Peter Mooney, is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funded Research Fellow at the Department of Computer Science, NUI Maynooth. He has been working with the EPA on making environmental data publicly accessibly for the last ten years. Presentation was part of The 1st Seminar of the ERC Funded Programmable City Project based at NIRSA, NUI Maynooth, Republic of Ireland.

1. Experiences as a producer, consumer,
and observer of open data
Dr. Peter Mooney
Senior Researcher, Department Computer Science, NUI Maynooth
Data Manager and IT Specialist, STRIVE Research, EPA Ireland
peterm7.com/mobile/me

2. Where am I?
Top Down: EPA delivering environmental data
Middle: EPA-funded research projects
Bottom Up: Citizen-science, Volunteered
Geographic Information
Meeting Place: Where Top Down, Middle, and
Bottom Up meet...

3. 5 Star Open Data
Where organisations
should, at least, be
http://5stardata.info/
Where many
organisations are
Where the future of Open
Data on the Web will be

4. Mark Johnstone’s Open Data Cake
http://www.impactandlearning.org/2013/08/open-data-and-increasing-impact-of.html

5. Making and baking the cake
- you can introduce flair but you must stick to the recipe and the
recipe that works for others who are making the cake or giving
you ingredients
Working with different ingredients
(licenses, copyright, databases, systems
etc)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jillclardy/8374937036/sizes/m/

6. The icing and the presentation
SAFER (http://erc.epa.ie/safer)
Development of web-services to
meet new European Directive Air
Quality Data Exchange Regulations
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nmoya/9962621026/sizes/c/

7. Eating the cake
Fingal Apps Competition
Using Open Data in
preference to all others
Open Data and open
standards in any teaching
I do.
Conducting research into
and using open data
http://www.flickr.com/photos/revjim/3143266465/sizes/z/

8. Thinking up
cake recipes
10 years data management experience with
EPA
Working with data in almost all the key thematic
areas
How to best deliver Open Data and Services to
the public and other stakeholders
Ensuring everyone's requirements are
specified correctly
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joannatwinn/2083379033/sizes/m/

9. Cake Taster:
Is the cake safe to eat?
Several years research work
into the quality and usability of
Volunteered Geographic
Information (VGI) and Open
Data
10 Journal papers on the topic
and subject area
http://www.steamykitchen.com/2583-wedding-cake-judging-adventures.html

10. Sharing the cake ….
SAFER and EPA Research
Data
Many mainstream EPA
reporting obligations (Air
Quality, Drinking Water,
Greenhouse Gas Inventories)
http://www.dallasartsrevue.com/art-crit/Here_Lately/PerfArt/Performance_Art.html

11. Open Data EPA Ireland
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aenimation/8997912525/sizes/m/

12. EPA’s Research Data Archive 2005

13. Providing ‘open-data’ PDF reports:
knowledge distribution - but not actionable
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/oct/21/development-open-data-action
“like funding James Cameron to make Avatar, and then releasing it in a black and
white flip book. We are missing all the good stuff”.

14. EPA Research Programme has been operating an open
access approach over the last 5 years
All EPA funded research projects must provide
“significant outputs” (datasets, info resources,
etc) for public access via SAFER
Crucially, this couples the final reports/papers
with the actual data/information used to
generate the findings/recommendations etc

15. EPA’s Research Data Archive 2013

16. SAFER’s open-access approach has been
EPA Research Data Archive 2013
very successful
EPA Research Data Archive 2006

17. EPA: Drinking Water Monitoring Results
and Water Supply Details for Ireland
http://erc.epa.ie/safer/resourcelisting.jsp?oID=10206&username=EPA%20Drinking%20Water
Joined SAFER in 2011
12 Resources on SAFER
Over 380 CSV and Excel files
Years 2000 - 2011 (2012 to appear soon)
Over 1,400 downloads
Success Story!
Distribution of the Drinking Water files
via CD is now supplemented with 24-7365 access to the archive of data online
on SAFER

18. EPA: Complete Archive of Air Quality
Monitoring Data for Ireland
http://erc.epa.ie/safer/resourcelisting.jsp?oID=10136&username=EPA%20Air%20Quality
Joined SAFER in 2010
16 Resources on SAFER
Over 800 CSV and Excel files
Years ~1998 - 2012 (2013 to appear Q1
2014)
Over 4,500 downloads
Success Story!
Very significant person-hours saved as
public/consultants/researchers etc can
access the entire archive openly 24-7365

19. EPA: Geochemistry Data for the Historic Mine Sites
Project - Inventory and Risk Classification
http://erc.epa.ie/safer/resourcelisting.jsp?oID=10170&username=EPA%20Historical%20Mines
Joined SAFER in 2011
4 Resources on SAFER
Analysis Data (4 files) and Reports
available
Over 190 downloads
Success Story!
Collaboration with Geological Survey of
Ireland - SAFER chosen as the outlet
for the end-products from this project

20. SAFER providing Web display of information and
equivalent machine readable Web Services
For consumption as Open Data
Information by other web-services
and mobile apps
For Web-page display

21. Air Quality Index For Health - multiple representations

22. VGI Open Data
http://www.flickr.com/photos/treaclepondphotos/10799092965/sizes/m/

23. Volunteered Geographic Information
(Goodchild, 2007)
The ‘spatial’ case of User-Generated Content (UGC) Passive and Active data streams
People driven - bottom up infrastructure - linked to ubiquitious
Internet + smart-technologies and the evolution of sociotechnology online
Immense historical growth - potentially unbounded
future growth - yielding Spatial Big Data

24. VGI/UGC with embedded spatial
attributes (Tweetmap)
Todd Mostak, (MIT), the
Harvard Center for
Geographic Analysis
(CGA) http://worldmap.
harvard.edu/tweetmap/.

25. OpenStreetMap - one of the best
known VGI projects
Gl
Global Node Density Map (2013) http:
//tyrasd.github.io/osm-node-density/

26. OSM continues to grow at a
considerable rate
http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php
October 8th 2013
1,391,737 (registered
contributors)
~ 2,700 contributors
active per day
2.3 billion nodes
200 million polygons
2.1 million relations

27. http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/

29. New Forest, Hampshire, England

30. http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-typhoon-haiyan-2013/#8/11.238/125.005
Nov 10th - Nov 13th 2013
Number of OSM Contributors: 608
Number of Map Changes: 1314912

31. Mapping agencies and municipalities can
be contributors to OSM and VGI
http://engagingcities.com/article/new-york-city-and-openstreetmap-collaborating-through-open-data#.Uk2ZBu2dkzk.twitter
OSM - the conduit for allowing
governments connected with open data
communities and for citizens to interact
with their government
Citizens - generating and
maintaining and updating
VGI become a
“collaborative intelligence”
or “update intelligence”

32. EuroSDR + AGILE
“Crowdsourcing in National Mapping”
5 Funded Projects (Phase 2 begins Q1 2014)
National Mapping Agency Driven
Development of test-bed/incubator ideas on how crowdsourcing of
geospatial data could be used by National Mapping Agencies:
Examples: Gamification for Update of Spanish National Gazetteer,
Conflation of official spatial data in Germany with OSM, place name
extraction from Flickr for IGN France Gazetteer, ‘off-the-beatentrack’ tourist sites in Lithuania (National SDI)

33. COST ACTION TD1202
“Mapping and the Citizen Sensor”
Accurate and timely maps are a
fundamental resource but their
production in a changing world is
a major scientific and practical
grand challenge. This EU funded
COST Action seeks to rise to the
challenges and enhance the role
of citizen sensors in mapping
activity.
COST Action TD1202 is an EU
funded interdisciplinary
networking activity that involves
~27 countries

34. OSM Network Evolution - following
well known network infrastructures
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/03/mapping-growth-openstreetmap/4982/
Corcoran, Mooney, Bertolotto "Analysing the growth of OpenStreetMap networks"
Spatial Statistics Vol 3, 21-32. 2013

35. Collaborative networks develop
amongst contributors building OSM
Berlin: All interactions (co-edits) - all
contributors to OSM in Berlin
Berlin: All interactions (co-edits) - highest
ranked contributors (by Eigenvector Centrality
measures)
Mooney and Corcoran (2013) “Interaction and co-editing patterns between contributors to OpenStreetMap”
To Appear Transactions in GIS

36. Using Spatial Simulation Models (Cellular Automata
Markov Chains) to predict future OSM contribution
activities
Contribution of Nodes over
time...
Karlsruhe
Stuttgart
2014
Jokar, Mooney, Helbeich (2013) in review IJGIS
“Spatio-temproal analysis of patterns of contribution
in OSM - a case study”
Development of a Contribution
Index (CI) to indicate if cells are
being edited and maintained

37. VGI in Africa: Who is performing the majority of the work
in VGI (OSM for example)? - Study of Edit Histories
South Africa: Cape Town (15 exclusively local from 41)
Kenya: Nairobi (17 from 30)
DR Congo: Kinshasa (0 from 10)
Rep. Sudan: Khartoum (2 from 14)
Burkina Faso: Ouagadougou (0 from 14)
Cameroon: Yaoundé (1 from 7)
Tanzania: Dar es Salaam (12 from 25)
High-frequency contributors studied
“Exclusively Local” - Contributors whose mapping activities
are contained exclusively in a given city or region.

38. Conclusions and Summary
http://www.flickr.com/photos/troudd/10797161793/sizes/m/

39. Delivering data and services: we have
always had telephones to worry about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Robotics_56K_Modem_Front.JPG
http://cdn3.pcadvisor.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3405369/latest_samsung_galaxy_smartphone.jpg

40. Deliver [open data] products which suit the requirements and skills of the
majority of your customers or stakeholders
Note: No pizzas or fajitas were made or consumed during the making of this slide

41. OpenStreetMap provides access to it’s database using three methods - different
skill levels for different end applications - tools and apps are built by the
community
Data access API
Access to the raw data in various formats
Map Rendering and
Map Services
It’s the OSM community which have
build GUI apps for OSM data upload
and editing, mobile apps, rendering
engines, etc.

42. What ROI are EPA getting for this
investment in an open data approach?
AQ PM10 Data
Drinking Water 2010
553 Downloads (Nov 1st 2013)
553 x 5 mins per request
= 2765 minutes
2765 / 60 = 46 hours
2138 downloads (Nov 1st 2013)
2138 X 6 mins per request
= 12828 minutes
12828 / 60 = 213 hours
8 hour working day
8 hour working day
TOTAL 26.5 days
TOTAL 5.75 Days
DW: http://erc.epa.ie/safer/iso19115/displayISO19115.jsp?isoID=268
PM10: http://erc.epa.ie/safer/iso19115/displayISO19115.jsp?isoID=69

43. Which is more important/difficult?
The icing or the cake?
● Open Data isn’t the
problem (icing)
● The biggest obstacles are:
Information management,
governance policies, data
structures, ROI, resource
management, sharing
culture, etc (cake)

44. For organisations Open Data is a
little like daily exercise
Open Data must become
part of organisation/office
routine
Organisational support
(technical and people)
A clear set of targets
Clear and unambiguous set
of reasons for undertaking
open data
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tulanesally/5860177655/sizes/n/

45. OPEN Data
OPEN Access
OPEN Information
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sigurtor/10805521514/sizes/z/

46. Would Open Data work in a GitHub style of
environment?

47. Would Open Data work best in server-based
cataloging applications?
You will find support for a
range of standards.
Metadata standards
(ISO19115/ISO19119/ISO1
9110 following ISO19139,
FGDC and Dublin Core),
Catalog interfaces (OGCCSW2.0.2 ISO profile client
and server, OAI-PMH client
and server, GeoRSS server,
GEO OpenSearch server,
WebDAV harvesting,
GeoNetwork to GeoNetwork
harvesting support) and
Map Services interfaces
(OGC-WMS, WFS, WCS,
KML and others) through

48. Open Data as Linked Data?

49. INSPIRE Air Quality Data: Example

50. What about BIG datasets?
Web Services (Download, View, Convert, ETL)
Application Programming Interfaces (API) - JSON,
KML, etc
Pre-cooked, dynamically updated, download
‘packages’?
IT Infrastructure Considerations
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chipkrieger/10781652035/sizes/z/

51. The answer is probably a combination
of all of these approaches
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jleighb/142336560/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16850197@N04/6796313167/sizes/n/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/strawberrylanecakecompany/5847996107/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/happy_homebaking/459555139/sizes/m/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Whitweddingcake.jpg

52. Take home messages
Baking the Open Data cake can be difficult
- but your consumers and stakeholders
will tell you how it tastes. If you haven’t
started - get baking!
For organisations - Open
Data does have many costs.
But there is substantial ROI
when Open Data + Services
are rolled out and adopted.
VGI and Citizen
Science/Participation:
Not to be underestimated.
Moving very quickly and
gathering momentum. These
communities are capable of
baking their own open data
cakes!
Open Data - The Future is NOW!
INSPIRE, Big Data, Linked Data,
Urban Sensing, Web 3.0, etc…

53. The End: Thanks for listening!
Email: peter.mooney@nuim.ie and p.
mooney@epa.ie
Web: www.peterm7.com/mobile/me
http://www.flickr.com/photos/phils-pixels/10728144746/sizes/z/