The Location Index (Loc-I) project aims to enable capability for integrating and analysis of spatio-temporal data in a reliable, effective and efficient manner across information domains and organisations, initially focusing on the public sector agencies in Australia. These include social, economic, business, and environmental data with location references embedded within the data (e.g. census district, water drainage regions, and address identifiers). Loc-I is part of the Data Integration Partnership for Australia (DIPA) initiative, which seeks to maximise government data to improve policy advice.
| Demo | Link |
|---|---|
| Loc-I Explorer - interactive demonstrator for user discovery of location features by a geo-point, or a location label. | https://explorer.loci.cat/ |
| Loc-I Integration API Search by label | https://api2.loci.cat/api/v1/location/find-by-label?query=50055290000 |
| Location resource (ASGS) landing page | http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/meshblock/50055290000 |
| Location resource (ASGS) alternates views | http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/meshblock/50055290000?_view=alternates |
| Location resource (ASGS) RDF/Turtle view | http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/meshblock/50055290000?_format=text/turtle |
| Location resource (ASGS) JSON-LD view | http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/meshblock/50055290000?_format=application/ld+json |
Helga is an Enterprise data warehouse manager that manages data warehouse of a public sector organisation. The data warehouse contains observation data which is captured by researchers in her organisation. The observation database captures data and includes a field for location. The location information values captured is varied and can include: textual description, place name, region according to a specific geographic classification, GPS location (lat-long). Helga would like to harmonise location information so that they are consistently and precisely captured and requires a tool for searching, resolving and consistently referring to the location.
Helga, the Enterprise Data Warehouse manager, is creating ETL scripts to append Loc-I identifiers to the data warehouse she is managing for references to location by label or ID.
Helga uses the Loc-I Explorer app to discover location features by label.
The Loc-I Explorer app fires off a query to the Loc-I Integration API, specifically the Search by label API at https://api2.loci.cat/api/v1/location/find-by-label?query=50055290000
Helga gets a list of matching resources in the results page of the Loc-I Explorer.
Helga clicks on the Loc-I resource link to verify that it’s the right one and gets the landing page: http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/meshblock/50055290000 which is redirected to the info resource https://asgsld.net/2016/object?uri=http%3A%2F%2Flinked.data.gov.au%2Fdataset%2Fasgs2016%2Fmeshblock%2F50055290000.
Helga clicks on the link to alternates views to check-out what other views and formats are available: http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/meshblock/50055290000?_view=alternates which 303 redirects to https://asgsld.net/2016/object?uri=http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/meshblock/50055290000&_view=alternates.
Helga views the MB Location resource in RDF/Turtle format: http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/meshblock/50055290000?_format=text/turtle which 303 redirects to https://asgsld.net/2016/object?_view=asgs&_format=text%2Fturtle&uri=http%3A%2F%2Flinked.data.gov.au%2Fdataset%2Fasgs2016%2Fmeshblock%2F50055290000.
Helga views the MB Location resource in JSON-LD format: Location resource (ASGS) JSON-LD view: http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/meshblock/50055290000?_format=application/ld+json which 303 redirects to https://asgsld.net/2016/object?_view=asgs&_format=application%2Fld+json&uri=http%3A%2F%2Flinked.data.gov.au%2Fdataset%2Fasgs2016%2Fmeshblock%2F50055290000.
Helga resolves the wfs view for the MB Location resource in:
http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/meshblock/50055290000?_view=wfs which 303 redirects to https://geo.abs.gov.au/arcgis/services/ASGS2016/MB/MapServer/WFSServer?service=wfs&version=2.0.0&request=GetFeature&typeName=MB:MB&Filter=%3Cogc:Filter%3E%3Cogc:PropertyIsEqualTo%3E%3Cogc:PropertyName%3EMB:MB_CODE_2016%3C/ogc:PropertyName%3E%3Cogc:Literal%3E50055290000%3C/ogc:Literal%3E%3C/ogc:PropertyIsEqualTo%3E%3C/ogc:Filter%3E.
Helga is satisfied with the resource and embeds the Loc-I identifier (http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/meshblock/50055290000) in the data warehouse and makes a note in the row about the WFS view along with its link (http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/meshblock/50055290000?_view=wfs).
The demo uses NIR for identifying the resource (MeshBlock), its views, and its formats.
This provides a separation between the NIR, which has been setup with http://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgs2016/ namespace prefixes arranged with the Australian Linked Data Working Group (ALDWG), and the implementation site http://asgsld.net.
The intention was to provide flexibility in case the implementation sites needed to change or move.
The status of asgsld.net is a research operations grade resource, and we are exploring production operations grade hosting arrangements.
However, the advantage of the way Loc-I NIRs are minted means that we should not need to change once the production operations grade hosting arrangements are determined.
In this case, it is important that any downstream applications and clients to use the NIRs and resolve them so the applications and clients are not affected by any changes to the underlying implementations.
A limitation of the current demo is that the current ASGS landing page doesn’t embed any JSON-LD (with schema.org tags). For indexing by search engines for discovery by search engines (e.g. Google), we would like to explore adding this in as per the ELFIE/SELFIE recommended discovery profile view.