of tested concepts and the fact that centralities represents just one view on evaluation of semantic resources.