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Linked Data for Development:Managing and sharing knowledge in the
developing part of the world
Victor de BoerWeb and Media group, Computer Science,
The Network Institute , VU University Amsterdam
With significant input from Christophe Guéret, Stefan Schlobach, Chris van Aart, Anna Bon, Hans Akkermans, Nana Gyan, Stephane Boyera, Bernie Innocenti, Walter
Bender, Claudia Urrea, Amadou Tangara. Mary Allen,…
About me
Victor de Boer
Assistant professor
Web & Media Group, Network Institute
VU University Amsterdam
Semantic Technologies, Linked Data
Cultural Heritage
Digital History
Linked Data for Development
Almost half the world — over three billion people — lives on less than $2.50 a day
http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
ICT4DInformation and Communication Technology for Development
• Technology is a development tool– Education– Healthcare– Livelihood– etc.
• Leveraging communication independently of physical/geographical barriers
• Improving transparency, accountability, efficiency of governments
• Developing nations can leapfrog directly into the information age, jumping many phases of immature technologies
Based on Sbc4d.com
Web Alliance for Regreening in Africa
Washington, 13-15 May 2013 11
W4RA : Information exchange and knowledge sharing in rural Africa
World Wide Web as Instrument of Empowerment
“Our success will be measured by how well we foster thecreativity of our children. Whether future scientists havethe tools to cure diseases.Whether people, in developed and developing economiesalike, can distinguish reliable information from propagandaor commercial chaff.
Whether the next generation will build systems that supportdemocracy and accountable debate.
I hope that you will join this global effort to advance theWeb to empower people.”
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web:
Can the Web (be made to) mean something forknowledge sharing even under veryconstraining conditions?
No internet, no computer, no electricity
Multitude of languages, levels of literacy
Information sharing needs
• 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
Low-literate users
• One of the grand challenges of ICT4D
• Especially prevalent among the rural poor
• Cf. Accessibility here
– Web design http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/
Icon-based interfaces
• Example: Indrani Medhi– Correlation between ease of using hierarchical menu’s
(even without text) and literacy
All phones: Voice-based user interfaces
• Not exclusive to ICT4D (cf Siri, In-car systems)
• Very suitable for oral cultures
• Integrate local community radios and mobile ICT for knowledge sharing
• Better support and integrate local languages in voice-based services
– Development of appropriate speech elements (text-to-speech and Speech recognition)
• Investigate self-sustainability
– Develop appropriate business models
– In collaboration with local communities.
‘Small Languages’
• Large language populations: English, Spanish, German, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch…– Large number of textual corpora available, great economic
value to localization
• Small languages: Frisian, Bambara (3M speakers), – Small number of textual corpora available, some economic
value to localization
• Very small languages: Bomu (30K speakers)– No textual corpora available, very low economic value to
localization
(adapted) Living Labs
• 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
From 20 use cases to 3 voice systems
Market Information
Citizen Journalism
Event Organiser
1 m-Milk ordering and delivery service of Tominian Milk producers and NGO2 m-Tree protection alert service Sahel Eco Farmers and NGO3 mobile-web Event organizer for vaccination of herds Farmers4 m-Farmer-expert directory service Farmer organization5 NGO info-line about legal issues in several languages Sahel Eco6 Leave announcement or select your favourite song Radio7 Shea butter and honey trading service Radio and Sahel Eco8 Access radio programs and announcements on your phone Radio9 Gourcy seed producers seed certification service Farmer organization10 Radio questions and answers about agricultural issues Radio11 m-collective purchase organizing service Local buyers12 m-GIS regreening service Sahel Eco13 m-Farmer social network Sahel Eco14 mobile-web regional market system Farmer organization15 Sahel Eco portal to Regreening and access to m-services Sahel Eco16 m-event organizer for re-greening events Sahel Eco, farmers
Local market data
Communiqué
GSM/Voice interface
Web Interface Text-To-Speech
Community radioSahel Eco operativeBuyers
“Slot and Filler” Text-to-Speech
English:
Bambara:
15 liters of offered by Zakari Diarra
15_ba.wav L_ba.wav Of_ba.wav
Spoken Language Elements Repository
honey
Voice Interface design forlow-(computer) literate users
•Design guidelines (Deepak Chhettri)•Evaluation experiment (Onur Akgun and Serdar Parlak)•Access to DBpedia / Wikipedia (Rianne Nieland)
Mo
bile u
sers
VOICES User Content
VOICES Platform & Toolbox
Telecom Access
Radio ProgramOutput
Web Access
MobileTraining Lab
Local ICT developers
Speech
Tools
Local end-users
Sustainablebusiness models
Mobileaccess
PRODUCTS
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
Sem.tech/Linked Data 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
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)mission and vision
• Develop (and deploy) a low-cost laptop in order to revolutionize how we educate the world's children
• What motivates learning is not carrots or sticks, but rather:– autonomy,– mastery, and– a sense of purpose.
• A laptop makes learning more flexible: Children learn by teaching and actively helping each other; the teacher is free to focus expertise where it is needed
How is learning with the XO different?
OLPC
Computer for learningStudent-centricTeacher as mentorVoice, textLearning to learnCritical thinking
Infrastructure: Low-powered hardware and Mesh networking
ENTITY REGISTRY SYSTEM (ERS)• Fully decentralised Linked Data publication platform• Works under any kind of connectivity context• Tracks back individual edits back to their authors• Simple and versatile• Open Source https://github.com/ers-devs• Low resource demanding
... and open for contributions so don'thesitate to fork it!
Christophe Gueret
Hybrid solution
http://www.firstmilesolutions.com/documents/DakNet_IEEE_Computer.pdf
Sneakernet
Throughput
Latency
“Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.”
—Andrew Tanenbaum
International Aid Transparancy Initiative
“IATI is a voluntary, multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to improve the transparency of aid in order to increase its effectiveness in tackling poverty.”
As of 2013, over 150 donors, NGOs and governmentshave registered to the IATIregistry.org by publishingtheir aid activities in this XML standard.
Now: 180+
http://iati2lod.appspot.com/4. How does violent conflict in recipient countries affect aid activities?
5. How does aid spending as registered in the IATI standard compare to World Bank indicators?
Links to DBPedia
IDS: document 0001 Theme:”Food Security”
DBPedia:”Food Security”
Analysis of approaches to understanding and addressing food security issues; examination of the structural causes of food insecurity and different policy responses
Theme:” Food aid emergencies ”
Person:”David Pimentel”
Organisation:”FAO”
“Voedselzekerheid”@NL
Links to IATI
IDS: document 0003 Theme 'Higher education’
IATI Sector:”Higher Education”
Theme Education
Organisation : UN Habitat
Activity: Multi donor fund to support civil society in democracy related issues
Degree and diploma programmes at universities, colleges and polytechnics; scholarships.
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
With the mainstream
Dev. countries can leapfrog directly into the information age,
jumping many phases of immature technologies
Img: flickr/n3v3rv0id
Linked Data is mainstream computer science research.
Test hypotheses in domains/environments
“The goal is to bring together top Computer Scientists who are willing to integrate development specific problems into their own respective research. Those experts will face common challenges: technologically, as well as legally, ethically, sociologically and politically, challenges that could be addressed more coherently in what we might call: Development Informatics.”
• Applied science in multidisciplinary domain• LD4D: Linked Data and Semantic web technologies
• HCI4D: voice interfaces, icon-based communication
• DS4D: distributed systems for low-connected environments
• Socio-technical system• Cultural, physical context plays important role in types of solutions, but also
Software engineering issues
Stefan Schlobach
http://www.voices.eu
http://w4ra.org
http://worldwidesemanticweb.org