The Open Street Map LinkedGeoData

Open Street Map Linked GeoData (RDF)

Making geographical data more discoverable and accessible:
Open Street Map Linked GeoData

LinkedGeoData is an effort to add a spatial dimension to the Web of Data / Semantic Web. LinkedGeoData uses the information collected by the OpenStreetMap project and makes it available as an RDF knowledge base according to the Linked Data principles. It interlinks this data with other knowledge bases in the Linking Open Data initiative.

The Linked Geo Data Knowledge Base

“In order to employ the Web as a medium for data and information integration, comprehensive datasets and vocabularies are required as they enable the disambiguation and alignment of other data and information. Many real-life information integration and aggregation tasks are impossible without comprehensive background knowledge related to spatial features of the ways, structures and landscapes surrounding us.

LinkedGeoData uses the comprehensive OpenStreetMap spatial data collection to create a large spatial knowledge base. It currently consists of information about approx. 350 million nodes and 30 million ways and the resulting RDF data comprises approximately 2 billion triples. The data is available according to the Linked Data principles and interlinked with DBpedia.

Accessing the data:

The following interfaces exist for online access:

  • Rest Api: provides basic access to a database with a full Open Street Map (OSM) planet file loaded.
  • Sparql Endpoints: enable queries on databases with a reduced (but hopefully for many applications relevant) subset of the whole data loaded. The Sparql Endpoints come in two flavours:
    • Static: Contains the data extracted from a OSM planet file of a certain date
    • Live: Initially a copy of the static version that is then synchronized with the minutely updates from OSM.


Example Link
http://browser.linkedgeodata.org/?lat=51.063657689874&lon=13.750735172091&zoom=16&prop=amenity&val=

Access to the Data
http://linkedgeodata.org/OnlineAccess

Geospatial Revolution

If you are having any doubts that geography, geospatial technologies and all those spatial concepts developed throughout the centuries underpin almost every aspect of our everyday life, please have a look at this series of short videos. Produced and released by Pennsylvania State University under the banner of the Geospatial Revolution Project.

The mission of the Project is to expand public knowledge about the history, applications, related privacy and legal issues, and the potential future of location-based technologies.

Geospatial information influences nearly everything. Seamless layers of satellites, surveillance, and location-based technologies create a worldwide geographic knowledge base vital to solving myriad social and environmental problems in the interconnected global community. We count on these technologies to:

* fight climate change
* map populations across continents, countries, and communities
* track disease
* strengthen bonds between cultures
* assist first responders in protecting safety
* enable democracy
* navigate our personal lives…


The videos are a great testimony to the power of geospatial technologies, today at fingertips of almost any individual with access to the internet, mobile phone and/or GPS receiver. Whether used for your personal convenience or in business, maps are so much more than just pretty pictures… If you have a problem to solve, think maps for a better perspective!