The CIARD RINGWhat is new

Imma Subirats

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Valeria PesceGlobal Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR)

Research Data Alliance 5th Plenary Meeting9-11 March 2015, San Diego

Joint session: IG Agriculture Data Interoperability& WG Wheat Data Interoperability

The CIARD RING

http://ring.ciard.net

The CIARD RING is a project implemented within the CIARD initiative and is led by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR).

The CIARD RING isa global directory of web-based information

services and datasets for agriculture

Numbers and map

• 499 data providers

• 1038 information services, of which

– 281 exposed datasets

The RING user interface

Dataset page

The RING machine interface – SPARQL

An RDF store is a way of storing data using a machine-readable "grammar" (the Resource Description Framework) and documented semantics (RDF vocabularies).

URIsThe URI for each service / dataset is built as follows: RING-domain/node/service-ID.For example: http://ring.ciard.net/node/2417

The RING database is also an accessible RDF store.

SPARQL endpointhttp://ring.ciard.net/sparql1

SPARQL how to: vocabularies

The vocabularies used in the RDF store are:• RDF: http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#• RDFS: http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema# • DC: http://purl.org/dc/terms/• DCAT: http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat# • ADMS: http://www.w3.org/ns/adms# • FOAF: http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/ • DOAP: http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap# • SKOS: http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core# • VCARD: http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#

The data model chosen to describe datasets is the

W3C Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT)designed to describe datasets

and the forms in which they are exposed, their "distributions"

The RING Linked Data“CIARD RING” record from LOD Live: http://en.lodlive.it/?http://ring.ciard.net/node/19435

The RING machine interface – Why (1)

• Datasets registered in the RING have to be found by applications

• Applications have to be able to read all the metadata about datasets and filter datasets according to their needs

• Applications have to find enough technical metadata in the RING to:– Identify datasets with a specific coverage (type of data, thematic

coverage, geographic coverage)

– Identify datasets that comply with certain technical specifications (format, protocol etc.)

– Access the dataset and get the data

This machine-readable layer can support the data aggregation workflows of external services

The RING machine interface – Why (2)

• Additional information that applications may want to get about datasets:

– Are there other software applications or APIs that can process this dataset?

A new feature of the RING is the addition of a directory of dataset processing software tools and web services

Datasets can be associated with software tools and APIs that can process them in different ways (convert, analyze, combine with other data etc.)

Linking datasets and software required two new RDF vocabularies:• DCAT-EXT: http://vocabularies.aginfra.eu/dcatext#

an extension of the DCAT vocabulary with a few additional properties

• WS: http://vocabularies.aginfra.eu/ws#an RDF vocabulary to describe methods and related parameters of web services

Search software and APIs: humans

Search software and APIs:machines!

Software in the RING

http://ring.ciard.net/software-all

Example of API page

Interoperability assessment in the RING

The technical metadata registered in the RING for each dataset provide enough information to give a good idea of the level of “interoperability” of that dataset.

“Interoperability is a feature of datasets— and of information services that give access to datasets— whereby data can easily be retrieved, processed, re-used, and re-packaged (“operated”) by other systems. The less pre-coordination required to achieve this, the more “interoperable” the dataset.”

[from: Interim Proceedings of International Expert Consultation on “Building the CIARD Framework for Data and Information Sharing”, Beijing 20-23 June 2011. 2011.]

Metadata Type Interoperability points Tim Berner Lee’s stars

For the service/dataset in general1 Global coverage Select list 4 if not empty2 Regional coverage (FAO) Select list 4 if not empty3 Regional coverage (GFAR) Select list 4 if not empty4 National coverage Select list 4 if not empty5 Specific topic (AGROVOC) Autocomplete multiple

(authority: AGROVOC)

8 if not empty

6 Type of content/data managed Autocomplete multiple 4 if not empty7 KOSs used Select list multiple

(authority: VEST Registry)

10 for each KOS used 5 IF you already have 4

8 Special instructions for getting

data from this service

Text 3 if not empty

9 Examples Text multiple 2 for each example

For each distribution of the

dataset10 URL / target / endpoint Text 30 if not empty 1

11 File upload Upload 10 if not empty 1

12 Access / licensing Autocomplete 4 if half-open; 6 if free / open; 8 if

formally open (OA, CC)

0.5 if half-open; 1 if open; 1.5 if

open and known license e.g. CC13 License URL Text: URL 7 if not empty 0.5

14 Protocol Select list 10 ftp/download; 20 OAI-PMH or

web service; 30 if SPARQL

1 if ftp/download; 3 if OAI-PMH or

RSS; 4 if SPARQL15 Format / serialization / notation Select list

(authority: subset of IANA

types)

5 Excel; 10 CSV, XML; 12 JSON; 15

RDFXML; 20 JsonLD, ntriples-n3-

turtle)

2 if Excel; 3 if CSV, XML, JSON; 4 if

JsonLD, RDFXML, ntriples-n3-turtle

16 Metadata set(s) used Select list

(authority: VEST Registry)

6 for each metadata set 2.5

17 Does the dataset use URIs? Yes/No 20 if yes; OR: multiply 15 by n. 10 4 (OR: 4 IF you already have 3)

18 Does the dataset link to external Yes/No 20 if yes; OR: multiply 15 by n. 15 5 (OR: 5 IF you already have 3)

Example of interoperability

assessment in the RING

The Open AGRIgate challenge

The challenge rewards the institution that registers the best datasets in the RING, judged especially in terms of interoperability, with two unique prizes:• the opportunity to work together with data

scientists building applications based on your data;• having your dataset featured at the next meeting of

the Agricultural Data Interoperability Interest Group at the Research Data Alliance.

This challenge aims at encouraging small institutions and institutions in developing countries to open their data, so the competition is limited to:• institutions in countries classified by the World Bank

as "low-income", "lower-middle-income" and "upper-middle-income“;

• institutions with less than 1000 employees in any country.

The interoperability assessment is used to rank datasets in the competition

http://ring.ciard.net/participate-open-agrigate-challenge

Final results of the Open AGRIgate challenge

Thank you

Thank you for your attention