4
Umair et al.
understanding all the freshwater sources and uses related to a business or a
product, decision-makers can identify environmentally conscious and programmatic
changes to reduce their freshwater impact or footprint. Water footprint assessments
are emerging concepts that require obtaining water data from many participants
within an organization’s supply chain. Numerous data sources can be used for
this purpose, including weather data, geo-location data, historical records, product
usage data, user behavior habits, etc. There is no single source to provide such
data and a considerable number of different data sources must be integrated to
collect the information necessary to generate an accurate water footprint. In short,
successful management of water data requires consideration of all sources of water
consumption, including indirect ones, augmented with water network distribution
information.
3 Linked Data for Water Information Integration
Information integration projects typically focus on one-off point-to-point integration
solutions between two or more systems in a customized but inflexible and ultimately
non-reusable manner. The fundamental concept of Linked Data is that information is
created with the mindset of sharing and reuse. Linked Data leverages open protocols
and W3C standards, emerging from research into the Semantic Web, for sharing
structured data on the Web. It proposes an approach for information interoperability
based on the creation of a global information space. Linked Data has the following
advantages:
• Separate systems that are designed independently can be later linked at the edges.
• Interoperability is added incrementally when needed and where it is costeffective.
• Data is expressed in a mixture of vocabularies.
Linked Data is facilitating the publishing of large amounts of structured data on
the web. The resulting interlined data can be considered as a Web scale dataspace
supported by the Semantic Web technologies. The Linked Open Data 1 represents
a large number of interlinked datasets that are being actively used by industry,
government, and scientific communities. Linked Data promotes four basic principles
for exposing, sharing and connecting data. The first principle encourages the use
of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs 2 ) for naming things. The second principle
recommends the use of Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP 3 ) for URIs, so that
data can be retrieve from names using standard protocols. The third principle
promotes the use of standard web formats, such as the Resource Description
1 http://lod-cloud.net/
2 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986
3 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616
Umair et al.
understanding all the freshwater sources and uses related to a business or a
product, decision-makers can identify environmentally conscious and programmatic
changes to reduce their freshwater impact or footprint. Water footprint assessments
are emerging concepts that require obtaining water data from many participants
within an organization’s supply chain. Numerous data sources can be used for
this purpose, including weather data, geo-location data, historical records, product
usage data, user behavior habits, etc. There is no single source to provide such
data and a considerable number of different data sources must be integrated to
collect the information necessary to generate an accurate water footprint. In short,
successful management of water data requires consideration of all sources of water
consumption, including indirect ones, augmented with water network distribution
information.
3 Linked Data for Water Information Integration
Information integration projects typically focus on one-off point-to-point integration
solutions between two or more systems in a customized but inflexible and ultimately
non-reusable manner. The fundamental concept of Linked Data is that information is
created with the mindset of sharing and reuse. Linked Data leverages open protocols
and W3C standards, emerging from research into the Semantic Web, for sharing
structured data on the Web. It proposes an approach for information interoperability
based on the creation of a global information space. Linked Data has the following
advantages:
• Separate systems that are designed independently can be later linked at the edges.
• Interoperability is added incrementally when needed and where it is costeffective.
• Data is expressed in a mixture of vocabularies.
Linked Data is facilitating the publishing of large amounts of structured data on
the web. The resulting interlined data can be considered as a Web scale dataspace
supported by the Semantic Web technologies. The Linked Open Data 1 represents
a large number of interlinked datasets that are being actively used by industry,
government, and scientific communities. Linked Data promotes four basic principles
for exposing, sharing and connecting data. The first principle encourages the use
of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs 2 ) for naming things. The second principle
recommends the use of Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP 3 ) for URIs, so that
data can be retrieve from names using standard protocols. The third principle
promotes the use of standard web formats, such as the Resource Description
1 http://lod-cloud.net/
2 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986
3 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616