=Paper= {{Paper |id=None |storemode=property |title=Creating an Open Data Application for Sustainability Education: Globe-Town |pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1124/linkedup_veni2013_02.pdf |volume=Vol-1124 |dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/okcon/TownsendGFHFPTS13 }} ==Creating an Open Data Application for Sustainability Education: Globe-Town== https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1124/linkedup_veni2013_02.pdf
                         Creating an Open Data Application for
                         Sustainability Education: Globe-Town

        Jack H Townsend                                    Richard Gomer                                  Andrea Prieto
     University of Southampton                              William Fyson
      j.townsend@soton.ac.uk                               Dominic Hobson                                 Gail Taylor
                                                             Huw Fryer                                   Nigel Shadbolt
                                                       University of Southampton                    University of Southampton


                                                                       between the global and local level, to help bring home what their
1. Abstract                                                            discoveries mean to them personally.
Globe-Town.org is an information visualisation using open data,
designed to convey the connections between economics, society          Globe-Town uses World Bank open data [8], integrated with
and environment in a globalising world. It informs about global        other data sources to provide a multi-faceted picture of all of
challenges whilst being easy and enjoyable to use. It aims to          sustainable development and climate change in particular, in all
motivate to act by showing how an intensifying network of              the countries of the world. Its design reflects the conventional
linkages connects global sustainability issues to the home             organisation of sustainable development into the economy,
country of the user, and the topics that they care about. Globe-       society and the environment, visualizing many aspects of each,
Town’s central innovation in interaction design is how it              for each country (Figure 2, Figure 3). The software is designed
combines visualisation of the properties of the individual             to make the information easy and enjoyable to explore. Globe-
country with a listing of the countries that are most strongly         Town shows how networks of relationships between countries
connected to it by a chosen type of relationship. This shows how       (such as trade, aid, travel & migration) connect the user with
ties of trade, migration, communication and culture increasingly       distant places in an era of increasing globalisation. These links
connect countries, sharing the risks, responsibilities and             may transmit the risks of issues like climate change around the
opportunities of issues like climate change. Globe-Town takes a        globe (e.g., the impact of the 2011 Thai floods on the Japanese
domain-specific storytelling approach to information                   economy [28]). They can also transmit the responsibilities for
visualisation, co-creating hypermedia narratives of sustainability     causing it (e.g., the embodied energy in exports from China
and globalisation along with the user. Having sufficient open          [14]), and provide opportunities to act to mitigate and to adapt
data availability is found to be highly valuable, as it prevents       effectively (e.g., investing in renewable energy projects abroad).
understanding of these expansive interdisciplinary problems            Globe-Town creates a metaphor between the familiar idea of
being stymied by arbitrary limits of data access. Globe-Town           neighbours in a town, and the relations between countries,
has won second place in the Linked Up Veni Open Education              represented them as a simple row of houses in a street. Globe-
competition and third place in the finals of the World Bank's          Town is a data visualisation based on PHP, MySQL, AJAX and
Apps for Climate competition. This article describes the Globe-        the Google Charts API that brings together many intuitive
Town application in detail, along with the numerous online data        design elements in order to make the information engaging.
resources that have enabled it, and the design and development         Globe-Town was awarded second place in the Linked Up Veni
process through which it was created.                                  Open Education competition at a ceremony in Geneva in 2013.
                                                                       It won third place in the finals of the World Bank's Apps for
Keywords                                                               Climate competition [34].
Sustainability;  Sustainable    Development;   Sustainability
Education; Environment; Climate Change; Economics; Trade;              3. Background
International   Development;     Complexity;   Globalisation;          This project builds upon the new field of ICT for sustainability
Information Visualisation; Open Data; Linked Open Data; Web            [13], and sits at the intersection of web science [5] and
Science; Education; Human-Computer Interaction; Hypertext              sustainability science [16]. It originates from the lead author’s
Narratives; Web Design.                                                research into the use of web technologies to advance
                                                                       environmental sustainability and respond to climate change, and
2. Introduction                                                        builds upon Tomlinson’s analysis of the role of Information and
                                                                       Communication Technologies (ICTs) in sustainability education,
Globe-Town http://www.globe-town.org is a web application
                                                                       in both formal and informal settings [30].
and an interactive information visualisation using open data
designed to convey the complex linkages of sustainable                 Interest in the use of open data for environmental sustainability
development in a globalising world. In particular, it aims to          [31, 36] is at an early stage, and has mainly focussed on
inform people about environmental challenges, and to motivate          promoting pro-environmental behaviours, good governance and
them to act, by showing how the intensifying network of                more sustainable consumption through greater accountability [7,
linkages connect global sustainability issues to the users home        17, 32]. Open data may promote efficient use of resources - such
country and the topics that they care about, finding “narrative        as in smart cities [4]. The role of open data in innovation and the
threads” of sustainability. The user can bridge the divide of scale    transition to sustainability has received some attention [3, 25], as
has its role in science for sustainability [9]. There is a nascent   references a place that has been heavily shaped by the forces of
international open sustainability community [20, 22]. However,       globalisation, in the East of London, UK. In particular, it is at
we are aware of little research into using open data for             the heart of the British-Bangladeshi community. The animated
sustainability communication and education.                          film created to introduce Globe-Town [33] draws heavily on the
                                                                     connections and contrasts between East London and Dhaka,
4. Method and Concept Development                                    Bangladesh through the lives of two characters. Linked for
The methodology is one of research through design, originating       centuries by the globalising forces of colonisation, trade,
from Human Computer Interaction (HCI) [37]. Zapico has               migration and cultural exchange, they are also both low-lying
adapted this into the following steps: grounding, ideation,          and prone to flooding. However, whilst the UK has been able to
iteration and reflection [35]. Research through design “uses         invest in large-scale engineering to counteract the growing
design artifacts as outcomes to transform the world from its         effects of climate change such as sea-level rise and increased
current state to a preferred state.”, and its main characteristics   precipitation, Bangladesh faces regular flooding and its
are a focus on creating, an implicitly normative stance and the      population of 150 million face an uncertain future, with
addressing of wicked problems [35].                                  implications for its “neighbours” - including the UK. With
                                                                     Globe-Town, the user can explore such narratives of global
The core concept was developed over several weeks through a
                                                                     change.
research through design process, and also with reference to the
Getting Things Done project planning process [1]. The first two
steps provide grounding. The aim of the project was defined, the
                                                                     5. The User Experience
purpose and principles. This was to find a novel and engaging        Globe-Town is a way of viewing information about the
way of taking on aspects of climate change with a web                countries of the world and exploring how they are connected. It
application. Secondly, a clear vision was developed of what a        integrates these two perspectives of country and relationship, so
successful outcome would be like. Success criteria included          the user can surf links from country-to-country around the
being intuitive and enjoyable to use, and the utilisation of open    world, like surfing the Web. Overall it follows the “Visual
data.                                                                Information-Seeking Mantra: overview first, zoom and filter,
                                                                     then details on demand.” [26]. Research into information
Most effort was expended on the next two steps of ideation in        visualisation has begun to move away from generic data analysis
order to identify a powerful central concept for the application.    tools towards more overt storytelling with information [2, 19].
Brainstorming was used to suggest many potentially relevant          Globe-Town takes this more designed and domain-specific
topics, which were jotted down on small pieces of paper. These       approach, actively narrating between user and data through the
included varied aspects of sustainable development and climate       use of selected imagery to engage with ideas and emotions. The
change themselves, and the challenges they create such as            resulting stories are co-created by both designer and user,
planning, energy efficiency or education. The requirements of        forming a hypermedia narrative [6].
the Apps for Climate competition were noted down along with
the form and subject matter of open data available. The lead         5.1 Relationships Between Countries
author’s research into the ways that web technologies can            When you select a country at the top of the main page, followed
advance sustainability provided many ideas, as did consideration     by a relationship between countries - such as trade - Globe-
of the incentives for users to engage with the site.                 Town displays the countries that are most strongly connected to
                                                                     the selected country via that relationship (Figure 1). These
The resulting concepts were organised and rearranged                 ‘neighbouring’ countries are represented as houses along a
continually, in order to stimulate the imagination by creating       street, with the size and proximity to the selected country’s
novel combinations of concepts [11]. The core concept emerged        house indicating the strength of the relationship. Many of the
from considering the country focus of the open data available,       relationships are of general interest, and several offer insights of
alongside the centrality of the interplay between sustainability     particular relevance to climate change mitigation (air travel,
and globalisation, in particular how the global nature of the        trade in fossil fuels, electricity, wood, meat or concrete) or the
atmosphere redistributes risks, and how the global economy           sharing of climate change risk and ability to adapt (aid, overall
challenges notions of responsibility for climate change due to       trade, or investment flows). The first 25 partner countries are
the embodied energy of exported products. The design therefore       shown, both going to the selected country (e.g. imports) and
focuses on both the nature of countries and the relationships        coming from it (e.g. exports).
between them, sharing the risks, responsibilities and
opportunities of climate change in a globalising world.
Once the core concept was identified, wireframes of the
interface were sketched and iterated through informal discussion
with potential users. Once a promising user experience was
designed, we returned to brainstorming and organising and
finally identification of next steps in order to create a plan of
action to build and iterate the software over a three-week period.
The assembled team of six included software architecture and         Figure 1 – A screenshot of a section of the Globe-Town.org
development skills, graphic and user experience design and           homepage, showing trade relationships between China and
project planning.                                                          its most prominent trading partners, represented
                                                                          metaphorically as a street of neighbouring houses.
The developing interface design, combined with the focus on            Importers from China are shown on the right in order of
relationships led to the analogy with being neighbours in a street    level of trade, with houses sized accordingly. Exporters to
of houses. In turn, this led to choice of Globe-Town as a name,      China are similarly shown on the left. Dropdowns allow the
that expresses the interplay between the global and the local, and
   type of relation to be changed (to e.g. migration or air            sustainable development: economic development, social
           travel), as well as the country and year.                         development, and environmental protection.


5.2 All about the Country in Question                                5.3 All about a Particular Indicator for a
Moving down the page, the user can discover much more about          Country
the selected country and the challenges and opportunities that it    Clicking on a country indicator opens up the indicator panel,
faces in a changing world (Figure 2). The grouping of these          where you can compare the chosen country to others for this
indicators, like life expectancy and economic growth, enables        particular indicator (e.g. a comparison of life expectancy to
the user to explore the three interdependent components of           other countries). The indicator is compared to the countries with
sustainable development in that country: the environment,            the highest and lowest values, and with the countries most
society and the economy (Figure 3). The careful labelling,           closely connected to the selected country by the selected
sorting, colouring and imagery of the indicators are designed to     relationship (e.g. its most active trading partners). How the
maximise the clarity of where this country sits relative to the      indicators vary around the world and how they have changed
rest. Two Creative Commons licensed images were chosen for           over time is conveyed via further simple data visualisations and
each indicator to communicate either higher or lower than the        a choropleth world map.
average for all countries, and where possible to create narratives
that connect with the users personal experience and actions. For
instance, where energy use per person was above the global
countries average, this is represented with a large car. Where it
was below the global average, it is represented by people
cycling. For each indicator, countries were divided into six equal
groups containing 16.66 percentiles each: high/low, quite
high/low and above/below average. This categorisation works
less well when data is very sparse for that year, or when many
countries share the same value such as zero. All countries are
counted equally regardless of very large differences in scale.
The most extreme, and therefore potentially most interesting
indicators for the selected country were ordered to the top of the
column in order to be initially visible without scrolling.




                                                                       Figure 4 – The Indicator Panel, showing how the selected
                                                                      indicator (the proportion of energy use from fossil fuels) in
                                                                      Switzerland compares to other countries, and has reduced
                                                                                              over time.


Figure 2 – Lower half of the Globe-Town homepage showing             6. System Architecture and Data Sourcing
       the detailed visualisation of the relative social,
   environmental and economic situation of the selected
 country, in this case China, presented in an engaging and
               readily understood visual style.




                                                                            Figure 5 – System Architecture of Globe-Town.
                                                                     Globe-Town is a PHP application that uses the MySQL database
                                                                     server to store the data. A conventional RDBMS was chosen
                                                                     over semantic web technologies such as a triple store for a
                                                                     combination of performance and maintainability. The flexibility
                                                                     offered by other data storage approaches was not required given
                                                                     the very structured way in which Globe-Town makes use of the
                                                                     data.
                                                                     The Globe-Town interface makes extensive use of Javascript
   Figure 3 – A version of the conventional diagram of the           and AJAX to provide a responsive web app that does not require
 three “interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars" of          frequent page reloads. This was particularly important given the
value placed on making Globe-Town easily accessible and in            adaptation index is then calculated as the readiness score of a
providing a good user experience. Charts were produced using          country minus its vulnerability score, normalised from 0 to 100.
the Google Charts API which enabled fast information
visualisation. Performance limitations of Google Charts mean          Whilst it was preferred to use the data as provided with minimal
that future iterations would benefit from substituting more           processing, in order to develop the narratives around climate
                                                                      change mitigation, the relative potential of countries for the
powerful visualisation tools such as D3.js.
                                                                      deployment of wind and solar energy were sought. For this, it
                                                                      was necessary to undertake a GIS analysis of data on wind
6.1 Sourcing indicator data                                           speeds and insolation sourced from NASA via SWERA [27].
Country indicators are the predominant data available on the
                                                                      The accuracy of the result is limited; the data has a relatively
World Bank’s open data portal [29] i.e. a data point for each
                                                                      low spatial resolution and does not include offshore areas..
country allowing comparisons between them and across a very
broad range of characteristics. The focus on countries provides a     One design challenge that could be better tackled in a future
useful common data structure to compare many topics, and suits        version of the application is to allow the user to switch between
the global perspective of international bodies. Statecraft has        all country total values to values per person, or indeed to per
neatly divided the physical geography of the planet into a            unit area, or per unit GDP. At the moment these are mixed side-
limited set of relatively well-defined entities, albeit of highly     by-side, which may be confusing, especially when comparing
contrasting sizes. This has enabled the World Bank to amass a         large countries with small ones.
rich compendium of datasets from many different organisations
with the same structure, and enables Globe-Town’s core                6.2 Sourcing relationship data
interaction design. However, such simplification comes as a           The World Bank’s own Data Bank site provided a matrix of data
cost; much information is lost in averaging over a whole              about migration between countries. However, the most
country. Similarly data is averaged over a whole year, so             interesting country relationship data – trade – was sourced from
potentially large variations within these ranges of time and          UN Comtrade [10]. In contrast to the other sources uses, this
space can be lost, especially for large countries with great          was not explicitly open data, with opaque terms of use, so
internal variations in physical or human geography, such as the       permission had to be requested directly from the organisation.
USA or China.                                                         The effort involved illustrated the chilling effect of closed data
Most of the datasets in Globe-Town were easily sourced from           on data reuse, and it is clear that this project would have been in
the World Bank indicator site. Not only does this provide a           no way possible without the broad provision of overtly open
convenient technical standardisation, but also reassurance about      data.
data quality and clear metadata on provenance – which is              Uploading overall trade data and trade in particular types of
reproduced for the user at the bottom of Globe-Town’s indicator       product of relevance to climate – such as the fossil fuel trade –
panel.                                                                was fairly straightforward. Data on the connections created
Nevertheless, in order to support the richness of climate change      between countries by modern air travel was of great value to
                                                                      both the climate change and globalisation narratives. This was
narratives intended for the application, it was necessary to fulfil
several specific data requirements from other sources and even        sourced from the Open Flights community of enthusiasts [23],
undertake considerable data processing to produce some of             and algorithms were applied to calculate the distance on the
them. This was certainly helped by the general use of standard        surface of a sphere between origin and destination. The
country codes such as ISO 3166-1 in most of the extra datasets        displayed statistic shows the cumulative length of recorded
found. However, not all datasets used standard codes - some           airline routes between countries. This approach provides both a
simply provided names, which had to be carefully matched              friendly way of visualising the intensity of traffic, and a
where possible using lookup tables of country name variations         reminder of the astronomical distances being traversed.
[24].                                                                 Data on international aid was sourced from the OECD [21], and
The World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal [8]                    thus includes only aid donated by OECD countries. However
provided data on predicted 2040-2060 temperature and                  this is likely to make up the majority.
precipitation levels obtained from the World Bank site,               It is technically easy to extend Globe-Town to include other
originating from the 2007 IPCC report [15]. This was deemed           datasets for both indicators and relationships. It could be
valuable to connect the user with the predictions of climate          developed into a generic tool, or focus on a new specific
changes in store for their own country. Considerable averaging        domain. Data on international tourism could be readily included.
had to be employed in order to generate the singular indicators       One dataset of particular interest was investigated, but no good
required for the application. The arithmetic mean was taken of        source of data could be found for it: the level of internet traffic
the projected median increase in temperatures or precipitation        between countries.
across all models, for two scenarios (a2 & b1), across all months
of the year and the two-decade period in order to give just one       7. Future Work
figure for comparing countries. The data is of course subject to
the uncertainties, precautions, assumptions and scenario              7.1 User Testing
parameters pertaining to such predictive climate simulation.          Globe-Town is in its first version. The priority for the project is
                                                                      systematic user testing in schools as a basis for iterative
Information on the vulnerability of countries to climate-related      refinement and assessment of the design. Testing could assess:
hazards and their readiness to adapt to the challenges posed by       1) how users’ understanding of and 2) concern for sustainability
climate change and other global forces were sourced from the          issues develop, and ideally 3) whether it led to any change in
GAIN Index [12]. GAIN quantifies the countries readiness to           behaviour; and even 4) resulting sustainability impact [18];
adapt to climate change, as well as its vulnerability to it. The      finally, 5) whether it is engaging and useful, by being both fun
and functional. For significant sustainability impact, it will need   resulting visualisation allows the user to surf from country to
to appeal to those not previously interested in sustainability        country as they might surf from page to page on the Web. It also
issues. Further conclusions could therefore be drawn into             allows the user to explore the links that sustainable development
designing other information visualisations for sustainability         makes between many different subjects, such as atmospheric
education.                                                            science and economics. The interactivity of Globe-Town thus
                                                                      enables the user to explore the wicked problems of sustainable
7.2 Features                                                          development: the synergies and trade-offs, agreements and
Ideas for the development of the application include increasing       discords between its different facets, the environment, society
the richness of available data and the ways of combining and          and the economy. The availability of sufficient open data is
interrogating the data. The system can be easily generalised with     found to be highly valuable, as it prevents understanding of
the inclusion of more indicators to increase the coverage of          these expansive interdisciplinary problems being stymied by
social and economic aspects in order to produce a tool of even        arbitrary limits of data access.
greater general interest for education in subjects such as
geography, economics and politics.                                    Globe-Town was created using many country indicator datasets
                                                                      sourced by the World Bank open data portal from diverse
Globe-Town includes a central user experience innovation in the       origins. In order to support the intended narratives of climate
visualisation of networks, allowing the user to consider the          change and globalisation, it was necessary to also source several
nature of an individual item alongside the items most strongly        datasets elsewhere. These included datasets for different
connected to it by a particular relationship. The user can then       relationship such as trade, trade in particular products, air travel
surf from item to item and thus explore the relationships. This       and international aid. It also included particular country
approach may be of value to exploring a broad range of different      indicators - some of which had to be calculated - such as the
items linked in networks, such as companies in an economy,            impacts of climate change on a country, or the potential for a
molecules in the metabolism or species in an ecosystem. It            particular renewable energy technology.
would be very simple to adapt it to these alternative domains.
                                                                      Beyond user testing and iterative refinement of the application,
Another development avenue for the existing sustainability-
                                                                      ideas for development include enabling users not just to learn,
focussed system would be to enable users not just to learn, but to
                                                                      but to contribute to the content, communicate with each other
contribute to the content, communicate with each other and take
                                                                      and take action. They can then go beyond exploring their
action. This will allow them to go beyond exploring global links
                                                                      existing international links to forging new ones.
to creating new ones.

8. Conclusions                                                        9. References
Globe-Town is a web application and an interactive information        [1]      Allen, D. 2001. Getting things done. Viking.
visualisation using open data that aims to inform people about        [2]      Badawood, D. 2012. Evaluation of storytelling in
sustainability, and to motivate them by opening up our world of
                                                                               information visualization (MPhil to PhD Transfer
connections to exploration, whilst bringing home what the
                                                                               Report). (2012).
things they discover might mean to them personally. By
bringing more transparency to the rich network of our                 [3]      Bakici, T. 2011. State of the Art - Open Innovation in
connections, it endeavours to introduce people to their distant                Smart Cities.
next-door neighbours. It seeks to bridge the divide of scale          [4]      Batagan, L. 2012. Open Data for Smart Cities.
between the global and local level, to connect the user to global              Economy Informatics. 12, 1 (2012), 136–142.
sustainability issues by showing what they mean for her home          [5]      Berners-Lee, T. et al. 2006. A Framework for Web
country.                                                                       Science. Foundations and Trends in Web Science. 1, 1
                                                                               (2006), 1–130.
Globe-Town was created over a three-week period through a
process of research through design, with four stages grounding,       [6]      Bernstein, M. 2009. On hypertext narrative.
ideation, iteration, reflection. Its interaction design follows the            Proceedings of the 20th ACM conference on Hypertext
“Visual Information-Seeking Mantra: overview first, zoom and                   and hypermedia - HT ’09. (2009), 5.
filter, then details on demand.” [26]. Research into information      [7]      Bonanni, L. 2011. Sourcemap: eco-design, sustainable
visualisation has begun to move away from generic data analysis                supply chains, and radical transparency. Magazine
tools towards more overt storytelling with information [2, 19].                XRDS: Crossroads. (2011).
Globe-Town takes this more designed and domain-specific               [8]      Climate Change Knowledge Portal 2.0: 2012.
approach, actively narrating between user and data through the                 http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal/index.cfm.
use of selected imagery to engage with ideas and emotions. The                 Accessed: 2012-08-04.
resulting stories are co-created by both designer and user,           [9]      CODATA 2012 International Conference: Open Data
forming hypermedia narratives [6].                                             & Information for A Changing Planet:
Globe-Town’s central innovation in interaction design is how it                http://www.codata2012.com/. Accessed: 2013-03-01.
combines visualisation of the individual country’s properties         [10]     Comtrade, U. 2010. United Nations commodity trade
with a listing of the countries that are most strongly connected to            statistics database. URL: http://comtrade. un. org.
it by a chosen type of relationship, such as trade. This generates             (2010).
narratives of globalisation: how ties of trade, migration,            [11]     Costello, F. 2000. Efficient creativity: constraint-guided
communication and culture increasingly connect countries. In a                 conceptual combination. Cognitive Science. 24, 2 (Jun.
shrinking global village, the countries that you depend upon                   2000), 299–349.
most - the countries with which you share the greatest risks,         [12]     Global Adaptation Institute: http://gain.org/.
responsibilities and opportunities – are increasingly distant. The
[13]   Hilty, L.M. et al. 2011. Sustainability and ICT – An               http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/2012/06/28/world-
       overview of the field. (2011), 13–28.                              bank-announces-winners-apps-for-climate-competition.
[14]   Hong, L. and Dong, Z.P. 2007. Evaluating the effects        [35]   Zapico, J.L. 2013. Hacking for Sustainability.
       of embodied energy in international trade on ecological     [36]   Zapico, J.L. 2013. The hacker ethic, openness, and
       footprint in China. Ecological Economics. (2007).                  sustainability. Open Book, Open Knowledge
[15]   Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)                   Foundation. (2013).
       2007. IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).                  [37]   Zimmerman, J. et al. 2006. Research through design as
[16]   Kajikawa, Y. 2008. Research core and framework of                  a method for interaction design research in HCI.
       sustainability science. Sustainability Science. (2008).            (2006), 1–10.
[17]   Kassoy, A. 2010. No Sustainability Without
       Transparency! - Forbes. Forbes Magazine.
[18]   Kirkpatrick, D. 1979. Techniques for evaluating
       training programs. Classic writings on instructional
       technology. (1979).
[19]   Kosara, R. and Mackinlay, J. 2013. Storytelling: The
       Next Step for Visualization. Computer. (2013), 44–50.
[20]   Launching the Open Sustainability Working Group:
       2012.
       http://sustainability.okfn.org/2012/12/06/launching-the-
       open-sustainability-working-group/. Accessed: 2013-
       03-01.
[21]   OECD Statistics (GDP, unemployment, income,
       population, labour, education, trade, finance,
       prices,health,debt...): http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx.
[22]   OKFestival Sustainability Stream Recap: 2012.
       http://openeconomics.net/2012/10/06/okfestival-
       sustainability-stream-recap/. Accessed: 2013-03-01.
[23]   OpenFlights.org: Flight logging, mapping, stats and
       sharing: http://openflights.org/.
[24]   OpenGeocode.Org - What Are the Official Names of
       Countries?:
       http://opengeocode.org/articles/countrynames.php.
[25]   Recheis, D. and Bauer, F. 2012. Using LOD1 to Share
       Clean Energy Data and Knowledge. ceur-ws.org.
       (2012).
[26]   Shneiderman, B. 1996. The eyes have it: A task by data
       type taxonomy for information visualizations. Visual
       Languages, 1996. Proceedings., IEEE …. (1996).
[27]   Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment:
       http://en.openei.org/apps/SWERA/. Accessed: 2014-01-
       01.
[28]   Thailand Investments Put Japan Inc. Profits in Flood’s
       Path - Businessweek: 2011.
       http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-
       09/thailand-investments-put-japan-inc-profits-in-flood-
       s-path.html. Accessed: 2012-08-04.
[29]   The World Bank Data Portal:
       http://data.worldbank.org/.
[30]   Tomlinson, B. 2010. Greening Through IT:
       Information Technology for Environmental
       Sustainability.
[31]   Townsend, J.H. 2012. Open Sustainability. The Open
       Book, Open Knowledge Foundation. 93.
[32]   Unerman, J. and Bebbington, J. 2007. Sustainability
       accounting and accountability. Routledge.
[33]   Welcome to Globe Town - YouTube:
       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40Q0_Is7Lw8.
[34]   World Bank Announces Winners in “Apps for Climate”
       Competition: 2012.