Ld4d 2013 part 2

Linked Data for Development:Part 2: Downscaling Linked Data

Victor de Boer

With significant input from Christophe Guéret, Martin Murillo, Stephane Boyera, Stefan

Schlobach, Bernie Innocenti, Walter Bender, Claudia Urrea, Anna Bon, Hans Akkermans, Nana Gyan, Amadou Tangara. Mary Allen,…

LD4D at ISWC2012

Outline

• Part 2:– Why Linked Data for Development– Bringing the Semantic Web and Linked Data to the Base of the

Pyramid• Relevancy• Infrastructure and connectivity• Interfaces

– IATI as Linked Data– Voice-based access to Market data in the Sahel– Distributed data sharing: OLPC and ERS

• Part 3: Handson session!

CAUTION! DIGITAL DIVIDE AHEAD

Img: Internet World Stats

Digital divide in classrooms

ICT4D• Technology is a development tool

– Education– Healthcare– Livelihood– etc.

• Leveraging communication independently of physical/geographical barriers

• Improving transparency, accountability, efficiency of governments

• Developing nations can leapfrog directly into the information age, jumping many phases of immature technologies

Based on Sbc4d.com

Information sharing needs• Agriculture

– Market Prices – Business opportunities– Support– Sharing indigenous knowledge– Etc.

• Health– Prevention– Access to healthcare– Detection of disease outbreak– etc.

• Education• Etc.

Based on Sbc4d.com

Web Alliance for Regreening in Africa

Washington, 13-15 May 2013 9

W4RA : Information exchange and knowledge sharing in rural Africa

World Wide Web as Instrument of Empowerment

“Our success will be measured by how well we foster the creativity of our children. Whether future scientists have the tools to cure diseases.Whether people, in developed and developing economies alike, can distinguish reliable information from propaganda or commercial chaff.

Whether the next generation will build systems that support democracy and accountable debate.

I hope that you will join this global effort to advance the Web to empower people.”

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web:

Why the Semantic Web?

• Information (from NGOs) in silos– Specific products– Specific communities

• Lot of knowledge is lost due to lack of publication

Sharing (heterogeneous) knowledge is essential

• LD is well-suited because of:– Language-agnostic– Interface-agnostic– De-centralised authoring

• Slicing

– Re-usability• Local• Global Img: flickr/elcovs

Why linked data (1/2)

Slide stolen from Christophe Gueret

Slide stolen from Christophe Gueret

Why linked data (2/2)

Web of Documents (WWW)Linked Documents

Web of DataLinked Data

Barriers to the Internet1. Technology: The lack of connectivity

and electricity, cost of devices and cost of connection are limiting the adoption and usage of new technologies;

2. Capacity: Lack of time and resources limits the participation in data sharing processes. There are also issues related to low education levels, low capacity to interpret data, and illiteracy;

3. Relevance: Power balance, culture, apathy, lack of incentives, lack of interest and dis-empowerment are also all threats to having citizens engage in data sharing.

Stephane Boyera (SBC4D.com)

Sem.tech/Linked Data should be made

1. usable on small, affordable, hardware deployed in various connectivity contexts;

2. accessible to individuals with varied cultural backgrounds / literacy levels;

3. relevant and directly useful to the target public they aim to empower.

Infrastructure

Interface Relevancy

Infrastructure

• No internet, • No bandwith,• No computer, • No electricity

• Cost– Total cost of ownership

Interface

• Low literacy• Low education• Small languages• low capacity to

interpret data, and illiteracy;

Relevancy

• No local content• No local ownership

• Power balance, culture, apathy, lack of incentives, dis-empowerment

Subsecretario de transparencia, Alcaldes y la gente http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0S3juRQXR0 Max Rodriguez

New ways of connecting to the (Semantic) Web

Mobile phones

•No. 1 source of information•Interactive radio programs•Huge listening base

Radio

Low-powered hardware

• OLPC XO laptop• Raspberry Pi• Sheevaplug etc.

With the mainstream

• Dev.countries can leapfrog directly into the information age, – jumping many phases of

immature technologies

• Linked Data is mainstream computer science research.– Let’s worry about the 4.5 B

unconnected prosumers now!

Img: flickr/n3v3rv0id

Voice-based Web access in Africa

• Integrate local community radios and mobile ICT for knowledge sharing

• Better support and integrate local languages in voice-based services– Development of appropriate speech elements (text-

to-speech and Speech recognition)

• Develop a free and open source toolbox for local developers.– Investigate self-sustainability – Develop appropriate business models – In collaboration with local communities.

Bottom-up• Involvement of local communities

– Trust and ownership– Co-creation

• Bottom-up: field visits, workshops, demos, roadshows, etc

• Local communities: innovation co-creation, “Living Labs” socio-technical approach– Use case gathering– Observation and prototyping– Test, adapt

From 20 use cases to 3 voice systems

Market Information

Citizen Journalism

Event Organiser

1 m-Milk ordering and delivery service of Tominian Milk producers and NGO2 m-Tree protection alert service Sahel Eco Farmers and NGO3 mobile-web Event organizer for vaccination of herds Farmers4 m-Farmer-expert directory service Farmer organization5 NGO info-line about legal issues in several languages Sahel Eco6 Leave announcement or select your favourite song Radio7 Shea butter and honey trading service Radio and Sahel Eco8 Access radio programs and announcements on your phone Radio9 Gourcy seed producers seed certification service Farmer organization10 Radio questions and answers about agricultural issues Radio11 m-collective purchase organizing service Local buyers12 m-GIS regreening service Sahel Eco13 m-Farmer social network Sahel Eco14 mobile-web regional market system Farmer organization15 Sahel Eco portal to Regreening and access to m-services Sahel Eco16 m-event organizer for re-greening events Sahel Eco, farmers

Local market data

Communiqué

GSM/Voice interface

Web Interface Text-To-Speech

Community radioSahel Eco operativeBuyers

Z_Di

arra

_ba.

wav

offered by.wav

“Slot and Filler” Text-to-Speech

English:

Bambara:

15 liters of offered by Zakari Diarra

15_ba.wav L_ba.wav Of_ba.wav

Honey_ba.wav

Spoken Language Elements Repository

honey

VoiceXML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><vxml version="2.0" lang="en"> <form> <prompt bargein="false"> Welcome to RadioMarche! <audio src=“audio/communique_1_bambara.wav"/> </prompt> <option dtmf="1" value=“1">Press one for X</option> <option dtmf=“2" value=“2">Press two for Y</option> ...</vxml>

DTMF = Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling

Foroba Blon

Web for ALL.Using voice technologies and available tools…

… we make the benefits of the Web available to people who use simple mobile phones.

~~

~~~~

Results

• RadioMarché -- Increased market for farmers.– Political, social, economical, ecological factors play a great role– Too successful: not the entire value chain is served

• Foroba Blon -- Facilitating rural citizen journalism.– Privacy and security, – New business models

Voice platform with reusable components for different use cases.

Linked Data for RadioMarche

http://semanticweb.cs.vu.nl/radiomarche

Linked Market Data

• 1,952 RDF triples– 90 offerings– 19 contacts

• Links to – Data

• DBPedia• GeoNames• Agrovoc

– Vocabularies• Foaf• GoodRelations

Local market data

Data / communique layer

Farmers (producers)

Buyers (consumers)

Email GSM/VoiceWeb SMS

Interface handler layer

Local radio

Sharing across regions/NGOs

Local market data

RadioMarché market information system

Farmers (producers)

Buyers (consumers)

Email GSM/VoiceWeb SMS

Data / communique platform

Local radio

RadioMarché in second region

Local market data

Data / communique layer

Farmers (producers)

Buyers (consumers)

Email GSM/VoiceWeb SMS

Interface handler layer

Local radio

Re-use: EcoMash

Henk Kroon

rm:offering0001

rm:shea_butter

rm:product_name

rm:1000

rm:quantity

rdfs:label

rdfs:label “Amande de Karité”@fr

“Shea Nuts”@en

speakle:voicelabel_ba

rm:audio_shea_nl.wav

rm:audio_shea_ba.wav

speakle:voicelabel_nl

rdfs:label“1000”

speakle:voicelabel_ba

rm:audio_1000_nl.wav

rm:audio_1000_ba.wavspeakle:voicelabel_nl

rm:Mazankuy_Diarra

rm:kilo

rdfs:label “kilo”@en

speakle:voicelabel_ba

rm:audio_kilo_nl.wav

rm:audio_kilo_ba.wav

speakle:voicelabel_nl

rm:unit_measure

rm:has_contact

Speakle voice labels

https://github.com/biktorrr/speakle

Voice browser Tel: +31208080855 Skype: +990009369996162208

Welcome

Choose application and language

dtmf

About which product (EN)

About which product (NL)

List all products (EN)

dtmf

List product offerings

dtmf

List product offerings

1

2

3

1..n

1..n

Current status• Linked Market Data

– Locally created – Linked Data make re-use possible (NGO, others)– LD voice labels

• Can be (re)used to develop voice applications with this data

• To go beyond proof-of-concept– More localization needed– Local hardware/services (Emerginov / OfficeRoute)– User testing– More sophisticated translations (VoiceSPARQL)

Infrastructure

Interface Relevancy

Icon-based interaction

Icon-based interaction

NCR ATM interface for illiterate 'grammar' - ISOTYPE by Otto Neurath available at http://imaginarymuseum.org/MHV/PZImhv/NeurathPictureLanguage.html

Crowdsourcing voice fragment gathering

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), Sugar and the Entity Registry System

Bernie Innocenti, Walter Bender, Christophe Guéret,Claudia Urrea

OLPC mission and vision• Develop (and deploy) a low-cost laptop in

order to revolutionize how we educate the world's children

• What motivates learning is not carrots or sticks, but rather:– autonomy,– mastery, and– a sense of purpose.

• A laptop makes learning more flexible: Children learn by teaching and actively helping each other; the teacher is free to focus expertise where it is needed

How is learning with the XO different?

OLPC

Computer for learningStudent-centricTeacher as mentorVoice, textLearning to learnCritical thinking

Sugar

• Operating system for XO laptops

• Learner centric• Activities (Apps)

Different activities

The numbers (2012)

• 2,000,000+ children with XOs• 1,000,000,000 children w/o laptops• 150+ language projects• 40+ countries• 500+ Sugar activities

Efficient Knowledge sharing with SemanticXO and ERS

Mesh VS Infrastructure network

Christophe Gueret

Christophe Gueret

Christophe Gueret

Christophe Gueret

Christophe Gueret

Christophe Gueret

Christophe Gueret

Christophe Gueret

Hybrid solution

http://www.firstmilesolutions.com/documents/DakNet_IEEE_Computer.pdf

Sneakernet

Throughput

Latency

“Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.”

—Andrew Tanenbaum

Infrastructure

Interface Relevancy

Linked Data for

Kasper Brandt Victor de Boer

Introduction - IATI

“IATI is a voluntary, multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to improve the transparency of aid in order to increase its effectiveness in tackling poverty.”

As of 2013, over 150 donors, NGOs and governments have registered to the IATIregistry.org by publishing their aid activities in this XML standard.

Now: 180+

Introduction - IATI users• Funders

o Where is the money of my organisation spent?o Where do other organisations spend their money?

• Governmentso How much money is spent in my country?o What are the budgets or planned disbursements for my country?

• Localso What organisations are working in my area?o What projects are currently going on in my area?

• Publico Where is my tax money going?o What are the organisations doing with my donations?

Introduction - IATI model

OrganisationsActivities

Introduction - Why IATI Linked Data?

1. Reusable vocabularieso Extract information automatically from the IATI data by making

use of applications which are able to interpret standard vocabularies

2. Enrich IATI datao Link IATI data to external datasets in order to enrich the IATI

data with additional information or metadata.3. Donors can use their own Linked Data specification.

o @Linked-data-uri attribute already exists in the IATI model.

Model and links based on requirements elicitated from experts

Iterative Requirements Engineering Process Model by Loucopoulos and Karakostas

Linked Data model - Example

iati:activity/GB-CHC-285776-CHA024iati:activity-transactioniati:activity/GB-CHC-285776-CHA024/transaction/42737 .

iati:activity/GB-CHC-285776-CHA024/transaction/42737iati:transaction-tied-statusiati:codelist/TiedStatus/5 .

Linked Data model - Provenance

• On file levelo Not on activity level

• A named graph per file, e.g.:iati:graph/dataset/Worldbank

Linked Data model - Vocabularies

Linked Data model - Triple store

• Triples loaded into a ClioPatria triple store:o http://semanticweb.cs.vu.nl/iati/o Sparql endpoint– Dereferenceable URIs (

http://purl.org/collections/iati/codelist/Sector/11420)

• Total number of triples: 36,629,017

• Total number of named graphs: 4,790o Largest activities graph is UNOPS containing 1,231,896

triples• Takes approximately 30 minutes to load all data into the triple store.

RDFLibPython RDF/Turtle

Linking datasets - Approach1. In total, how much does a given country receive in aid?2. A comparative index of aid versus the Human Development Index.3. What is the geographic location of a project? How much aid went to a given

province, constituency or village?o Is the aid spent in places where the need is highest? Is it well distributed

across the country?o Can we attribute sub-national breakdowns for aid so we can see how much

goes to different parts of recipient countries?4. How does violent conflict in recipient countries affect aid activities?5. How does aid spending as registered in the IATI standard compare to World Bank

indicators?

Linking datasets

Linking Data applications - Approach1. In total, how much does a given country receive in aid?2. A comparative index of aid versus the Human Development Index.3. What is the geographic location of a project? How much aid went to a given

province, constituency or village?o Is the aid spent in places where the need is highest? Is it well distributed

across the country?o Can we attribute sub-national breakdowns for aid so we can see how much

goes to different parts of recipient countries?4. How does violent conflict in recipient countries affect aid activities?5. How does aid spending as registered in the IATI standard compare to World Bank

indicators?

http://iati2lod.appspot.com/1. In total, how much does a given country receive in aid?

2. A comparative index of aid versus the Human Development Index.

http://iati2lod.appspot.com/

http://iati2lod.appspot.com/4. How does violent conflict in recipient countries affect aid activities?5. How does aid spending as registered in the IATI standard compare to World

Bank indicators?

Links to DBPedia

IDS: document 0001 Theme:”Food Security”

DBPedia:”Food Security”

Analysis of approaches to understanding and addressing food security issues; examination of the structural causes of food insecurity and different policy responses

Theme:” Food aid emergencies ”

Person:”David Pimentel”

Organisation:”FAO”

“Voedselzekerheid”@NL

Links to IATI

IDS: document 0003 Theme 'Higher education’

IATI Sector:”Higher Education”

Theme Education

Organisation : UN Habitat

Activity: Multi donor fund to support civil society in democracy related issues

Degree and diploma programmes at universities, colleges and polytechnics; scholarships.

Linked Data for Landportal.info

[M.Sc. thesis by Alan Chavoshe]

• The Land Portal is an easy access, easy-to-use platform to share land related information, to monitor trends, and identify information gaps to promote effective and sustainable land governance.

Nichesourcing for pluvial data digitization for the Sahel

[M.Sc. thesis by Binyam Tesfa]

DBpedia

GeoNames

Agrovoc

Inst. of Development Studies LOD

Citizen Journalism data

Sahel Pluvial data

SemanticXO

RadioMarché Linked market data

Linked Data for Development (LD4D)

IATI data

Infrastructure

Interface Relevancy

Take home

• Knowledge sharing is a tool for development

• Linked Data is well-suited because of– Language- and interface agnostic characteristics– Decentralizability– Reusability outside of original context

• Downscaling– Interface– Infrastructure– Relevancy

Img: flickr/TomJByrne

What we need from you?

• Data• Cases

– Transparency, Governance, Democracy– Economic development, Healthcare

• Reflection– Ethics of ICT4D

• Open Data• Linked Data

Img: flickr/wetwebwork

More information?

http://worldwidesemanticweb.org

http://w4ra.org

http://iati2lod.appspot.com/

http://[email protected]

The Tabale Platform

NGO staff

Malian French

Bomu

Bambara

Recordmultiple

messagesin different languages

yes

no

don’t know

VUI design (three languages)