The SDI4Apps Open INSPIRE4Youth supports creativity, technical capabilities, skills, knowledge and also relations, through the sharing of spatial based content and educational materials around environment. Using new methods of digital cartography enables to go beyond linguistic barriers. Using principles of Linked Open Data INSPIRE4Youth offer new possibilities of analyzing relation among different types of objects. The pilot is focused on building of Environmental and Geographical Web based atlas and educational quizzes based on utilization of Geospatial data, Linked Open data and other environmental data (maps) for educational and gaming purposes. The main components of the environment introduced are - water, air, soil, forests, nature protection, climate information, landscape, waste management, forest management etc. Each component has its actual condition measured for the region. All this will be made available in an entertaining manner - no school textbooks. Pilot also re uses database of Smart Point of Interest from Smart Tourist Data pilot. The main user group for this Atlas are students - higher grades of elementary schools, high schools and universities. However it should be appealing also for any adult person interested in topic.
The European SDI (INSPIRE) is based on exist ing data of Member States. The
INSPIRE Directive does not intend to change the way how data are collected,
processed and stored. INSPIRE focuses on harmonisation and interoperable exchange
of spatial data and services. The main target of SDI4Apps is to bridge the 1) top-down
managed world of INSPIRE, Copernicus and GEOSS built by SDI experts and 2) the
bottom-up mobile world of voluntary initiatives and thousands of micro SMEs and
individuals developing applications (apps). SDI4Apps will secure that users profit
from INSPIRE and INSPIRE profits from different voluntary initiatives. SDI4Apps
will build a WIN-WIN strategy for building a successful business for hundreds of
European SMEs on the basis of INSPIRE, Copernicus and GEOSS. [
The ideas of solution and also some tools are based on results of previous projects
in this are namely Naturnet Redime [
Current society requires easy, reliable and quick access to environmental information published by various organisations and initiatives. The environment questions cover many activities that produce various sorts of data. In Europe collection and management of this data
INSPIRE, GEOSS and Copernicus are politically driven top-down initiatives
supported by experts from countries and organisations.. [
On other side, there exist number of voluntary or bottom-up initiatives supporting SDI building. Currently, data collection by citizens is high er than collection of data by public bodies, as depicted in Figure 2.
Volunteered geographic information (VGI) [
The concept of SDI4Apps is demonstrate on six different pilots projects:
1. PILOT 1: Easy data access aims to support easy access to existing services using
the SDI4Apps platform API solution, which supports easy collection of
information using smart phones and integrates this information into current SDIs,
by implementing the European Tourism Indicators System (ETIS) and Ground
Truthing services
2. PILOT 2: Open Smart Tourist Data focus is on collecting, integrating and
presenting tourist related data. This can be then further reused for various
applications.
3. PILOT 3: Open Sensor Network -aiming to allow farmers to integrate low cost
sensors into local and regional web sensor networks. Meteorological data and in
situ meteorological sensing networks will be used to support the crop production
systems.
4. PILOT 4: Open Land Use Map Through VGI involves management and
modification of natural environment into built environment such as fields,
pastures, and settlements. The intention is to support voluntary initiative for open
land use mapping, extending the initiative outside of Europe.
5. PILOT 5: Open INSPIRE4Youth supports creativity, technical capabilities, skills,
knowledge, and relations, focusing on methods where young people are able to
contribute to environmental and social issues.
6. PILOT 6: Ecosystem services evaluation is focused on identification of spatial
representation of the outcomes of ESS Evaluation, focusing on sustainable support
of tourism. The pilot web application will utilise the outcomes of Open API
adopted by the project.[
Open INSPIRE4Youth supports creativity, technical capabilities, skills, knowledge and also relations, through the sharing of spatial based content and educational materials around environment. Using new methods of digital cartography enables to go beyond linguistic barriers. Using principles of Linked Open Data INSPIRE4Youth offer new possibilities of analysing relation among different types of objects. The pilot is focused on building of Environmental and Geographical Web based atlas and educational quizzes based on utilization of Geosp atial data, Linked Open data and other environmental data (maps) for educational and gaming purposes. The main components of the environment introduced are – water, air, soil, forests, nature protection, climate information, landscape, waste management, forest management etc. Each component has its actual condition measured for the region. All this will be made available in an entertaining manner – no school textbooks. Pilot also re uses database of Smart Point of Interest from Smart Tourist Data pilot. The main user group for this Atlas are students – higher grades of elementary schools, high schools and universities. However it should be appealing also for any adult person interested in topic.
The pilot currently cover two pilot solution with tree different applications: 1. Thematic Environmental Map Atlas based on Map Composer 2. Mobile Thematic Map Viewer 3. Geographical quiz based on database of Linked Open Data
The application is providing the necessary functionality for displaying geographic data on a map and then creating a map composition (a thematic map) that can contain several data layers. After the map composition is created, i.e. detailed definition and metadata of each layer of the composition along with the composition itself, it can be saved as a JSON-styled text document. Then, this document can be read and visualized by an HSLayers NG-based web application. So, the main purpose of the application is to share visualized geographic data between us ers.
Map Composer is currently it is able to display map layers that come from the following services/sources: WMS, WFS, WCS, KML, GeoRSS, GML, GeoJSON and SOS. A user can then combine the layers he wishes into a composition that will be saved as an .hsl file (JSON styled text document that contains all necessary definitions and metadata of each layer and composition itself). It is further intended that the user will publish the composition he has created and share it with other users. It can be done in several ways: if user sets composition to “public” it can be viewed by other users of the platform in the Thematic Atlas web -application or the user can use Embed Map utility (feature of Thematic Atlas) to generate link to insert the map window with composition into any web-page (as data object, iframe etc.).
In the context of the project the Map Composer is playing very important role as it is allowing thematic map creation. With the help of this application users can overlay data from different sources and visually explore patterns in data and relationships between different data layers. The application is intuitive enough even for users that don’t have strong background in GIS.
It is mobile version of Thematic Viewer. The mobile application being developed as a part of the SDI4Apps project is a result of the HS-Layers framework and mobile specific code integration. Geolocation component also needed to be rewritten to use native geolocation API via the Cordova Geolocation plug -in. This allows for usage of high precision GPS service. A GPS logging functionality was also introduced as a part of the mobile geolocation component. It employs a WebSQL database to store location information (available values are longitude, latitude, altitude, horizontal accuracy, current velocity and heading). Another storage options are also available, including local file storage or other database types. This logging functionality can be extended to display various statistics about created GPS tracks or the tracks themselves as features on the map. Displaying velocity and altitude as well as centring on the user’s current position functions as in tended. 4.3. Quiz One of the interesting tasks of the pilot is creating ontologies for those mentioned geographic objects. After creating those ontologies and then storing the data in RDF format and uploading it to Virtuoso, it is possible to query the data based on created ontologies, taking into account different interesting relationships between the classes. This can be very useful as in some cases it is impossible precisely to define some of the relationships by geometrical/topological means or even by visual means.
The semantic to such games brings a lot. It allows to add pictures and description
of the places automatically if needed – for example from DB:Pedia. Also as was
mentioned below it allows explore various interesting relationships between the
objects: rivers and towns, mountains and provinces, lakes and habitats of water bird
species, countries and forests, and in questions all these relationships can be
combined for example we have following classes: cities, provinces, countries and
rivers then we can ask such question ‘find the city with more then 100 000
inhabitants, that lies in x province, on the bank of x river, that flows t hrough x,y,z
countries?’. It can well be filled with the picture of the most famous monument from
that city from DB:Pedia. The Apps provides spatial analysis and build semantic
linkage among different types of data. Like for example: river A is crossing c ountries
A, B, C. Protected area X is in countries Y. Z. The results of analysis are stored as
RDF files, so it allows different types of queries and educational scenarios. [
SDI4Apps - the solution was achieved with financial co -funding by the European Commission within the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme with registration number 621129 and name “Uptake of Open Geographic Information Through Innovative Services Based on Linked Data”
The responsibility for the content of this paper lies with the consortium and not with the European Commission or its agencies.