decentralised open data for world citizens
DESCRIPTION
These are the slides of a presentation given at http://www.w3.org/2012/06/pmod . Our current mindset when thinking about "Open Data" excludes the majority of World population from using it. This presentation highlight some of the work being done to change this.TRANSCRIPT
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 1/19
Decentralised Open Data for World Citizens
Christophe Guéret, Victor de Boer, Anna Bon & many more
Using Open Data policy modelling, citizen empowerment, data journalism
19 - 20 June 2012
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 2/19
The common facets of Open Data
http://www.flickr.com/photos/swamibu/2928083712
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 3/19
Open Data portals
Single entry point to all data and applications
English + country official language(s)
Text oriented
Serve static data
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 4/19
Open Data users
They have a smartphone or at least a Web browser
They are young and geeky
They can read and type
Some of them will code applications for the others
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 5/19
Open Data producer hardware
Data centers that can host terabytes of data
99.9% uptime
High speed reliable Internet connectionhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/3323018571
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 6/19
Who are we talking about exactly?
Data consumers that:
(Computer) literate
Early adopters of new technologies
Data producers that:
Have access to publication platforms
Have a significant amount of data to publish
Are trusted as data providers
A tiny fraction of the 7 billion World Citizen
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 7/19
Data sharing need and issues
Example needs
Market prices
Innovative agricultural techniques
Information about stock of crops
Issues
Distances between rural communities in Sahel
Limited infrastructure: no electricity, no computer, no Internet (but radio and mobile phones)
Lack of relevant content, literacy and education, different languages
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 8/19
A simple question...
How can everyone benefit from Open Data ?
Part of the solution:
Voice interfaces
DownScaled infrastructures
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 9/19
Voice interfaces
What ?
Replace textual interfaces by speech
Why ?
Everyone can speak and listen
Good mobile penetration in sub-Saharan Africa
How ?
Use and develop TTS and ASR technologies
Deal with several local languages
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 10/19
DownScaling infrastructures
What ?Use a swarm of micro-servers instead of a central one
Why ?Micro-servers are less costly
Redundancy in the swarm improves robustness
Decentralise => get closer to data consumers/producers
How ?Use low-end hardware
Adapt data technologies (in particular, Linked Data)
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 11/19
Our target hardware, portal and users‘Allo, Linked Data?
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 12/19
Some of the ongoing projects
Photo (c) Bruno van Moerkerken
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 13/19
RadioMarché: sharing market prices
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 14/19
RadioMarché : voice interface
Farmers call to indicate their prices
Messages are generated in different languages
Buyers call and listen to the messages
Rely on community radio
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 15/19
Foroba Blon: timely data sharing
It rained a lot today!
I wonder when it will rain...
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 16/19
Foroba Blon: citizen journalists
Users call the service and leave their message
Community radios collect and curate the citizen-reported content
Messages are diffused on the radio and are accessible via mobile phones and on the Web
Less latency between producers and consumers
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 17/19
SemanticXO: sharing data at 6 to 12
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 18/19
SemanticXO: data sharing stack for the XO
Every XO is a data publisher and consumer
Does not rely on any central host
Uses lightweight data relays when needed
External applications
Sugar activities
HTTP ServerStructured
data store API
Triple store +
files
Web of Data
PMOD - June 2012 Open Data for World Citizens 19/19
Take home message
Widening the access to Open Data implies
Developing voice-based interfaces
DownScaling infrastructures
For more information:
http://worldwidesemanticweb.wordpress.com/
http://semweb4u.wordpress.com/
http://w4ra.few.vu.nl/
http://mvoices.eu/