Why Linked Data?

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• published: 05 Aug 2013
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This video is an introduction to Linked Data, from understanding why to use, who is using and introducing Ordnance Survey Linked Open Data. Open data is all about opening up information and data as well as making it possible to use and re-use it. To fully benefit from open data it is crucial to put information and data into a context that creates new knowledge and enables powerful services and applications. In order for the various open data datasets to work together, they need to be structured so that they work easily with other open datasets. This is called interoperability. Sir Tim Berners-Lee created a 5 star model to show the various levels of how levels of interoperability can be categorised. For example open data that is considered 1 star is easy to publish, but will take a lot of processing to make it work with other data, whereas 5 star data will need investment to build links, but will become easily findable on the web and so increase the value of the data. Today we link web pages using hyperlinks to allow us to find out more about a subject. Linked Open Data follows these principles by publishing data as a web page, which can be linked to allowing us to find out more insights about the data. Linked Open Data is still a relatively new field, but has been picked up by several industries such as clean energy, biomedicine and Government. Using Linked Open Data makes it possible to process multiple datasets and provide added value by combining different data sets. Ordnance Survey has published three OS OpenData products as Linked Data: the 1:50 000 Scale Gazetteer, Code-Point Open and the administrative geography for Great Britain taken from Boundary-Line. A combined OS Linked Data dataset combines these products into one database to support more flexible data access.