Downscaling the Semantic Web / Linked Data for Development slides presented at Open Development Camp 2014. Includes a slide on Downscale2014

1. DOWNSCALE: Linked Data for Development
Victor de Boer - Anna Bon- Christophe Guéret
Open Development Camp 2014

2. www.worldwidesemanticweb.org

3. Need for information sharing in rural
developing areas
• Agriculture
– Market Prices
– Business opportunities
– Support
– Sharing indigenous
knowledge
– Etc.
• Health
– Prevention
– Access to healthcare
– Detection of disease
outbreak
– etc.
• Education
• Etc.
Based on Sbc4d.com

4. Barriers to the Internet
1. Technology: The lack of connectivity
and electricity, cost of devices and
cost of connection are limiting the
adoption and usage of new
technologies;
2. Capacity: Lack of time and resources
limits the participation in data
sharing processes. There are also
issues related to low education levels,
low capacity to interpret data, and
illiteracy;
3. Relevance: Power balance, culture,
apathy, lack of incentives, lack of
interest and dis-empowerment are
also all threats to having citizens
engage in data sharing.

5. Information sharing should be made
1. usable on small, affordable,
hardware deployed in various
connectivity contexts;
2. accessible to individuals with
varied cultural backgrounds /
literacy levels;
3. relevant and directly useful to
the target public they aim to
empower.
Infrastructure
Interface Relevancy

6. Why the Semantic Web?
• Information (from NGOs) in silos
– Specific products
– Specific communities
• Lot of knowledge is lost due to lack of publication
 Sharing (heterogeneous) knowledge is essential
• LD is well-suited because of:
– Language-agnostic
– Interface-agnostic
– De-centralised authoring
• Slicing
– Re-usability
• Local
• Global
Img: flickr/elcovs

7. Web of Documents (WWW)
Linked Documents

8. Web of Data
Linked Data
Semantic Web

9. With the mainstream
• Dev. countries can
leapfrog directly into the
information age,
– jumping many phases of
immature technologies
• Linked Data is mainstream
computer science
research.
– Let’s worry about the 4.5 B
unconnected prosumers
now!
Img: flickr/n3v3rv0id

10. Interface: Mobile phones and
Community radios

11. http://vimeo.com/68218759

12. Can the Web (be made to) mean something for
knowledge sharing even under very constraining
conditions?
•No internet, no computer, no electricity
•Multitude of languages, levels of literacy
Market
Information
Citizen
Journalism
Event
Organiser

13. Bottom-up
•Involvement of local communities
–Trust and ownership
–Co-creation
•Bottom-up: field visits, workshops,
demos, roadshows, etc
•Local communities: innovation co-
creation, “Living Labs” socio-
technical approach
–Use case gathering
–Observation and prototyping
–Test, adapt

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Speakle voice labels

16. Low-powered hardware
• OLPC XO laptop
• Raspberry Pi
• Sheevaplug etc.

17. ERS: Distributed Networks
Mesh VS Infrastructure network

19. Christophe Gueret

20. STUDENT PROJECTS
at VU AMSTERDAM

21. ICT4D Course
•MSc Computer Science course
–this year 3rd time
–Core Computer Science: CS4D
•Make students aware of
importance of context
•Hands-on experience
•Train CS researchers in ICT4D

22. Nichesourcing for pluvial data digitization for the Sahel
[M.Sc. thesis by Binyam Tesfa]

23. 1.How does violent conflict in recipient countries affect aid activities?
2.How does aid spending as registered in the IATI standard compare to World Bank
indicators?
http://iati2lod.appspot.com/
IATI2LOD
(Kasper Brandt)

24. Voice Interface design for low-literate users
•Design guidelines (Deepak Chhettri)
•Evaluation experiment (Onur Akgun and Serdar Parlak)
•Access to DBpedia / Wikipedia (Rianne Nieland)

25. Icon-based interaction
(Project Julia Salomons)

26. Knowledge sharing platform
(aka “The Box”)
•Brings together many strands
•Rapid prototyping platform
–Flexible use cases
•Rainfall, land rights, market places, seed exchange,
messaging platfomr
–Knowledge sharing on multiple levels
–Small, low-power, low-cost hardware
–Multi-model interface
–Privacy and data sharing
VU Network Institute Research Assistant Project
w/ Julie Ferguson (Org. Sci)

27. DOWNSCALE 2014
ICT4D 3.0 :
Complex adaptive system
User-centric
Different backgrounds
DISTRIBUTED
IATI/CONTRACTING:
ERS-like networks for local and global
sharing of data
PRIVACY AND
DATA CONTROL
Multi-layered architecture can help
with privacy/
Linked Private Data?

28. More information?
http://worldwidesemanticweb.org
http://w4ra.org
christophe.gueret@dans.knaw.nl
v.deboer@vu.nl