Linked Open Data for the Food and Agriculture

Country Profiles

Soonho Kim, Virginie Viollier, and Marta Iglesias Sucasas Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

2011 Semantic Technology Conference

Agenda

• About FAO• FAO Country Profiles • Contribute to the Linked Open Data (LOD)

cloud• Exploit LOD resources • Expose FAO Country Profiles data in Resource

Description Framework-in-attributes (RDFa)• Conclusions and next steps

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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

• Established in 1945• One of the major agencies of the UN system• Counts 192 member countries.• HQ is in Rome and has more than 100

decentralized offices around the world.

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Knowledge organization• Article 1 of FAO’s Constitution:

– “The Organization shall collect, analyse, interpret and disseminate information relating to nutrition, food and agriculture”

• FAO experts’ knowledge network:– Agronomists, foresters, fisheries and livestock specialists, nutritionists,

economists, statisticians, ICT and IM professionals.

• FAO Internet knowledge in numbers:– 2.3 million monthly visits– 3 million web pages, 100 000 documents, hundreds of DBs and

information systems

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FAO Country Profiles

• launched in 2002• a fast and reliable way to access country-

specific information produced by FAO from a single entry point

• Data sources: FAO, FAO-partnership and non-FAO

• Average 250,000 monthly visits

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FAO Country Profiles in LOD

• Contributes to the LOD cloud with a Resource Description Framework (RDF) version of FAO’s country-based reference data

• Exploits the LOD resources to provide enhanced country profiles in Food and Agriculture.

• Exposes FAO Country Profiles data in RDFa to improve search and reuse

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Contribute to the LOD cloud

• Embracing the W3C LOD initiatives• Releasing the FAO geopolitical ontology in

RDF format

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FAO geopolitical ontology

• A mechanism to describe, manage and exchange data related to geopolitical entities

• provide the most updated geopolitical information (names, codes, statistics, historical changes, and so on)

• Associated services– Module maker – Web Services

• Various use cases inside and outside FAO

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Use cases of FAO geopolitical ontologyFAO Country Profiles (key statistics)

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Use cases of FAO geopolitical ontology FAO Country Profiles (land borders and groups)

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FAO geopolitical ontology in LOD

• RDF/XML format • 22,495 triples • 195 links to DBPedia• RDF dump

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Architecture to implement

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Demo

• http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/geopolitical/resource

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Exploit LOD resources

• Exploring LOD’s large and interoperable information base

• Integrating appropriate LOD resources into FAO Country Profiles– Covering most of countries – Updating in regular basis– Providing RDF representation– Including interesting content in the context of

FAO Country Profiles

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Global Hunger Index (GHI)

• A multidimensional overview of global hunger

http://www.ifpri.org/publication/2010-global-hunger-index15FAO Country Profiles

Global Hunger Index dataset in LOD

• Modeled in a RDF data Cube multi-measure model

• Provides the GHI of about 130 countries • Identified with ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country

code• URIs containing year and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2

country code (i.e. GHI of India in 2010 http://data.ifpri.org/rdf/ghi/2010/qb/#observation-2010-IN)

http://data.ifpri.org/rdf/ghi/

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GHI in FAO Country Profiles

http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/index.asp?lang=en&ISO3=IND17FAO Country Profiles

Expose FAO Country Profiles data in RDFa

• Embedding RDF triples within FAO Country Profiles pages

• Examples:– Describing country official name in the selected

language (rdf:label)– Linking to FAO geopolitical ontology (owl:sameAs)– Mapping AGROVOC keywords (skos:closeMatch)

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Describing the official name of country

http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/index.asp?lang=en&iso3=HND&paia=1019FAO Country Profiles

Linking to the FAO geopolitical ontology

http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/index.asp?lang=en&iso3=HND&paia=1020FAO Country Profiles

Mapping AGROVOC keywords

http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/index.asp?lang=en&iso3=HND&paia=1021FAO Country Profiles

Conclusions

• Contributes to the LOD cloud with a RDF version of FAO’s country-based reference data

• Exploits the LOD resources to provide enhanced country profiles in Food and Agriculture.

• Exposes FAO Country Profiles data in RDFa to improve search and reuse

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Next steps

• Continue to provide high quality country information

• Add more LOD resources• Include the FAO geopolitical ontology in the

LOD cloud • Expand the FAO geopolitical ontology with

more data• Provide a SPARQL end-point

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Thanks for your attention

• More information at:

http://www.fao.org/countryprofilesfao-country-profiles@fao.org

Questions?

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